Arrow Air Flight 1285 - Aftermath

Aftermath

On the day of the crash, responsibility was claimed by Islamic Jihad, a wing of Hezbollah.

The claim was dismissed by the Canadian and U.S. governments soon afterward. According to United Press International "Hours after the crash the Islamic Jihad – a Shiite Muslim extremist group – claimed it destroyed the plane to prove ability to strike at the Americans anywhere." Pentagon and Canadian government officials rejected the claim, made by an anonymous caller to a French news agency in Beirut.

256 people died, including 248 U.S. servicemen and eight crew members. As of 2009, that death toll constituted the deadliest plane crash in Canada, and the United States Army's single deadliest air crash in peacetime.

Of the 248 servicemen, all but 12 were members of 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), most of whom were from the 3d Battalion, 502nd Infantry; eleven were from other Forces Command units; and one was an agent from the Criminal Investigations Command (CID).

A memorial to the 256 victims at the crash site overlooks Gander Lake, and another memorial was erected at Fort Campbell. There is also a Memorial Park in Hopkinsville, KY, just north of Fort Campbell.

In 1991, Les Filotas, one of the four CASB board members who dissented in the final report, published an exhaustive argument for the minority opinion that a possible in-flight explosion doomed the aircraft.