Archive: Plane Crashes Into Potomac River

The roar, an eerie silence, then panic—and heroism

Flurries of thick, wet snow swirled through the streets of Washington last Wednesday, clogging traffic and slowing down pedestrians to a labored trudge. As the snow piled up, Government offices and private businesses closed early and sent their workers home. By midafternoon, traffic on the bridges over the Potomac River that link the capital with its Virginia suburbs had already slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, Washington National Airport had just reopened after having been shut down by the snowfall for two hours. At 3:59 p.m., Air Florida’s Flight 90 to Tampa, a Boeing 737 with 74 passengers aboard, began rolling down the airport’s main runway for takeoff.

Lloyd Creger, an administrative assistant in the Justice Department, was inching along the northbound span of the 14th Street Bridge in his Chevrolet station wagon when he heard the roar of Flight 90’s engines. He thought nothing of it; hundreds of planes every day take off from National and head out over the bridge. But this time was different. Creger watched in horror as the blue-and-green jetliner suddenly appeared out of the gray mist. The plane slammed into the crowded bridge, smashed five cars and a truck and then skidded into the frozen river. “It was falling from the sky, coming right at me,” recalls Creger. “It hit the bridge and just kept on going like a rock into the water.” He remembers that the plane’s nose was tilted up when its tail crashed into the bridge, as if the pilot “was trying like hell to get that jet up.”

For a moment, there was silence, and then pandemonium. Commuters watched helplessly as the plane quickly sank beneath the ice floes; only its tail remained visible. A few passengers bobbed to the surface; some clung numbly to pieces of debris while others screamed desperately for help. Scattered across the ice were pieces of green upholstery, twisted chunks of metal, luggage, a tennis racquet, a child’s shoe. On the bridge, a red flatbed truck with a 20-ft. crane was knocked on its side; the arm of the crane swung over the water. Two of the cars were flattened like tin cans; a brown Ford held the body of a man who had been decapitated when the roof was sheared off by the plane.

Within minutes, sirens began to wail as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene. A U.S. Park Police helicopter hovered overhead to pluck survivors out of the water. Six were clinging to the plane’s tail. Dangling a life preserver ring to them, the chopper began ferrying them to shore. One woman had injured her right arm, so Pilot Don Usher lowered the copter until its skids touched the water; his partner, Eugene Windsor, scooped her up in his arms. Then Priscilla Tirado, 23, grabbed the preserver, but as she was being helped out of the icy river by Fellow Passenger Joseph Stiley, she lost her grip. Lenny Skutnik, a clerk for the Congressional Budget Office who was watching from the shore, plunged into the water and dragged her to land. But the most notable act of heroism was performed by one of the passengers, a balding man in his early 50s. Each time the ring was lowered, he grabbed it and passed it along to a comrade; when the helicopter finally returned to pick him up, he had disappeared beneath the ice (See ESSAY).

Meanwhile, rescue workers feverishly tossed out ropes and ladders over the frozen river and launched rubber dinghies, but their efforts were hampered by floating chunks of ice. As dusk fell, searchlights were switched on, but by 5:30, officials realized the quest was in vain. Divers sent down to inspect the fuselage had discovered that nearly all of the passengers were still strapped in their seats. The toll: 78 dead, including four motorists. Only five aboard Flight 90—four passengers and a stewardess—survived the first major U.S. airline crash in 26 months.

Even as the search for survivors ended, a team of 70 experts from the National Transportation Safety Board began piecing together the reasons for the disaster. One possible cause: ice on the wings and tail, which acts as a drag on the plane. That afternoon, the 737 had been swabbed twice with glycol, an anti-icing chemical, but more than 20 minutes had elapsed between the second coat and takeoff. The plane’s engines may also have sucked up slush from the runway, thereby diminishing their power during the critical climb. Survivor Stiley is a pilot, and he recalls that “the plane was just too heavy as it was going down the runway.” He remembers turning to his secretary in the next seat—she also survived the crash—and saying, “We’re not going to make it.” Investigators are mystified as to why the plane’s landing gear was still down when the jetliner hit the bridge; usually the wheels are brought up immediately after takeoff. Says one aviation expert: “Flight 90 appears to have been barely airborne, and may have been staggering along at maximum power trying to get altitude.”

Divers plunged into the icy Potomac to retrieve the “black boxes”—the flight data and cockpit voice recorders—that were in the tail of the plane. The divers were also examining the wreckage to see how the rest of the plane, and the bodies trapped inside, should be recovered. Meanwhile, National Airport, which was closed again immediately after the crash, opened the next day. Every few minutes, a departing plane roared over the icy waters that held the wreckage of Flight 90. —By James Kelly. Reported by Maureen Dowd and Jerry Hannifin/Washington