On December 27, 1968, North Central Airlines Flight 458 crashed into a

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

while attempting a night landing in poor weather at

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Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, in the

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. Of the 41 passengers and four crew members, only 17 passengers and one crew member survived. One person was killed and six were injured on the ground.

Flight history

Flight 458 was a regularly scheduled flight that originated in

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, and stopped at Wausau, Green Bay, Manitowoc and

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before terminating at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois. On December 27, 1968, the flight left Minneapolis on schedule at 4:15 p.m.

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, and made its intermediate stops without incident. However, delays caused by weather and baggage handling meant that by the time the plane departed General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee at 7:48 p.m. CST for the final leg of its flight to Chicago, it was running 62 minutes behind schedule. At 8:14 p.m. CST, the aircraft began its approach to O'Hare, which had a

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with light rain and fog, and runway visibility varying from . The plane made a normal approach, and at 8:20 p.m. CST, it was cleared to land on Runway 14R. The flight crew acknowledged the clearance message; it was the last communication with Flight 458. The approach continued normally until about from the threshold of the runway, when from an altitude of about , the CV-580 began a sustained climb for 11 seconds, after which the

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

initiated a

go-around In aviation, a go-around is an aborted landing of an aircraft that is on final approach or has already touched down. A go-around can either be initiated by the pilot flying or requested by air traffic control for various reasons, such as an unstab ...

procedure. However, the aircraft instead continued to climb; witnesses reported that the engines were running at a high throttle setting and that the aircraft rolled left and right two or three times during this time period. Flight 458 lost speed until it

stalled ''Stalled'' is a 2013 British zombie comedy film directed by Christian James. It stars Dan Palmer, who also wrote the screenplay, as a man confined to a bathroom stall after zombies attack. Produced by Richard Kerrigan and Daniel Pickering, the f ...

13 seconds after the initiation of the go-around. The aircraft entered a steep left bank, and its left wing struck the ground about from a hangar located to the left of the runway. At 8:22:23 p.m. CST, the plane, now nearly inverted, struck the main door of the hangar with its left wing and crashed into the hangar bay.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Convair CV-580 (registration ''N2045''), c/n 369, which Convair had completed as a CV-440 Metropolitan on October 8, 1956. It was converted to a standard CV-580 in July 1968. As a CV-580, it entered service with North Central Airlines on August 9, 1968. The crash damaged the aircraft beyond repair.

Casualties

Three crew members – the captain, the first officer and a

flight attendant A flight attendant, also known as steward/stewardess or air host/air hostess, is a member of the aircrew aboard commercial flights, many business jets and some government aircraft. Collectively called cabin crew, flight attendants are prima ...

– and 24 passengers died in the crash. One crew member (a flight attendant) and 17 passengers survived, all with injuries. Several airline employees, as well as members of a boys' drum and bugle corps group, were on the ground in the vicinity of the hangar or in the hangar bay at the time of the crash; none of the airline employees were harmed, but seven of the boys were injured, and one of them died nine days later.

Investigation

The

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incid ...

conducted an investigation of the accident that lasted almost 23 months. Its report, released on November 12, 1970, blamed the crash on "Spatial disorientation of the captain precipitated by atmospheric refraction of either the approach lights or landing lights at a critical point in the approach wherein the crew was transitioning between flying by reference to flight instruments and by visual reference to the ground." The NTSB noted that the captain of Flight 458, although experienced, had relatively few hours of experience as the

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in CV-580s and that a captain more experienced with the CV-580 might have recognized the growing danger of a stall sooner and avoided the crash. It recommended that

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

regulations be amended to require pilots to have more flying hours and landing experience in a given type of aircraft before being released from "high minima" landing requirements when serving as pilot-in-command in that type.

Notes

References

{{coord, 41, 59, 28, N, 87, 55, 20, W, type:event_region:US-IL, display=title Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1968 Airliner accidents and incidents in Illinois Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error 1968 in Illinois Accidents and incidents involving the Convair CV-240 family North Central Airlines accidents and incidents History of Chicago December 1968 events in the United States