hughes airwest crash impact with terrain

Hughes airwest crash impact with terrain full#

Diagnostic tests at Mountain Home revealed that the aircraft had an inoperative radio, inoperative transponder, oxygen system leak, and a degraded radar system.

The aircraft was ordered to effect repairs at Mountain Home AFB and then to return to MCAS El Toro. '458' had been a part of a cross-country flight of two aircraft when its radio failed while landing at Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwest Idaho. The jet and its crew were based at MCAS El Toro. The co-pilot and Radar Intercept Officer was 1st Lt. At the time of the accident it was assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Air Wing, though it had been operated by various squadrons prior to that. Marine Corps F-4B-18-MC Phantom II, Bureau Number (BuNo) 151458, coded '458', had been in operation since April 15, 1964. Flight 706's acknowledgement of this instruction was the last radio transmission received from the aircraft. and instructed to head 040 (magnetic) until receiving the Daggett VOR, then direct. Control of the flight was transferred to Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center at 6:06 p.m. PDT for Salt Lake City, Utah, the first of five intermediate stops en route to Seattle. įlight 706 departed from Los Angeles at 6:02 p.m. Puylaar, 34 Patricia Shelton, 28 and Helena Koskimies, 30. Other crew members included three flight attendants: Joan R. His co-pilot was First Officer Price Bruner, 49, who had 17,128 total hours flying time and 272 hours in DC-9s. The aircraft was piloted by Captain Theodore Nicolay, 50, who had logged 15,490 hours of total flying time, with 2,562 hours in DC-9s. The aircraft was operating under the livery and name of Air West, the airline that had been recently purchased by Howard Hughes and rebranded Hughes Airwest. The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-31 aircraft had accumulated 5,542 airframe hours since entering service in 1969. The crash of Flight 706 prompted the US Armed Forces to agree both to reduce the number of military aircraft operating under visual flight rules in civilian air corridors, and to require military aircraft to obey civilian air traffic controllers.įlight 706 was a scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles International Airport, California and Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, Washington. It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States in nearly 21 months, the previous was a mid-air collision of Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 with a Piper PA-28 on September 9, 1969. Its pilot and all 49 passengers and crew aboard the civilian airliner died in the collision over the San Gabriel Mountains, near Duarte. Completing a cross-country flight, the F-4B Phantom was arriving from Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada to land at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro near Irvine. Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II over southern California on Sunday, June 6, 1971.įlight 706 had departed Los Angeles just after 6 p.m., en route to Seattle, Washington, with stopovers in Salt Lake City, Utah Boise, Idaho Lewiston, Idaho Pasco, Washington and Yakima, Washington. Hughes Airwest Flight 706 was a regularly scheduled Hughes Airwest flight operated by a Douglas DC-9-31 that collided in mid-air with a U.S. My friend is 83 now and really wants to go in one last time, Hope I can make it happen.Hughes Airwest Flight 706 Accident summary If and when I make it in, I'll be happy to post a few pic's but won't post the GPS coordinates. My friend has given me a lot of interesting bits of info including the location of the missing luggage. I haven't been back since, but plan on going sometime this fall when the weather cools. Thanksgiving '13 he drove me up to the ridge and we hiked out as far as possible that day.

Hughes airwest crash impact with terrain full#

He has several carousels full of slides from the wreck that I'm hoping to see soon. While he didn't see bodies, he did find a few body fragments as well as the instrument panel from the cockpit. In doing research on the location, I made friends with one of the SAR members that spent a night or two and several at the wreck site recovering debris. The entire area hasn't burned in decades. You are correct in stating that the wreck site hasn't burned since '71.

That fire originally started in Glendora and moved N/W toward the wreck site but never got closer than 8 or 9 miles.