Texas International Airlines Flight 655
Convair 600 · Controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error in inclement weather
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 11 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 11
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Convair 600
- Aircraft type
- Convair 600
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N94230
- Operator
- Texas International Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)To Dallas Love Field (DAL)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Controlled collision with ground/water
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Continued VFR flight into adverse weather conditions
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel › Failure to comply with proper dispatching procedures
- Pilot in command › Continued VFR flight into adverse weather conditions
- Pilot in command › Failed to follow approved procedures, directives, etc.
- Pilot in command › Improper in-flight decisions or planning
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Texas International Airlines Flight 655 was a scheduled domestic flight within the United States of America. On September 27, 1973, the Convair 600 turboprop aircraft en route from El Dorado to Texarkana, Arkansas crashed into Black Fork Mountain, Arkansas. The eight passengers and three crew members on board were killed.
Accident
The route from El Dorado to Texarkana was part of a longer sequence starting in Memphis, Tennessee, with stops in Pine Bluff, El Dorado, and Texarkana in Arkansas; and finally terminating in Dallas, Texas. While the plane was on the ground in El Dorado, the crew consulted with Flight Service Station staff and another set of pilots about a line of thunderstorms 35 nmi to the west. Upon confirming there was a 15 nmi wide break in the storm the crew departed at night under visual flight rules (VFR).
After departing El Dorado, no contact was made with any controllers en route. When the plane was overdue at Texarkana, search and rescue was notified. Despite an extensive search along the proposed route of flight, no sign of the aircraft was found. A controller at the Fort Worth air traffic control center advised the searchers that he had observed an unidentified VFR target departing from El Dorado to the northwest before the plane went missing. With this information, the wreckage was found after three days of searching. There were no survivors.
The cockpit voice recorder later revealed the first officer was flying the plane while the captain advised him of headings and altitudes to take to navigate around the storm. The captain then deviated the aircraft around 100 nmi to the north in an attempt to go around it. The first officer expressed concern that he did not know their position and what the terrain clearance was for the area. After the captain ordered him to descend to 2,000 ft the first officer consulted an en-route instrument chart. He alerted the captain they were too low saying, "Minimum en route altitude here is forty-four hun..." The recording cut off during this sentence as the plane struck Black Fork Mountain.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the crew did not discuss the details of their intended route with Flight Service or activate the instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan forwarded from the airline dispatch to Flight Service. If they had been operating under instrument flight rules they would have been tracked by radar or required to make position reports to air traffic control en route. Under VFR they would only need to maintain contact with a controller while in controlled airspace. In this area of rural Arkansas there was no controlled airspace below 18,000 ft. Further, according to Federal Aviation Regulations the airline dispatcher should have been notified the flight was proceeding under VFR. The captain also could have contacted controllers in Fort Worth to open their flight plan or receive radar vectoring in the area.
From the conversation of the crew on the recorder the board concluded the flight encountered inclement weather conditions during the flight and was likely in inclement weather conditions when it crashed. The board concluded that the cause of the accident was the captain's decision to continue flying into inclement weather at night, his not taking advantage of the nearby navigational aids to get a fix on their position, and his decision to descend despite the first officer's concerns about position and terrain.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Texas International Airlines Flight 655” (revision 1339306362, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
CDFNT ACRS PROPOSED RTE,LOW CIGS FCST.DEVIATED 100MI FRM DIRECT COURSE.HIT MTN RIDGE.RCVRD 9/30/73
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Texas International Airlines Flight 655
- Revision
- 1339306362 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q7707777
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19730927P047934
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Texas International Airlines Flight 655" (page 20570943, revision 1339306362); merged with NTSB case NTSB19730927P047934 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19730927P047934: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Texas International Airlines Flight 655" and NTSB case NTSB19730927P047934, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.