Trip 6

Jones trip 6 to Seattle: Plane 66 testing on frequencies 3147.5. . . .

Seattle to Jones trip 6: OK, the correct time is 8:25 p. m. Seattle barometer 29.83. United proceeds only with safety.

Thus began the radio log of United Air Lines' Trip 6--Seattle to San Diego, Calif.-- on the rainy night of November 28, 1938. Nine hours later Co-Pilot Lloyd E. Jones was dead, drowned in the surf off Point Reyes, near Oakland. So were the stewardess and three of the four passengers. The ship, a Douglas DC-3, out of gas, off its course and miserably mismanaged by its First Pilot Charles B. Stead, was a wave-washed wreck.

Last week crash experts of the Air Safety Board turned over to the Civil Aeronautics Authority their official report of the loss of U. A. L.'s Trip 6. It was the most damning official criticism of plane and ground crews in U. S. airline history. It also recommended unprecedented penal ties for both. After the crash, Pilot Stead's explanation was that he got lost because sunspot activity caused radio "long skip." made remote radio stations drown out ranges on his course (TIME, Dec. 12). The hard-headed experts of the Air Safety Board summarily laid the crash down to a mounting series of fantastic bungles, found no support for his explanation.

Trip 6 got away safely from Medford, Ore. after midnight, with seven radio ranges, their beams running in four quadrants, to guide him to Oakland. But at Medford, Stead had already made his first blunder. He failed to fill his gasoline tanks. From Medford, on instruments, against a heavy headwind and an hour behind schedule, he went down the south leg of the Fort Jones range, passed the Red Bluff localizer, reported that the Sacramento range was drowning out the Williams beam (which ground stations reported was operating without interference). Then, for almost an hour, Trip 6 was silent.

Oakland to Stead--Trip 6 not heard.

Portland to Trip 6--not heard.

Sacramento to Stead--not heard.

Elko to Stead--not heard.

Oakland East and North--SUSPEND ALL TRAFFIC EXCEPT SHIP TO GROUND.

Finally, at 3:03 a. m. Stead called Oakland, asked to be told where the north leg of the Fresno range intersected the northeast leg of the Oakland range.

Oakland to Stead: One minute . . . vicinity of Fairfield (about 35 miles northeast of Oakland).

Stead to Oakland: Definitely on northeast leg.

The Oakland dispatcher breathed easier. If Stead was where he said he was, he should be landing in 15 minutes. But troubles were piling up for the husky oldtime (8,650 hours) pilot like ice on a wing in a freezing rain. On he flew, but heard no cone of silence from the radio range which would have told him he was over Oakland, and Oakland heard nothing from him. Oakland waited.

Oakland to Stead: Oakland ceiling 2200 . . . visibility 20 miles.

Oakland to Medford: How much fuel on United Trip 6 out of your station?

Medford to Oakland: No fuel on at Medford.

Then Oakland, thoroughly alarmed, heard from Stead. "Something must be wrong with the Oakland range," he said. With only 60 gallons of gas left, he reported: "Don't know exactly where I am."

Where Trip 6 was was on the northwest leg of the Oakland range, not the northeast. Stead was headed for the sea, not Oakland, but for 35 minutes beyond the time he should have been over Oakland he had been convincing himself that his course was deflected by a side wind. At 4:16 he came to.

Pilots have got on the wrong leg of a radio range before, but few have posed questions to their dispatchers like those that Pilot Stead now proceeded to ask. He wanted to know what was the engine's best manifold pressure to conserve gas.

Oakland to Stead: Decrease [propeller'] revolutions per minute to seventeen hundred, and increase the manifold pressure.

Stead to Oakland: OK, increase it to what?

Oakland to Stead: Increase it till you get seventeen hundred. . . . Put your props to cruise at seventeen hundred and then increase the pressure with your throttle.

Stead to Oakland: What pressure?

Oakland to Stead: The manifold pressure. In other words, use your props.

Stead to Oakland: OK.

But it was not OK. Stead was now over the sea and, with 20 gallons of gas left--enough to keep him aloft only another twenty minutes--he was told his position was off the Point Reyes light. By now the dispatcher was running the plane. He told Stead there was a rough beach and a bench (level ground above a beach) behind the light.

Oakland to Stead: If you land on water, wheels up. If you land on bench, wheels down.

Stead to Oakland: We pulled a flare and the shore is too rough.

Five minutes later came the finale in the log: Trip 6 not heard.

But the tragedy was not ended. Instead of keeping the passengers in the stranded plane, Pilot Stead got them up on the slippery top of the fuselage. One by one they were washed off and drowned--all save Stead and an ex-convict. When he reached the bluff and safety in the dawn, the Douglas' cabin was still dry.

Because of the slovenly conduct of the trip; because of Stead's failure to find his position by a simple standard orientation problem; because the Oakland office failed to recognize the inconsistency of Stead's course with the course to be flown on the northeast leg, and for many other reasons, the Air Board found: 1) that the crash was due primarily to bad judgment by Pilot Stead and two Oakland dispatchers, Thomas P. Van Sceiver and Philip Stever Showalter; 2) that U. A. L.'s procedures for aiding aircraft under such an emergency were inadequate.

Its unprecedented recommendations (subject to CAA approval): That the airline competency ratings of Pilot Stead, Dispatchers Van Sceiver and Showalter be revoked, i.e., that they be fired.

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