Original subtitles

New Hope, Georgia, April 4th, 1977.

Hello?

My husband called me and he said, "Honey,

"we've got some bad weather coming in."

Boys, come on in now.

Nasty weather's comin'.

One of the worst storms in years is moving across the south.

Sadie Hurst rushes her children to safety.

We heard this tremendous noise.

When I got to the top of the basement steps to close the door,

I saw a red reflection like fire in the door.

That's when I saw what was happening.

72 people are killed

when a Southern Airways DC-9 falls from the sky.

Mayday. Mayday.

Boarding pass.

Thank you.

- Good afternoon, sir. - Good afternoon.

- May I see your boarding pass, please? - Certainly.

Just down the aisle on the right, sir. Enjoy your flight.

Thank you.

Boarding pass.

81 passengers board Southern Airways Flight 242,

a DC-9 bound for Atlanta, Georgia.

Many of them are military personnel from nearby bases.

Captain Bill McKenzie and First Officer Lyman Keele

have been shuttling passengers across the American South all day.

Who's got the landing?

"Not me," says the captain.

Ignition, sir.

Pilots regularly exchange tasks on long days like this one.

First Officer Lyman Keele will be handling this leg of the flight.

He's an experienced Navy pilot

who's been with Southern Airways for four years.

Before their last take-off, the crew was handed

a weather report for the airports along their route.

Looks like you guys got a good one comin'.

The DC-9 was introduced in 1965

to fly frequent short flights.

Both of its engines are mounted to the rear fuselage

rather than the wings.

It was designed for take-off on shorter runways.

We had a 13 landing day,

which was a lot of small stops, you know.

About 20 or 30 minute legs in between,

and it was sort of the tour to the south.

Skies have been smooth all afternoon,

but the weather's worsening.

The flight crew is prepared for turbulence.

It was raining in Huntsville and they said,

"Oh, it's going to be some bad weather. Don't serve."

So we did not serve from Huntsville to Atlanta,

which is a very short route,

and we were delighted not to be serving.

I was a little surprised

that we took off when we did.

I really thought we'd taxi out

to the end of the runway and hold for a while,

because the weather looked so bad.

But we taxied out and immediately took off.

At 3:54 p.m., the DC-9 takes off into a hard rain.

The short hop to Atlanta should take just 25 minutes.

As Southern Airways 242 flies away from Huntsville,

the National Weather Service tracks weather that's far worse than the pilots expect.

Tornadoes are touching down all across the south.

The weather in the South-Eastern United States

can be very treacherous.

High humidities, high temperatures are

a prescription for thunderstorms.

And so, with all of that kind of moisture in the air,

and the high convective heating,

you're going to have very large thunderstorms

that are associated with heavy rains, hail,

icing conditions, and extreme winds.

And, of course, tornados that will be spawned from that kind of action.

Huntsville Air Traffic Control has

some concerns about the gathering storm.

Southern Airways 242, I'm painting a line of weather

which appears to be moderate to-possibly-heavy precipitation

starting about five miles ahead.

Okay, we're in the rain right now.

Uh... it doesn't look much heavier

than what we're in right now, does it?

It's not a solid mass,

but it, uh, appears to be a little bit heavier

than what you're in right now.

In 1977, most airliners are equipped with the Bendix Weather Radar.

Pilots are trained to avoid regions that appear bright.

Where there's light, there's bad weather.

I can't read that.

It just looks like rain, Bill. What do you think?

- There's a hole. - There's a hole right there.

That's all I see.

The pilots spot a dark area on their radar,

a passageway through the storm.

They plan to navigate between towering thunderheads over 14,000 meters.

Coming over, we had pretty good radar.

I believe right straight ahead. There.

The next few miles is probably the best way we can go.

But as they head towards the storm system,

they get an ominous report from Memphis Air Traffic Control.

Attention all aircraft.

SIGMET. Tennessee, Southern Louisiana, Mississippi...

SIGMET is short for Significant Meteorological Information.

