Idlewild in sight — At flight’s end, safety eludes an Italian airliner (Part 5)

Mar 21, 2021

This web page is a work-in-progress. Please come back in a few weeks, unless I die before then...

The final, fatal approach

Flight was only for the relatively wealthy

The passengers and crew of LAI Flight 451 were no doubt much like the passengers and crews of almost any international airline in the mid-1950s. The following postcard pictures the passenger cabin of a Northwest Orient Airlines DC-6B:

World travellers in the mid-20th Century, whether they had bought passage on airliners or ocean liners, were cut from the same cloth. The majority were college- or university students or graduates; those with jobs worked in high-paying jobs or professions. They were well dressed by mid-20th Century standards: you wouldn’t have seen many cut-offs or T-shirts on airline flights or ocean liners in the 1950s or 1960s. The great majority of were Caucasian; people of colour were less likely than Caucasians to be able to afford the high cost of airline tickets, much less training as a pilot or other air crew. In the United States, even though the Civil Rights Movement had resulted in the racial integration of airliners, some airports in the southern U.S. still practiced apartheid-like segregation. Nearly all airline passengers could be classified as “busy people” with clear needs and agendas. And nearly all of those busy people greatly valued two things highly: their time, and their comfort. Airlines were working hard to move people where they wished to go, as fast and as comfortably as possible, at a profit, of course.

When the passengers and crew of Linee Aeree Italiane Flight 451 boarded their DC-6B at Campiano Airport in Rome, on December 18, 1954, they must have been aware of the dangers they faced: nearly 50 airliners had already crashed in that year alone. In the short history of airline flight (the world’s first commercial passenger flight was in 1914, between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida), hundreds of airliners had fallen from the sky as a result of engine failures, engine fires, flying into “terrain,” mid-air collisions, running out of fuel, and extreme weather.

Although jetliners would prove to be far safer than propeller airliners, they had a rocky start. Within a year of its their debut in 1952, two jet-powered de Havilland DH.106 Comets suffered catastrophic, in-flight breakups due to a previously unknown problem, metal fatigue resulting from the need to pressurize them for high-altitude flight.

Predictably, political differences came to negatively impact the airline business. Commercial aircraft hijackings had become a thing as early 1947, when a domestic Romanian flight from Bucharest to Craiova was hijacked by three army officers seeking political asylum from communist Romania. During the hijacking, the flight mechanic, Mitrofan Bescioti, was shot by lieutenant Aurel Dobre. Just six months before passengers boarded LAI Flight 451, a Cathay Pacific Douglas C-54 Skymaster enroute from Bangkok to Hong Kong was shot down by fighter planes of the People's Republic of China, killing 10 of 19 passengers and crew on board.

What goes up must come down

Regardless of the cause or causes of any aircraft accident, the most hazardous moments of every flight occur during take-off, when the plane may or may not reach the safety of the sky, and during landing, when the plane may or may not come to a stop safe in the bosom of the earth. At cruising altitude, it might be possible to overcome such problems as engine failure, running out of fuel, loss of pressurization, The challenge that passengers and crews face in every flight comes down to a contest between the aircraft and one the most powerful, least understood of natural phenomena — gravity.

Except The 10 crew members of LAI Flight 451 and many if not all of its 22 passengers had survived six take-offs and five landings. Most of the passengers were probably Italian or Americans of Italian descent. There may have been passengers who emplaned or deplaned the airliner at Milan, or Paris, or Shannon, or Boston. (It’s unlikely that many passengers boarded or left the flight at Gander, Newfoundland, since it was primarily a refuelling stop for transatlantic flights.)

After an uneventful flight under instrument flight regulations (IFR), Flight 451 reported to Idlewild Airport Approach Control at 11:22 a.m. that it had arrived over the Mitchell Radio Range Station at 7,000 feet. Air traffic controllers cleared the flight to enter the Scotland holding pattern, 13 nautical miles southwest of the airport where it would fly “racetrack” ovals within the specified airspace called the Scotland Holding Pattern, presumably airspace reserved for airliners arriving from Western Europe. Subsequently, the airliner was "laddered down" to the number-one position to approach the airport.

It’s probably safe to say that everyone else on board the airliner was exhausted. They had left Rome in the evening the day before and had likely been on the aircraft for at least 18 hours, assuming that the airliner was on the ground for about an hour at each of its stops. They were probably able to leave the aircraft to stretch their legs at each airport, but they had endured more than half a day of vibration, shaking, and such high levels of noise from the aircraft’s huge engines that they must have felt permanently deafened. And they had crossed seven time zones.

At 11:47 a.m., flight controllers notified Flight 451 that weather conditions at the airport had deteriorated due to light rain and fog, and that the lowest clouds were below below the altitude of 400 feet, below the minimum for landing on runway 22, the runway then in use. Flight 451 continued to hold, waiting for clearance to land.

By 1954, Idlewild had the highest volume of international air traffic of any airport in the world..

at least those who had flown all the way from Rome or Paris, would probably have been exhausted and certainly anxious to arrive in New York. The distance from Rome to New York, on the route the airliner took, was about 4,331 miles (almost 7,697 kilometres) . At the DC-6B’s cruising speed of 315 miles per hour (507 kilometres per hour), its flight time, which of course doesn’t take re-fuelling stops into account, would have been about 26 hours.

another landing in “sub-optimal” weather — light rain and fog. A and flew to New York via Milan, Paris, Shannon, Gander, and Boston. flown Flight 451 originated at Ciampino airport in Rome and flew to New York via Milan, Paris, Shannon, Gander, and Boston. when it struck the pier which supported the left row of runway 04 slope line approach lights. At 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 18, 1954, an LAI Douglas DC-6B airliner carrying a crew of 10 and 22 passengers Only six people, all passengers, survived.**

It’s pointless to say that the accident shouldn’t have happened. Of course it shouldn’t ahave happened! But it did. The reasons that it happened are instructive, pointing as they do to the deadly combination of pilot fatigue and, as the crash report puts it, “particular and difficult circumstances”. was Italy’s flag carrier airline from 1946 until 2008.

Pilot fatigue was blamed for the crash of a Linee Aeree Italiane Douglas DC-6B airliner when it crashed on landing at New York City's Idlewild Airport on December 18, 1954. The airliner was in its fourth landing attempt when it struck the pier supporting the left row of Runway 04 slope-line approach lights.

All 10 crew perished in the crash, along with 16 of 22 passengers. After striking the pier

The crash made headlines internationally. Two days after the crash, on December 20, the London Daily Mail published these photos:

Philatelic evidence of the crash exists in mail that was recovered from the crash site. This airmail cover, stamped with a purple handstamp reading, DAMAGE DUE TO AIR MAIL INTERRUPTION NEAR N.Y. INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT DEC. 18, 1954, was posted two days earlier at Lavello, Potenza, Italy:

Water damage is visible at the top and bottom of the cover, and there appear to be oil stains along the bottom.

The crash delayed the cover in its journey to an address in Young, Saskatchewan. Backstamps document its arrival there on New Year's Eve, 13 days after the accident.

The report of the crash investigation cited an erratic approach which resulted in a descent to an altitude too low to avoid striking the pier. A contributing factor to this accident was pilot fatigue due to the particular and diffcult circumstances.

All 10 crew perished in the crash, along with 16 of 22 passengers. After striking the pier

The crash made headlines internationally. Two days after the crash, on December 20, the London Daily Mail published these photos:

Next, in Part 6: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

HOME | Next Page: What went wrong?xxx

HOME | Next Page: What went wrong?