Stewart International Airport - Accidents and Incidents

Accidents and Incidents

During the morning of August 20, 1987, two cargo aircraft collided on Runway 9 in foggy conditions. A Douglas DC-8 landed without first receiving clearance while a Douglas DC-9 was taxiing on the runway.

In the early morning hours of September 5, 1996, the pilots of a Federal Express DC-10 on its way from Memphis to Boston reported smoke in the cargo compartment and made an emergency landing at Stewart to fight the fire. All five crewmembers escaped with only minor injuries but, despite a prompt effort by the firefighting teams from the ANG base (which also handle the civilian airport's fire protection needs) the aircraft was completely destroyed. Two years later, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) traced the source of the fire to an area where some flammables had been stored but could not pin down exactly which had combusted, and faulted the captain for failing to get full information on potentially hazardous materials being shipped.

Early on the morning of November 21, 2007, a single-engine Cirrus piloted by Brian Early of Wayne, Pennsylvania got lost in the fog on its approach and crashed in the state forest. He had been dropping off his two passengers, a son and one of his friends, to visit friends of theirs at West Point for Thanksgiving. It took rescuers three hours to find the wreckage using the plane's transponder. Early was killed but the younger men survived.