A warning to pilots that dangerous weather is in the region.

Here we go. Hold 'em, cowboy.

Pilots don't want to be within 50 miles

of a lot of those types of thunderstorms,

for the very reason that the airplane may not be able to handle it,

and or the pilots may not be able to control

the airplane flying into that kind of activity.

McKenzie and Keele take a harder look at their weather radar.

Looks heavy. Nothing's going through that.

Mysteriously, the gap the pilots thought

they'd spotted no longer seems to exist.

That's the hole, isn't it?

It's not showing a hole, is it?

The storm suddenly gets much worse.

Never heard such loud hail in my life.

And it beating on the, you know,

the sides of the airplane was extremely deafening.

The hail was probably the loudest noise I've ever heard.

It sounded like I was in a metal barrel

with someone throwing rocks at me.

Please keep your seatbelts fastened!

We should be out of this shortly.

Hail the size of baseballs hammers the DC-9,

breaking the plane's windshield.

The pilots of Southern 242 had

to raise their voices audibly to be heard

above the unholy tattoo of this hail,

which was buckshotting the airplane.

These pilots had never been through anything like this before in their lives.

Which way? Do we cross here, or go out?

I don't know how we get through here, Bill.

I know. You're just gonna have to go out.

Yeah, right across that band.

All clear left, approximately right now.

I think we can cut across there.

McKenzie and Keele desperately seek

an escape route from the storm.

But as they do, the emergency escalates.

The plane loses all electrical power.

Without power, Keele must keep

the aircraft level without an artificial horizon.

Now the pilots are left to look back out the window

and try and orient the airplane with the horizon.

But surrounded by thick cloud, a horizon is difficult to find.

It's almost impossible for Lyman Keele to get his bearings.

Southern 242, what's your speed?

Atlanta Air Traffic Control tries

to make contact with Southern Airways.

They receive no response.

Southern 242, Atlanta. What's your speed?

After I realized that we had a disaster in progress,

or something was wrong,

I got up and started briefing my passengers.

The flight attendants were very quick

in giving us emergency landing instructions.

There was not very much time for anyone to start panicking.

Got it. We got it back, Bill. Got it back, got it back.

After 36 seconds in the dark,

power returns.

The instruments come alive, and the radio begins working again.

Air Traffic Control finally gets through to McKenzie and Keele.

Maintain 15,000, if you understand me.

Maintain 15,000, Southern 242.

Southern Airways Flight 242 has been

instructed to fly at 4,600 meters.

But the plane has fallen to almost 4,200 meters.

We're trying to get it up there.

While I was lookin' out

at the front of the left engine,

I could see the hail continuing to put

more and more dents into the cowling

around the engine and into the cone

in the center of the engine,

and the engine was starting to make sounds like it was quitting.

Okay, uh, 242, uh,

we just got our windshield busted.

We'll try to get it back up to 15.

We're at 14.

Southern 242, you say you're at 14 now?

Left engine won't spool!

Our left engine just cut out.

You say you lost an engine and, uh, busted a windshield?

Yes, sir!

My God.

The other engine is going, too.

Got the other engine going, too.

Southern 242, say again.

Standby!

We lost both engines!

Both engines are now out.

This DC-9 is a glider, and it's falling at 56 feet per second.

They're at 14,000 feet.

They don't have a lot of time.

Get us a vector to a clear area, Atlanta.

Lyman Keele adjusts his course

to navigate his plane out of the storm.

Captain McKenzie must restart the engines,

or they'll be forced to make an emergency landing.

Without engines, Southern Airways Flight 242 is plummeting from the sky.

There's also another dire consequence of the engine failure.

Normally, the engines generate electricity for the instruments,

radios, and hydraulics.

When the engines quit, all of these systems fail.

APU deployed.

The APU, the Auxiliary Power Unit,

is a back-up power generator.

It will provide electricity to the plane.

But it will take more than two minutes for it to power up.

