Last Flight

Light snow blew across the Buffalo Airport one afternoon last week as American Airlines Flight 6780, bound for Newark, taxied out for takeoff. The sky was overcast, ceiling 3,000 ft., visibility two miles.

Out of Rochester, its first stop, the sleek two-engined Convair was eight minutes late. At Syracuse the snow was heavier and Pilot Thomas J. Reid landed a half hour behind schedule, late enough for Barbara Levy, Syracuse University sophomore. She had kept a taxi standing by while she finished a mid-term exam, had rushed to the Syracuse field to get a quick start on a winter vacation.

Behind Schedule. At 3:41, Captain Reid had his plane at 1,500 ft. over Linden, N.J., letting down to the northeast toward Newark Airport. He had been cleared for an instrument approach to Runway 6, had reported that he was receiving instructions from the control tower "loud and clear." The snow had melted into light rain. The ceiling was down to 400 ft. and visibility was poor.

Now in his slowly descending approach to the landing runway, Captain Reid was flying along the shallow arc of a radio glide path. This was standard airline technique--to make bad-weather landings by I.L.S. (Instrument Landing System), with two crossed needles on the instrument panel to register any deviation from course.

On the airport in an old trailer, two men huddled over the radarscopes of the field's G.C.A. (Ground Controlled Approach) equipment. They were in radio contact with Reid, were watching the glowing radar echo of his plane as it moved across their screens. G.C.A. operators are not responsible for a plane's safety unless they are asked to take over. But almost always, wherever they are stationed, they monitor instrument landings.

When the Convair was four miles out, the G.C.A. told Captain Reid he was "300 ft. to left and coming back to course." The next message advised Reid he was "right on course," 100 ft. above the glide path with the tall (277 ft.) tower of the Elizabeth, NJ. courthouse one mile ahead of him. Within seconds, the Convair was pulling widely off her course. "Drifting 900 ft. to right of course . . ." flashed the urgent warning. At 3:44, the G.C.A. operator reported that Flight 6780 had moved completely off his radar screen.

A Singing Thing. Below, the rain and fog had driven Elizabeth's residents indoors. Eugene Alvator, home for an early dinner with his wife and children, heard "a singing thing." He walked to the door. The song ended in shocking crescendo; the crump of a crashing airplane, then the violent explosion of fuel tanks.

Just three-quarters of a mile from the spot where, last month, a flaming C46 crashed and killed 56 passengers, the Convair had nosed over into a fatal dive. After skimming a girls' high school, one wing sliced into a three-story brick building and spun the plane into a two-family frame house. Blazing gas spewed over the neighborhood. Choking black smoke billowed up to thicken the fog. All 23 passengers, including former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, and crew members were killed. In the muck and charred ruins, Elizabeth (pop. 112,675) counted six of its own among the dead.

Sirens screamed through the afternoon, and the last flames were still flickering when furious citizens began their protest. The airport must go. All week long, investigators swarmed over the scene--from Washington, from the New Jersey legislature, from the CAA, the CAB. But Elizabethans were not half so interested in causes of the crash as they were in the exasperating probability that the airport would operate as usual, at least for ten months. Then, if construction is complete, a new instrument runway will bring traffic in over the marshlands to the east.

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