Transport: Death at Daytona

Until last week Eastern Air Lines was the only major airline in the world which had never killed a passenger.* Last week Eastern’s magnificent record of 180,000,000 passenger miles without passenger fatality was spoiled by as cruelly unnecessary a crash as any in aviation’s debris-strewn history.

The plane was a Douglas DC2 making its regular run from Chicago to Miami. With veteran Captain Stuart G. Dietz, 33, at the controls it settled to the airport at Daytona Beach, Fla. shortly after 4 a. m. Daytona Beach has been an Eastern Air stop only since May but Captain Dietz was completely familiar with the field. Presently, with co-pilot beside him, steward and six passengers strapped in their seats in the cabin, Captain Dietz taxied to the northern end of the 3,700-ft. NW/SE runway, gave his two motors a final revving, hurtled into the air in what was apparently a normal takeoff.

Suddenly, just after the big transport had drummed some 25 ft. above the highway at the south end of the field, there were three rending crashes, whop! when the ship slammed full-tilt into a foot-thick pine power pole, crack! when the motors ripped out and thudded to earth, and smash! when the rest of the stricken plane bashed into a palmetto thicket. There was a spurt of flame from one motor, then silence.

Rushing to the scene, bystanders, two of whom had got out of the airliner when it had landed, found the Douglas ripped and tortured like a tin can in which a giant firecracker has burst. Pinned within it were four seriously injured survivors. The fifth survivor—a ten-year-old boy—was thrown free, escaped with bruises. Captain Dietz, also thrown free, was decapitated. The co-pilot and two passengers likewise met instant death.

Immediately there rose a hubbub of a far different sort than follows most crashes. Said Daytona Beach Airport Manager Peter Dygert: “I am sure the pilot did not know the power line was there. … I was not informed last night of the new line being strung. This morning I was informed that the line was placed there to give service to a small area to the west which had been interrupted when an underground cable failed.”

The fatal line consisted of four creosoted poles, invisible in the dark since they were unlighted, strung with two naked copper wires.* The line was raised between nine-thirty and two the night of the accident in accordance with a permit for emergency service granted to Florida Power & Light Co. some time ago. No one formally notified the airport of the obstruction, but the gang of nine men on the job worked under bright headlights from four trucks only 150 yds. from the airport office and twice used airport phones to call headquarters. The power company pleaded in the inquiry that it was unable to understand how airport officials remained oblivious of the action. But Eastern Air, whose hard-bitten General Manager Eddie Rickenbacker sped to the spot, presently issued a bitter statement completely exonerating the flight personnel and putting the blame squarely on the power company. A damage suit seemed highly probable.

*One passenger did die—by suicidally jumping from a Stinson into a South Carolina swamp.

*Will Rogers used to say that the best way to find an airport was to follow a high tension line. This accident was caused by a distribution wire, not high tension.