American Airlines Flight 1502

American Airlines Flight 1502 was a crew training flight from Idlewild International Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport).

On January 28, 1961, the Boeing 707 operating the flight crashed out of control into the Atlantic Ocean 9.5 miles west of Montauk Point, New York, and all six crew on board were killed. The cause of the crash was never officially determined. Flight 1502 would be the second of three 707s that American lost in a three-year period in the New York area.

Accident

Flight 1502 departed Idlewild Airport into clear skies at 11:00 a.m. EDT (UTC−4), with Captain Reinhard at the yoke. 57 minutes later, the aircraft made its last radio contact.

At 12:20 p.m. EDT (UTC−4), Airman First Class James F. Ross was driving on the Montauk Highway and caught Flight 1502 passing overhead at an estimated 100 ft, in a 60–70° dive. Ross pulled his car to the side of the highway as the 707 disappeared behind sand dunes. Also present on the highway was Captain Frank Ward, a local fisherman from Montauk who said the aircraft did multiple rolls, straightening out before impact, and that an engine was reportedly on fire. In a steep, left wing low attitude, Flight 1502 crashed into the shallow waters off of Napeague Beach, killing the six occupants. Emergency crews rushed to the scene to find the aircraft extensively fragmented, with some seats reportedly split in half by the force of the crash. The crash was the fourth involving a modern jetliner in the New York metropolitan area in the past two years, amounting to a total 149 lives lost. This included what was at the time the world's deadliest aviation disaster, the 1960 New York mid-air collision, that only occurred the previous month.