This is the story of TWA flight 553, I started this channel because I wanted to shed light on the incidents and accidents that other people over looked because these incidents for whatever reason as I belive that we can learn a lot from the lesser known incidents. A lot of the safety practices that we take for granted come from smaller accidents like the one that we are going to look at today. TWA flight 553 was a flight between Newyork and Chicago with stops at harrisburg, pittsburgh and dayton ohio. TWA opted to operate a DC-9 on this route as the DC9 was just the right size for this job with only 25 passengers being on the leg from pittsburgh to dayton. The jet took off from the Pittsburh at 11:25 am local time the jet climbed out of pittsburgh with no issues whatsoever and after a relatively short cruise it was time for the jet to start its descent into dayton ohio. As all of this was happenintg a beechcraft that was chartered for a business flight was making the trip from detroit to springfield ohio. The beechcraft was flying under VFR or visual flight rules meaning that it was using visual cues on the ground to navigate from point A to point B. the beechcraft was staying pretty quiet on the comms as well. After takeoff the pilot only transmitted that he was on top of the smoke and haze and then left the detroit frequency. He also made a radio call to springfield aviation incorporated asking them for a courtesy car and letting them know that he would be starting his descent shortly. With that he slowly made his way south. As the jet approached the dayton terminal area it was cleared to descend from 20000 feet, its cruising altitude to 5000 feet and the jet was handed off from the indianapolis air route traffic control center to the Dayton Radar Approach Control Center. Dayton RAPCON wanted to the jet to fly a heading of 240 which would take them right to an ILS approach at Dayton. With the jet making great time with its descent the controller further cleared flight 553 all the way down to 3000 feet. As the controller went about his duties he noticed something that he didnt expect. A radar contact near TWA 553, the controller had no idea that there was a beach craft heading south from detroit and so he didnt really know who was in that vicinity and he issued the following warning to the pilots of TWA 553. “TWA 553 Traffic at 12:30 one mile sotuhbound slow moving” the pilots of TWA 553 just responded with roger. The controller the went about his way. On the screen the two blobs got closer and closer over the next 14 seconds and then they merged, the Beechcraft slammed into the DC-9 then left wing of the jet dropped and the bank angle increased until eventually the plane started to dive. There was no hope of saving the plane. The radar returns changed shape ever so slightly, the controller then got on the radio and said Clear of traffic but no reply came from the DC-9, he tried to get a hold of the jet again but still no reply. Eventually the realization hit him flight 553 had been lost it had collided with the mystery plane. On the ground near springfield ohio people heard the noise of the beechcraft and looked up only then they looked away and once they looked back the DC9 was falling from the sky. All 25 souls aboard the DC9 and the one occupant of the Beechcraft were lost thankfully no one on the ground was injured.
While reasearching for this video i found an image of the TWA flight 553 departing from pittsburgh. Its a close up shot of the jet just hours before it would crash and its a hauntin image. Id love to put it up on screen right now but its under copyright. But i would highly suggest that you go look it up after this video ofcourse. When ever you have a mid air collision you have one person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. To find that out you need to figure out the tracks that both planes were flying at the time they collided. Today thats pretty easy, even you and i can look on flight radar and get a rough idea of where most planes are. But back in 1967