Once they'd finished their instructions,

and there was simply a waiting period before we landed,

we turned to each other and said that we would

all get through this together

and we held hands for a moment.

When the second engine quit,

I wasn't aware of what was going on around me.

I was so focused on trying to figure out a way to save myself.

I knew that sometimes the tail breaks off in an accident,

and I felt, the further back I could get, the better.

There we go!

After two minutes without systems,

the Auxiliary Power Unit finally kicks in.

The pilots may not have engines,

but at least they now have power.

We've lost both engines.

How about getting us a vector to the nearest place?

Captain McKenzie needs directions to an airport.

The flight can only stay airborne for another six minutes.

Dobbins Air Force Base is 32 kilometers away.

It has a runway that's long enough for a DC-9.

It also has full emergency services.

Southern 242, roger.

Turn right heading one-zero-zero,

There will be vectors for a straight-in approach

to Dobbins, uh, runway 11.

What's Dobbins weather, Bill? How far is it?

How far is it?

Lyman Keele knows

Dobbins Air Force Base intimately.

He trained there, and it's now his home base as a Navy Reserve pilot.

He's landed there frequently.

Declare an emergency, Bill.

Right now, Keele's familiarity

with Dobbins is the only advantage this crew has.

Less than 16 kilometers away lies

the town of New Hope, Georgia.

Sadie Hurst sees no signs of an advancing storm.

It was an absolutely beautiful day.

The children were playing laying outside.

They were riding their bicycles

up and down the driveway.

Hello? Hey, you.

My husband worked in Atlanta and he kept his radio on the Huntsville radio station.

And he called me and he said "Honey,

"we've got some bad weather coming in."

He said, "You need to get the kids in."

Boys! Come on in now!

Nasty weather's comin'.

Come in now.

All right. Flashlights and batteries, Steven.

Ordinarily tornados come with bad weather.

You know, dark clouds, and rain and hail.

But we didn't see any of that.

Southern Airways 242 finally breaks

through the storm clouds into clear skies.

The plane descends steadily through 2,100 meters.

Get those engines started!

Once the engines failed,

the workload in the cockpit increased substantially.

In this particular instance,

the first officer was the "pilot flying."

He was the one that was actually manipulating the flight controls

and maneuvering the airplane.

The captain, on the other hand, was now running checklist

and trying to troubleshoot.

Listen, uh, we lost both engines, and uh,

I can't, uh, tell you the implications of this, uh...

We only got two engines,

and how far is Dobbins now?

Southern 242, uh, 19 miles.

Do you have one engine running now?

Negative.

No engines.

I didn't know what was wrong,

but I could tell something was wrong.

I went and opened the cockpit door

simply to tell them we're ready for whatever.

Just don't stall this thing out.

No, I won't.

Bill, what's going on?

Not now, Cathy. Sit down!

You could tell they were afraid.

I understood that they were afraid

just by the sound of their voice.

So I understood that there was something

very dangerous going on, but I had no idea what.

Down to only 1,400 meters,

the plane is still 27 kilometers from Dobbins Air Force Base.

Ask him if there is anything between here and Dobbins.

- What? - Ask him if there's anything

between here and Dobbins!

Uh, is there an airport between our position and Dobbins?

Southern 242, uh, no, sir. Closest airport is Dobbins.

First Officer Lyman Keele doesn't think

he can get the DC-9 as far as Dobbins Air Force Base.

He's lost too much altitude.

I doubt we're going to make it,

but we're trying everything to get something started.

Uh, Roger. Well, there is Cartersville.

You're about 10 miles south of Cartersville,

fifteen miles west of Dobbins.

Keele needs a closer airport.

Cartersville seems like a good choice.

We'll take a vector to that, yes. We'll have to go there.

Can you give us a vector to Cartersville?

All right. Turn left, heading 360 will be directly, uh...

direct vector to Cartersville.

Air-traffic controllers in Atlanta see

no other options.

They direct Flight 242 to Cartersville Airport.

As the pilots seek out an airport,

the flight attendants still don't know

what type of landing to prepare for.

