Retro Indy: 1994 American Eagle Flight 4184 crash in Roselawn (2024)
At 3:56 p.m. on Halloween in 1994, a small commuter plane took off from Indianapolis on a 168-mile trip to Chicago carrying 64 passengers. The plane was a French-made ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop with a four-person crew.
At 4:13 p.m. the pilot radioed he was ready to begin the descent at O'Hare, but controllers put him in a holding pattern because too many planes were trying to land and heavy rain was slowing everything down. American Eagle Flight 4184 would have to wait its turn.
At 5 pm. the tower instructed the pilot to descend to 8,000 to begin another holding pattern. But as he did so the plane suddenly lurched to the right. Both pilots fought for control of the plane and briefly righted it, but it lurched again, this time rolling over and diving at full speed directly at the ground. Flight 4184 was gone from the sky in seconds.
The crash site was a soybean field near Roselawn in Newton County, Indiana. Emergency crews rushed to the scene, but quickly realized there was nothing to be done. "There were no lives to save, no fires to put out," one of the first responders later said. And it was silent.
The crash had torn the plane into so many small pieces it was hard to tell where all of it was. From the air they could see only a few large pieces of wreckage, a small impact crater and tiny pieces of debris spread out behind it in a trail stretching about two city blocks.
The farmer who tended the soybeans heard about the crash on the radio and went out looking. When he saw how little was left of the plane he thought: "There's got to be bodies out there."
It was a gruesome night as rescuers slogged through the mud in driving rain, and they knew their mission had changed from rescuing survivors to gathering body parts. The next morning they brought in gravel to make a 200-yard road out into the muddy field in order to get vehicles out there.
It would take several days to reclaim the remains of the dead and weeks longer to identify them. The FBI sent in a special team to painstakingly identify as many body parts as possible so that proper burials and consecrations could be made.
The FBI's Disaster Squad was created after a similar crash in 1940 to bring the agency's expertise to bear in just this type of situation. In an age before DNA matching, FBI scientists used fingerprints, blood types, dental records and forensic anthropology to make identifications.
Two and a half weeks later, after all methods had been exhausted, the remains still unidentified were quietly buried in a Merrillville cemetery without notifying relatives. This was one of several missteps officials made in dealing with the families of the dead.
As for the cause of the crash, it was believed from the start to have been ice buildup on the wings, and this was confirmed by a Federal Aviation Administration investigation. The report blamed the plane's manufacturer, Avions de Transport Regional for not studying the effects of ice on its planes after others had similar problems. It also said the French Directorate-General for Civil Aviation exercised inadequate oversight of the plane's performance in icy conditions. And it faulted the FAA for not disseminating timely information about flight hazards during icy conditions.
The FAA ordered new instructions for flying in icy conditions, and American Eagle improved the equipment that breaks ice off wings.
Families of the crash victims had been frustrated and angered by the lack of timely information provided to them during the ordeal and their activism led to the passage of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act of 1996. That law requires the federal government and airlines to get information to families of crash victims faster and respond more fully and promptly to their questions and requests.
People who lived near the crash site were affected by it also. On the one-year anniversary of the crash members of the Lincoln Township Volunteer Fire Department in Newton County -- they had been among the first on the scene that awful night -- held a memorial service attended by grateful crash families. After the ceremony at the fire station, everyone drove to the crash site where area residents had erected 68 white crosses, each bearing the name of a victim.
American Eagle Flight 4184, officially operating as Simmons Airlines Flight 4184, was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Chicago, Illinois, United States. On October 31, 1994, the ATR 72 performing this route flew into severe icing conditions, lost control and crashed into a field.
During the holding pattern, the plane experienced freezing rain and ice began to build up on the wings. While descending, the plane went into an uncontrolled roll, which disengaged the auto pilot. The crew was unable to regain control of the plane as it rapidly descended toward the ground.
583: The Tenerife airport disaster, which occurred on March 27, 1977, remains the accident with the highest number of airliner passenger fatalities. 583 people died when a KLM Boeing 747 attempted to take off and collided with a taxiing Pan Am 747 at Los Rodeos Airport on the Canary Island of Tenerife, Spain.
USAir Flight 427 took off from Chicago on Sept. 8, 1994, headed for Palm Beach, Florida. It was near the stopover at Pittsburgh International Airport that disaster struck. The aircraft accident report notes the crew called in problems at 7:02 p.m. The plane began to rapidly descend.
Of the hull losses, most were propeller driven aircraft, including three Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft (of which one, the crash in 1959 of Flight 320, resulted in fatalities). The two accidents with the highest fatalities in both the airline's and U.S. aviation history were Flight 191 in 1979 and Flight 587 in 2001.
The most fatalities in any aviation accident in history occurred at the Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport (then Los Rodeos Airport) in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, on 27 March 1977, when a KLM Boeing 747-206B and a Pan Am Boeing 747-121 collided on a runway, killing 583 people.
KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, March 27, 1977
This crash remains the deadliest ever, claiming the lives of 583 people when two 747s collided on a foggy runway on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport), on the Spanish island of Tenerife, Canary Islands. The crash killed 583 people, making it the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Hawaiian has been flying planes since 1929 and never once had a fatal accident, making it, if our stats stand up, the longest functioning carrier to have never lost a passenger. It may have suffered two bankruptcies (1993 and 2003) but it has not compromised on safety.
Heavy fog, an issue with transmitters, and miscommunication between the pilots and the control center resulted in the KLM 4805 taking off without permission, while the Pan Am 1736 was still on the runway, at the wrong exit because the pilot couldn't read the signs in the fog.
In New York City, two planes (American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175) crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC) North and South Towers (Twin Towers) in Lower Manhattan.
The Associated Press has reported that the Pentagon believes it has identified the mechanical failure that caused the crash in Japan, while NBC News reported that investigators were looking at the aircraft's propeller rotor gear box as a possible cause for the crash.
The NTSB report explained that the overuse of the rudder mechanism by the captain caused the plane's vertical stabilizer (tail fin) and both engines to detach from the plane; an unlikely scenario. Without the vertical stabilizer, the plane spiraled out of control and crashed in the Queens neighborhood of Belle Harbor.
A former Osprey pilot familiar with the investigation confirmed that the component in question is part of the proprotor gearbox, a critical system that includes gearing and clutches that connect the Osprey's engine to the rotor to turn it.
27 March 1977 – The Tenerife airport disaster: a senior KLM pilot failed to hear, understand or follow instructions from the control tower, causing two Boeing 747s to collide on the runway at Tenerife. A total of 583 people were killed in the deadliest aviation accident in history.
Introduction: My name is Duane Harber, I am a modern, clever, handsome, fair, agreeable, inexpensive, beautiful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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