Accidents
Several major air crashes involved Stapleton as the origin or destination airport, with four actually occurring at Stapleton.
- On October 6, 1955, United Airlines Flight 409, a Douglas DC-4 propliner, was a scheduled flight departing from Denver, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah. The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak, near Centennial, Wyoming, killing all 66 people on board (63 passengers, 3 crew members.) The victims included five female members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and military personnel. At the time, this was the deadliest airline crash in U.S. commercial aviation history.
- On November 1, 1955, United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner, exploded over nearby Longmont while en route to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington from Stapleton, killing all 44 persons aboard. John "Jack" Gilbert Graham was found to have planted a dynamite bomb in a suitcase that was loaded onto the plane, to murder his mother in revenge for the way she treated him as a child. He was executed two years after Flight 629 exploded.
- On July 11, 1961, United Airlines Flight 859, a DC-8-12 tail number N8040U, was destroyed after landing. Asymmetric thrust on engines 1 & 2 (left wing) forced a loss of control on the runway. The aircraft struck a maintenance vehicle, killing the driver. In the ensuing disaster, 17 of the DC-8's 122 occupants died.
- On August 7, 1975, Continental Airlines Flight 426 crashed due to windshear after taking off and climbing to 100 feet (30 m) on runway 35L. Nobody was killed in the accident.
- On November 16, 1976, a Texas International DC-9-10 aircraft stalled after takeoff at Stapleton and crashed. The 81 passengers and 5 crewmembers suffered a total of 14 injured, but there were no deaths.
- On December 28, 1978, United Airlines Flight 173, which departed from Stapleton, ran out of fuel while circling near Portland, Oregon, as the crew investigated landing gear problems. The DC-8-61 jetliner's fuel supply was exhausted after the crew decided to "go-around" one more time prior to landing. The plane subsequently crashed in a wooded residential neighborhood southeast of the Portland airport. Ten of the plane's 189 occupants were killed.
- On November 15, 1987, Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a DC-9-14 jetliner bound for Boise, Idaho, crashed on takeoff at Stapleton during a snowstorm. The probable cause of the crash was the failure of the flight crew to have the aircraft de-iced prior to take-off and the over-rotation of the aircraft on take-off. Twenty-eight of the plane's 82 occupants were killed.
- On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, a DC-10-10, crash-landed at the Sioux City, Iowa, airport on a flight which originated at Stapleton. Flight 232 experienced a catastrophic engine failure over Alta, Iowa, on a flight to Chicago, Illinois. 112 of the plane's 296 occupants died.
- On March 3, 1991, United Airlines Flight 585 was on final approach to Colorado Springs Municipal Airport from Stapleton when the 737-200 spun out of control. All 20 passengers and 5 crew were killed.
Read more about this topic: Stapleton International Airport
Famous quotes containing the word accidents:
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)