They wouldn't talk to me.

When I looked in the door,

the whole windshield was cracked.

So what do we do?

I think we've lost both the engines.

I thought so.

Okay.

Cathy, have you briefed all your passengers?

Mm-hmm.

I realized I was in an emergency situation,

and I felt like I was going to die.

But I decided I would do everything I could to try to help my chances.

I had previously collected some blankets and pillows

and had gotten my leather jacket off the overhead rack.

And I arranged those in to make a nest

as much as I could for myself.

With tornadoes in the forecast,

the community of New Hope is braced

for a different type of danger.

After a couple of hours of playing outside

my mother called us in to...

to come in, because there was bad weather

coming our way.

We came into the house

and mother had told us about what was going on,

and she said that we needed to get downstairs

to prepare for the bad weather that was coming.

Southern Airways Flight 242 has lost too much altitude.

The pilots come to the frightening conclusion

that at the rate they're falling,

they can't make it to Cartersville.

They must prepare to land now.

I'm picking out a clear field.

Bill, you have to find me a highway.

Let's get the next clear open field.

No, Bill!

I see a highway over there, no cars.

Right there, is that straight?

No.

We'll have to take it.

Lyman Keele decides to bring the plane down

onto a rural highway, Georgia State Highway 92.

Captain Bill McKenzie radios Atlanta Air Traffic Control with the bad news.

We're putting it on the highway.

We're down to nothing.

The clock runs out on Southern Airways 242.

Sweet Jesus.

With no engines, First Officer Lyman Keele

lines up the aircraft for an emergency landing

on the highway that runs through New Hope, Georgia.

In the last minute, we did a steep left bank,

in which we were able to see

the pine trees that were very close to the aircraft.

Flaps.

They're down to 50.

Oh, God, Bill, I hope we can do it.

Without training on how to land a DC-9 with no engines,

First Officer Lyman Keele's attempt is entirely improvised.

Lyman Keele is a young man who has just come back

from the proving ground of Southeast Asia,

where he was a naval aviator.

He learned the niceties of landing

on a rolling, pitching aircraft carrier

in the South China Sea, in the middle of the night.

What he was confronted with right now was even a greater test.

The greatest test he had ever confronted

in his life as an airman.

I'm going to land right over that guy.

There's a car ahead!

I got it. I've got it now. I got it.

Brace for impact!

The Southern Airways flight

touches down on State Highway 92.

When the aircraft touched down,

the first touchdown was very, very nice.

It was smooth. It seemed like it was gonna work,

and everything was gonna turn out okay.

And then it immediately bounced back up in the air

and then slammed down.

Each bump that we made seemed to be harder

and louder than the previous one.

The plane smashes into New Hope.

Before the plane completely stopped moving,

there was fire blowing through the cabin.

I felt my face burning,

even though I tried to cover it with my leather jacket.

We heard this tremendous noise.

Large sections of Southern Airways 242 litter

the entire length of New Hope.

Come on, damn it.

I got my seat belt loose after a few tries

and turned toward the rear of the airplane

and I saw a spot of light.

I got up and ran for that light.

I could not believe I was alive.

I just could not believe it.

Where I found myself after we woke up,

was sort of indescribable.

I was sitting by the front entry door.

We have a coat closet that was adjacent to it

and the back wall that the jump seat's strapped to.

All three of those walls had collapsed

and rolled into like a little triangle ball area.

And there was just enough room for me inside.

And I could see a crack of light,

and I thought I'm going through that crack of light come hell or high water.

In the very next instant,

as if I had just blinked my eyes,

instead of seeing the carpet between my feet,

I suddenly was looking at blue sky above me.

I realized I was lying flat on my back in the dirt.

Everything to the left of me was flaming wreckage.

I didn't even recognize it

as being the plane that I had just been thrown out of.

I thought it was maybe a house that we had hit.

Stewardess Sandy Purl also escapes safely.

She's able to help others.

Survivors flee the flaming wreckage.

