TWA Flight 514

Trans World Airlines Flight 514 was a domestic scheduled flight of Trans World Airlines from Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus, Ohio, to Washington National Airport. On December 1, 1974, the Boeing 727-231 serving the flight was diverted to Washington Dulles International Airport but crashed into Mount Weather, Virginia. All 92 occupants aboard, 85 passengers and 7 crew members, died. In stormy conditions late in the morning, the aircraft was in controlled flight and struck a low mountain 25 nmi northwest of its revised destination.

The accident was one of two crashes involving Boeing 727 aircraft in the United States that day, the other being the crash of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231 later that evening near Haverstraw, New York.

Accident

On Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, the eastern half of the

United States experienced severe weather, with high winds, snow, and rain. The flight was scheduled for arrival at Washington National Airport, but was diverted to Dulles when high crosswinds, east at 28 knot and gusting to 49 knot, prevented safe operations on the main north–south runway at Washington National.

The flight was being vectored for a non-precision instrument approach to runway 12 at Dulles, a heading of east-southeast. Air traffic controllers cleared the flight down to 7000 ft before clearing them for the approach while not on a published segment.

The jetliner began a descent to 1800 ft, shown on the first checkpoint for the published approach. The cockpit voice recorder later indicated there was some confusion in the cockpit over whether they were still under a radar-controlled approach segment which would allow them to descend safely. After reaching 1800 ft there were some 100 to 200 ft altitude deviations which the flight crew discussed as encountering heavy downdrafts and reduced visibility in snow.

At 11:09:22 a.m. EST (UTC−5), the plane impacted the west slope of Mount Weather at 1670 ft above sea level at approximately 230 knot. The wreckage was contained within an area about 900 by 200 ft. The evidence of first impact were trees sheared off about 70 ft above the ground; the elevation at the base of the trees was 1650 ft.

The wreckage path was oriented along a line 118 degrees magnetic. Calculations indicated that the left wing went down about six degrees as the aircraft passed through the trees and the aircraft was descending at an angle of about one degree. After about 500 ft of travel through the trees, it struck a rock outcropping at an elevation of about 1675 ft. Numerous heavy components of the aircraft were thrown forward of the outcropping, and numerous intense post-impact fires broke out which were later extinguished. The mountain's summit is at 1754 ft above sea level.