Allegheny Airlines Flight 853

On September 9, 1969, Allegheny Airlines Flight 853, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating a regularly scheduled flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to St. Louis, Missouri, with stops in Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Indianapolis, Indiana, collided mid-air with a Piper PA-28 light aircraft near Fairland, Indiana. The left wing of the PA-28 sheared off the DC-9's rear tail assembly, causing both to crash, killing all 83 occupants on board both aircraft. More than 50 years later, the incident remains Indiana's deadliest commercial airline disaster.

Flight history

Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 was a regularly scheduled flight departing Boston Logan International Airport with a final destination of St. Louis International Airport (Lambert Field) with stopovers at Baltimore Friendship (now known as Baltimore-Washington International Airport), Greater Cincinnati (now known as Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International), and Indianapolis Weir-Cook Municipal Airport (now known as Indianapolis International). The aircraft, N988VJ, was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-31 manufactured in 1968 with 3170 hours on the airframe at the time of the incident. At the controls were Captain James Elrod, 47, a seasoned veteran with more than 23,800 flight hours, and First Officer William Heckendorn, 26. The flight departed from Cincinnati at 3:15 pm en route to Indianapolis, carrying 78 passengers and 4 crew members. Flying under instrument flight rules (IFR), it was initially cleared to ascend to airway V-97 at 10,000 feet. Approach Control then instructed it to descend to 6,000 ft; then 2,500 ft after passing the Shelbyville VOR. The flight was then vectored to a 280 degree heading. This was the last recorded communication between Air Traffic Control and the aircraft.

The other aircraft, a privately owned Piper PA-28, was piloted by 34-year-old Robert Carey. He was attempting a solo cross-country flight, and was on a southeasterly heading. It departed Brookside Airpark at 3:21 pm, operating under a visual flight rule (VFR) flight plan which indicated a cruising altitude of 3,500 ft. It was not in communication with air traffic control and was not equipped with a transponder, and there was no evidence it appeared as a primary radar target on the radarscope. Though visibility was 15 miles, an intervening cloud condition prevented either aircraft from seeing the other until a few seconds prior to the collision.

With only a window of 14 seconds to see and react, neither aircraft nor the Air Traffic Controller noticed the impending collision, with the pilots of the DC-9 likely preparing for a 3,500 ft altitude call. The two aircraft converged at a relative speed of 350 mph, 4 miles northwest of Fairland, Indiana, at an altitude of 3,550 feet. The initial point of impact was at the forward upper right section of the DC-9's vertical stabilizer, just underneath the horizontal stabilizer. On the Piper, the impact point was just forward of the left wing root. The impact severed the entire tail assembly of the DC-9, which rolled left until it was inverted and crashed nose-down into a soybean field at an approximate speed of 400 mph, about 100 yd north of the Shady Acres mobile home park. The PA-28 broke up mid-air and crashed approximately 4500 ft from the DC-9.