When I got to the top of the basement steps to close the door,

I saw a red reflection

like fire in the door.

That's when I saw what was happening.

I saw smoke and fire.

And the people that were coming toward me,

they weren't screaming, they weren't yelling, they were quiet.

Everything was on fire

and I could see people running toward a house.

I need to use your phone.

I wanted to call the local people, or Southern

or somebody, and say we've just landed somewhere and we need help.

It just became a blur. They just kept coming.

You, help her.

I got back to the kitchen

and I was just circled by people.

They knew they were in a house,

and I guess they felt safe

and they needed somebody to help them.

I was still frantic.

I was still trying to move as quickly as possible

and do as much as I could at the time.

I'll remember to the day I die

just staring there

at the, you know, trees burning

and pine trees burning

and pieces of aircraft. It was so unreal.

Never seen anything like it,

and never want to see anything like that again.

72 people, including pilots Lyman Keele

and Bill McKenzie, die in the crash

of Southern Airways Flight 242.

Investigators would soon uncover a tragic series of miscues

and coincidences that caused the plane to crash.

Southern Flight 242 crashed

after the DC-9 jet lost power in both engines.

The plane had just flown through a violent hailstorm

on a flight from Huntsville, Alabama to Atlanta.

I saw the plane as it came veering down, hit the treetops.

We thought it was a tornado at first.

Vehicles, people who was in the grocery store,

yard and vehicles, it actually hit them.

A family of seven is killed instantly

when the plane hit their car.

They were just leaving the store

about the time the flight tried to land on the highway

and then... 'course the...

I think they hit the gas pumps and they exploded,

and everything around was on fire.

And actually they were in the car and perished during the...

during the explosion and fire.

Investigators from The National Transportation Safety Board arrive

within hours of the accident.

This is the second major blow

to Southern Airways' Safety Record.

In 1970, Flight 932, carrying the Marshall University football team,

crashed in West Virginia.

Everyone on board was killed.

There are always many questions

that investigators have to find answers to.

The two primary questions that needed to be answered

by the Board were what were the weather conditions,

and what caused both engines

on a two-engine airplane to flame-out

that resulted in the pilots having

to make an emergency landing on a highway in a small town.

The storm that Flight 242 flew into was a monster.

Why had a crew so familiar with weather in the south flown headfirst into it?

That's a hole, isn't it?

It's not showing a hole, is it?

Investigators listen to the cockpit voice recorder

for any clues about the decisions made

by the crew as they were entering the thunderstorm.

That's a hole, isn't it? It's not showing a hole, is it?

They learn that the pilots relied heavily

on their weather radar as they approached the storm.

But it appears to have deceived them.

All clear left, approximately right now.

I think we can cut across there.

One of the limitations of the radar

that the crew of Flight 242 was using is signal attenuation.

That is that the beam that is projected

from the radar unit out to look at the weather and return is diffused.

So that the picture that is depicted in the cockpit

that the crew is looking at may not be accurate.

Weather radar sends out radio waves.

Those waves bounce off storm clouds ahead and return to the aircraft.

But if precipitation is extremely intense,

the radio waves can be deflected away.

The radar unit might then interpret

the lack of returning waves as a clear path ahead.

Those inaccuracies are hard to decipher.

And if the crew is depending solely,

or very intently on the radar

to guide them through the precipitation,

they may be making decisions

that aren't based on accurate information.

The storm that entangles Southern Airways 242 is

one of the worst to hit the United States in three years.

The crew didn't encounter a tornado, but it was battered

by torrential rain and heavy hail.

Which way? Do we cross here, or go out?

I don't know how we get through here, Bill.

What Keele and McKenzie read as a clear area ahead

was, in fact, the heaviest part of the storm.

They flew straight for it.

The other engine's going, too.

Got the other engine going, too.

Southern 242, say again.

Standby.

We lost both engines!

Once inside the storm, the DC-9's engines failed.

But a turbofan engine is designed to ingest

huge amounts of rain and even hail.

