Allegheny Airlines Flight 737 was a

Convair CV-580 Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee, was an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, i ...

(aircraft registration that crashed while attempting to land at Bradford Regional Airport in

Bradford, Pennsylvania Bradford is a city in McKean County, Pennsylvania. It is located close to the border with New York state and approximately south of Buffalo, New York. Bradford is the principal city in the Bradford, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The popul ...

on January 6, 1969. Eleven of the 28 occupants on board were killed.

Aircraft and crew

The flight was operated using a

that was originally certificated as a Convair CV-440 on July 11, 1967, but was modified to include upgraded turbine engines and propellers and re-certificated as a CV-580. The aircraft had accumulated a total of 27,285 flight hours at the time of the accident. The flight crew consisted of Captain William I. Blanton Jr. (33), and First Officer Ronald Lesiak (31).

Flight

Flight 737 took off from

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

bound for

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

with intermediate stops in

Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...

, Bradford, and

Erie, Pennsylvania Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...

. The flight was uneventful until the aircraft began its approach to Bradford. Weather was overcast with one and one half miles visibility and snow showers. At ten miles from the airport, Flight 737 requested and received clearance to make its instrument approach to runway 14 instead of runway 32. The flight struck treetops just under five nautical miles from the airport before coming to rest upside down on a snow-covered golf course.

Cause

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was unable to determine the probable cause of the crash. "Of some 13 potential causes examined by the Board, three remain after final analysis. They are: 1) misreading of the altimeter by the captain, 2) a malfunction of the captain's altimeter after completion of the instrument approach procedure turn, and 3) a misreading of the instrument approach chart. Of these three, no single one can be accepted or rejected to the exclusion of another based on the available evidence."

Aftermath

Less than two weeks before flight 737 crashed,

Allegheny Airlines Flight 736 Allegheny Airlines Flight 736 was a regularly scheduled flight that crashed while attempting to land at Bradford Regional Airport in Bradford, Pennsylvania on December 24, 1968. Twenty of the 47 occupants on board were killed. Aircraft and cre ...

also went down on approach to Bradford Airport on the same Detroit-Washington DC route via Erie, Bradford and Harrisburg. Both aircraft were approaching the same runway at Bradford, but in opposite directions at the time of the crashes. Shortly after Flight 737's crash, Allegheny Airlines self-imposed new rules for landings at airports. The rules required visibility of 1,000 feet up and three miles out for any airport without instrument landing systems. Allegheny cancelled 124 out of 1,409 scheduled flight segments in the first week after the new visibility rules were adopted.

References

External links

* () {{DEFAULTSORT:Allegheny Airlines Flight 737 Accidents and incidents involving the Convair CV-240 family Airliner accidents and incidents in Pennsylvania Airliner accidents and incidents with an unknown cause Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain Allegheny Airlines accidents and incidents Transportation in McKean County, Pennsylvania Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1969 1969 in Pennsylvania January 1969 events in the United States