Alaska Airlines Flight 779

Alaska Airlines Flight 779 was a contract cargo flight operated on July 21, 1961 by an Alaska Airlines Douglas DC-6A

that crashed short of the runway at Shemya Air Force Base with the loss of all six crew members on board.

The investigating board determined that the probable cause of the accident was a lack of approach and runway lighting and improper guidance by the air traffic controller.

Accident

The DC-6A was chartered by the Military Air Transport Service to carry cargo from Travis Air Force Base to Tachikawa, Japan with refueling stopovers in Anchorage and Shemya. On July 20, the flight departed Everett without cargo en route to Travis Air Force Base. Upon arrival in Travis military personnel loaded 25,999 pounds (11,793 kg) of cargo onto the aircraft under the supervision of the flight engineer. The flight then departed Travis en route to Alaska, for the purpose of refueling and picking up the navigator from Anchorage. It took 8 hours and 59 minutes for the flight to arrive at Anchorage from Travis. The aircraft was at Anchorage Airport for an hour and 8 minutes. The time from takeoff in Anchorage to the crash was 6 hours and 30 minutes. In Anchorage, the crew was given weather information for the route to Shemya but were not notified of the approach and field lighting deficiencies.

Flight 779 took off from Anchorage at 19:40 en route to Shemya on an instrument flight plan. At 00:45 the flight radioed Shemya air traffic control; reporting their position as 55° 46' North and 179° 08' East at an altitude of 10,000 feet. The flight was 100 miles from Shemya 43 minutes later. At 01:45 the flight made radar contact with the airport, at an altitude of 5,500 feet and 18 miles north-northeast of the destination. The air traffic controller reported that the flight entered the glidepath and stayed on the correct approach for runway 10, but two miles from touchdown the flight was 10–15 feet below the ideal glidepath, so he instructed the crew to ""ease the aircraft up"; but the crew failed to correct the position. One mile from touchdown the aircraft was 30–40 feet below the glidepath, to which the controller again instructed the flight crew to "bring the aircraft up." Despite the warnings the flight still maintained the current path with no corrections to the altitude. The flight was still above the minimum safe altitude, and when the flight began to descend rapidly the controller assumed that the pilots switched to a visual approach. At 02:11 Alaska time the flight crashed 200 feet short of the runway in Shemya, killing all six crew members on board.

Wind at speeds of 20 knots were present at an altitude of approximately 500 feet. At 02:12, when the observer of the U. S. Weather Bureau was notified, the weather conditions as follows were recorded:

Indefinite 200-foot variable ceiling; visibility 3/4 mile variable, fog; temperature 45°; dewpoint 45°, wind south-southeast 8 knots; altimeter setting 29.84; ceiling 100 feet variable to 300 feet, visibility 1/2 mile variable to one mile.