Precipitation alone should not have shut them down.

Investigators study what's left of the DC-9's engines for clues.

They need to know if some mechanical failure

caused both engines to fail inside the storm.

Well, initially I was puzzled as to how the engines could

be involved in the cause of this accident,

but I was very anxious to get there

to see the engines myself to find out if there was

any sort of visible failure in the engines.

Pratt and Whitney, the manufacturer of the engines,

assigns Al Weaver to advise the NTSB investigation.

The engines are moved to Atlanta airport for a closer inspection.

And when they lifted the engines up

in the vertical direction

in the hangar,

I could hear the tinkling and pieces fell out

through the front of the engine on to the floor.

I reached over and picked up those pieces

and I recognized them immediately as part

of the high compressor blading deep inside the engine.

Al Weaver discovers that the pieces

that fell from the engine were broken blades from the compressor.

Jet engines need pressurized air for combustion.

Two separate compressors inside the engine are

made up of dozens of steel blades.

The rapidly spinning blades force air to the back of the engine.

The pressurized air is ignited

in the combustion chamber creating thrust.

Weaver notices that the compressor blades

from Flight 242 are badly bent, or fatigued.

The way they're bent tells him

they were damaged in the air,

not when the plane hit the ground.

And we know that, that fatiguing

and the type of fatigue that we could observe with our eye...

is caused by the repetitive surging

of the engine over and over.

A surge occurs when the airflow through an engine gets interrupted.

Pressure builds up between the compressors

instead of behind them.

Without the back pressure,

air from the combustion chamber moves

to the front of the engine.

The engine briefly loses power.

Next, investigators need to find out

if the repetitive surging was caused

by the engines inhaling massive amounts of rain.

When an engine ingests rain, it has to convert it into a gas

before it can pump it out as exhaust.

That process uses energy and slows down the engines.

Investigators conclude that with so much rain to convert,

the engines couldn't maintain enough power to run the generators.

That's what caused the first power outage.

But it doesn't explain why the engines failed completely.

Al Weaver wants to know if the sheer volume of rain

the engines were forced to ingest could have caused their failure.

The same engine model that powered Southern Airways 242

is run with up to 14 percent water to air.

Okay.

Engine's at three-quarters throttle.

Let's begin.

Investigators ultimately throw

monsoon level rains against the engine.

They run it from idle up to full throttle.

Okay, that's it. Shut it down.

The rain was not enough to cause

the kind of surge that tore the engines

on Flight 242 to pieces.

Thanks very much, gentlemen.

And the engine operated normally.

No abnormalities.

So our judgment was

we could not conceive of a rainstorm

that would put more water in.

So we knew we were going in the wrong direction with more water.

The water ingestion test points investigators to another suspect.

That's a hole, isn't it?

It's not showing a hole, is it?

Hail.

People who survived the crash describe

seeing hail the size of baseballs.

It was powerful enough to break

the plane's three-and-a-half centimeter thick windshield.

Al Weaver discovers significant hail damage

on both of the plane's engine cowlings.

Starting at the front of the engine,

we noted that the inlet cowl

and the center-body that streamlines

the airflow going into the engine,

which are parts of the aircraft structure

and made out of aluminum,

were all dented from both engines.

And that led us to suspect

that the existence of the hail might have been

a significant contributor.

Weaver knows that it would take a powerful force

to damage the hard metal compressor blades.

We knew from the examination, mechanically, of the engines

that the hail itself did not cause any damage to the engine.

It only dented the outside of the covering over the engine.

Heavy precipitation and a damaged cowling

could have interrupted the engine's airflow and caused a surge.

But one surge shouldn't tear an engine apart.

Weaver suspects that massive pieces of hail may

have clogged a vital outlet in the plane's engines.

The bleed valves.

When pressure builds between the two compressors,

bleed valves should open automatically

to release that pressure, and clear the surge.

If the bleed valves were blocked,

the engines would have continued to surge over and over again.

