North Central Airlines Flight 458
Convair 580 · Pilot error; spatial disorientation as a contributing factor
From Minneapolis, MN to O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois
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
- 28 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- Occupants
- 45
- Survivors
- 18
- 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
- 24 · 6 on the ground
- 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 580
- Aircraft type
- Convair 580
- 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
- N2045
- Operator
- North Central Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis, MNTo O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
On December 27, 1968, North Central Airlines Flight 458 crashed into a hangar while attempting a night landing in poor weather at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Of the 41 passengers and four crew members, only 17 passengers and one crew member survived. One person was killed and six were injured on the ground.
Flight history
Flight 458 was a regularly scheduled flight that originated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and stopped at Wausau, Green Bay, Manitowoc and Milwaukee, Wisconsin before terminating at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois. On December 27, 1968, the flight left Minneapolis on schedule at 4:15 p.m. Central Standard Time, and made its intermediate stops without incident. However, delays caused by weather and baggage handling meant that by the time the plane departed General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee at 7:48 p.m. CST for the final leg of its flight to Chicago, it was running 62 minutes behind schedule.
At 8:14 p.m. CST, the aircraft began its approach to O'Hare, which had a 200 ft ceiling with light rain and fog, and runway visibility varying from 2800 to 4500 ft. The plane made a normal approach, and at 8:20 p.m. CST, it was cleared to land on Runway 14R. The flight crew acknowledged the clearance message; it was the last communication with Flight 458.
The approach continued normally until about 4500 ft from the threshold of the runway, when from an altitude of about 210 ft, the CV-580 began a sustained climb for 11 seconds, after which the captain initiated a go-around procedure. However, the aircraft instead continued to climb; witnesses reported that the engines were running at a high throttle setting and that the aircraft rolled left and right two or three times during this time period. Flight 458 lost speed until it stalled 13 seconds after the initiation of the go-around. The aircraft entered a steep left bank, and its left wing struck the ground about 100 ft from a hangar located 1,600 ft to the left of the runway. At 8:22:23 p.m. CST, the plane, now nearly inverted, struck the main door of the hangar with its left wing and crashed into the hangar bay.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board conducted an investigation of the accident that lasted almost 23 months. Its report, released on November 12, 1970, blamed the crash on "Spatial disorientation of the captain precipitated by atmospheric refraction of either the approach lights or landing lights at a critical point in the approach wherein the crew was transitioning between flying by reference to flight instruments and by visual reference to the ground."
The NTSB noted that the captain of Flight 458, although experienced, had relatively few hours of experience as the pilot-in-command in CV-580s and that a captain more experienced with the CV-580 might have recognized the growing danger of a stall sooner and avoided the crash. It recommended that Federal Aviation Administration regulations be amended to require pilots to have more flying hours and landing experience in a given type of aircraft before being released from "high minima" landing requirements when serving as pilot-in-command in that type.
Text from the Wikipedia article “North Central Airlines Flight 458” (revision 1374430151, 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
PRECIPITATED BY ATMOSPHERIC REFLECTION OF EITHERAPCH LIGHTS OR LDG LIGHTS.CRASHED INTO HANGAR.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: North Central Airlines Flight 458
- Revision
- 1374430151 · 2026-09-12 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q7054721
- 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
- 19681227P023273
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "North Central Airlines Flight 458" (page 33731020, revision 1374430151); merged with NTSB case NTSB19681227P023273 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19681227P023273: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19681227P023273
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19681227P023273: 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 NTSB19681227P023273: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: total_fatalities (the NTSB's 1962-1981 record gives 27)
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: ground fatalities
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (5)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "North Central Airlines Flight 458" and NTSB case NTSB19681227P023273, 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.
- The NTSB record (NTSB19681227P023273) gives 27 fatalities and the Wikipedia article 28; the article's figure is shown, as the NTSB's 1962-1981 archive often leaves out people killed on the ground and those who died later.
- 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.