Once the engine began to surge,

the action that the pilot should have taken was

to pull the throttles back to clear the surge.

Al Weaver turns to the Cockpit Voice Recorder

and discovers that circumstances may have caused the crew

to do the exact opposite.

Maintain 15,000, Southern 242.

We're trying to get it up there.

Weaver learns that the crew was asked

to climb while in the heart of the storm.

Maintain 15,000, if you understand me.

Maintain 15,000, Southern 242.

In order to climb, the captain had to increase thrust to his engines,

which would have made matters worse.

But if the surge was not cleared

and allowed to continue,

then the engine would simply break itself internally.

We're trying to get it up there!

Advancing the throttles would only worsen the situation.

With its bleed cavities blocked by hail,

pressure built up inside the engines,

bending the compressor blades until they shattered.

Left engine won't spool!

Our left engine just cut out.

And once the blades broke in the compressor,

then the engine has no hope

of ever working again.

Investigators now understand

how the pilots misread the storm,

and how their engines failed as a result of it.

But they don't know why the pilots weren't warned

that there was such a severe storm in their path.

Who's got the landing?

"Not me," says the captain.

Ignition, sir.

As the pilots prepared to depart Huntsville,

they did have a weather report from Southern Airways.

But the information was already hours old.

Looks like you guys got a good one comin'.

Southern Airways dispatch did not have

updated information.

They didn't subscribe to the National Weather Services update system.

They did have a subscription to a service

that required them to dial-up and receive the information.

When the dispatcher called the phone number

to get the updated information it was busy,

and never pursued it,

and was not able to provide

any kind of update information

to the crew of 242.

Southern Airways 242,

I'm painting a line of weather

which appears to be moderate to-possibly-heavy precipitation,

starting about five miles ahead.

Could Huntsville have provided

better weather information? Absolutely.

But in the course of doing their job,

they provided localized weather information

about an intense thunderstorm, or rain shower

that was moving over the airport.

They were only responsible,

really, for about 40 nautical miles.

What the crew of Flight 242 was looking at

was well beyond 40 miles.

With little information on the storm,

and having misread their weather radar,

Bill McKenzie and Lyman Keele flew blindly

into massive thunderheads.

The heavy rain and hail crippled their engines.

The crew decided that their only option was an emergency landing.

We've lost both engines.

How about getting us a vector to the nearest place?

Southern 242, roger. Turn right, heading

one-zero-zero.

Will be vectors for a straight-in approach

to Dobbins, runway 11.

When investigators analyze the flight path

of Southern Airways 242,

they discover one more deadly oversight.

From the time the crew realized

that they had no engine power

till the time of touch-down was about nine minutes.

So, in looking at the critical decision making,

they had about seven minutes

of solid, critical decision-making

before they were committed

to that emergency landing on the highway.

Get us a vector to a clear area, Atlanta.

After the engines failed,

the pilots made a 180 degree turn

towards the west

looking for an escape from the storm.

That takes them directly away from Dobbins Air Force Base.

The turn takes the pilots out of the hailstorm

but leaves them further away from a runway.

They also lose minutes of valuable flying time.

Only once the pilots escape the hailstorm,

do they turn again towards Dobbins.

Uh, is there an airport between our position and Dobbins?

Southern 242, uh, no, sir, closest airport is Dobbins.

Had they maintained that course to Dobbins

rather than make the turns or try to find another airport,

they probably would have had a better success rate

and definitely a better survival rate.

Southern 242, roger. Turn right, heading 100,

will be vectors for a straight-in approach

to Dobbins, uh, runway 11.

By the time McKenzie received the instructions,

Southern Airways 242 had been flying away from Dobbins for too long.

The plane was simply too far

and flying too low to make it there.

Declare an emergency, Bill.

But there was one last missed opportunity to save Flight 242.

Investigators learn that just as McKenzie and Keele were

directed towards Dobbins Air Force Base,

they were right above another runway.

Cornelius Moore Airport.

I thought we would land at Cornelius Moore Airport,

because I was familiar with that airport.

I had flown many times in our airplane

back and forth between Decatur and Atlanta.

Investigators learn that Cornelius Moore was

just out of range of radar at Atlanta Approach Control.

They didn't know it existed.

They could not direct Southern Airways 242 there,

because they couldn't see it on their screens.

When I learned that the controllers

in Atlanta didn't know

about the Cornelius Moore Airport in Cartersville,

I was upset.

Because we went within,

I think, three or four miles of that airport.

It had a 4,000 foot runway.

And even though some of the controllers thought it was too short,

it sure would have been better than that highway we landed on.

I was very, very angry. It was such a futile reaction.

You know, it was such a waste of life that...

I was sad.

The NTSB investigation concludes

that the catastrophic failure of the turbofan engines

and the failure to convey sufficient information

on the storm to the pilots, are the causes

of the crash of Southern Airways 242.

The NTSB acts immediately.

It issues a recommendation

that weather radar systems aboard planes

and in air-traffic control centers be upgraded

to better portray weather systems.

In today's commercial aircraft,

pilots have available to them color weather radar.

It's radar that will depict in various colored bands

the intensity of the precipitation.

The crash of Southern Airways 242

also leads to a better understanding

of how engines should be managed in heavy precipitation.

We once again reaffirmed to the pilots the importance

not to allow the engine to continue operation

in continual surging.

If there is a surge condition, for any reason,

you should clear the surge.

Because if you didn't clear the surge

and allowed it to operate it would break eventually.

In every air crash, investigators try

to determine whether or not the accident was survivable.

When you look at the survivability in an aircraft accident,

you can definitively say

that the design of the seat contributed

to the survival factors aspects,

but the statistics that bear out

whether sitting in the front of the airplane is safer,

the middle, of the airplane is safer,

or the back of the airplane is safer, don't exist.

In this particular instance,

a surviving passenger, Don Foster, was quick-thinking.

He put a leather jacket over his head,

and used a pillow as a buffer

between the seat in front of him and his face.

That probably saved his life

from the standpoint

that it minimized any injuries

he would have suffered.

In fact, the NTSB believes

that if flight attendants had distributed blankets and pillows

to the passengers, there would have been fewer injuries

as a result of the crash.

We learn from every airplane crash.

We learned from this one.

We learned that the communication broke down

within the FAA, within Southern Airways,

even within the cockpit of that DC-9.

What we didn't ultimately learn though is

the most important lesson,

and that is awesome respect for Mother Nature,

and what Mother Nature can do.

30 years have passed

since Southern Airways 242 crashed

through the small community of New Hope, Georgia.

Every 10 years since the crash,

survivors of the tragedy gather at a church in New Hope.

They remember those that were lost,

and help one another cope with the tragedy.

It's one of the longest-running survivors group of its kind.

I want to welcome you to this service today

in remembering April the 4th, 1977,

when the Southern Airways Flight 242 crashed here

in the New Hope community.

Earl D. Johnson.

Lyman Keele Junior.

William Wade McKenzie.

Earl C. Griffin Junior.

After the crash, I had...

a hard time understanding how I managed to survive.

And after a couple of months, I quit worrying about it.

I felt like I had a second shot at it.

I felt like that...

family was more important,

uh, having fun was more important.

It took a pretty deep toll on our family,

my mother, my father especially.

They lost two of their children

and all their grandchildren all at one time.

And I can, still to this day,

I can smell the odors,

and I can... hear the sounds

and I can see those people.

So many things will bring back those smallest memories.

And every time it's triggered,

the emotions come back.

You don't want them to. You don't ask for them.

But you can't stop them.

I believe it's important

for the survivors to get together,

so that they can share their experiences,

know that there are other people

that went through the same feelings that they did.

I mean, I've had a great life because of this, in a way.

That makes no sense,

but it's changed me for the better.

I think I've done better and had a better life,

because of how I grew from that.

May this service do honor to these dear loved ones,

And may it bring comfort and peace

to we who remain.