Mohawk Airlines Flight 112
Martin 404 · Pilot error, bad weather as a contributing factor
From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) to an unrecorded destination
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
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 36
- 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
- 36
- 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
Martin 404
- Aircraft type
- Martin 404
- 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
- N449A
- Operator
- Mohawk Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC)To not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Exercised poor judgment
- Weather › Thunderstorm activity
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Mohawk Airlines Flight 112 was a scheduled passenger flight from Rochester-Monroe Airport in Rochester, New York to Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. On July 2, 1963, the aircraft operating the flight, a Martin 4-0-4 with a total of 15,970 operational hours, crashed during takeoff. The accident killed 7 people (2 crewmen and 5 passengers) and injured 36.
Flight 112 attempted to take off on Rochester's runway 28 into a heavy thunderstorm. The co-pilot was unable to maintain control of the aircraft, and it fell to earth two minutes after takeoff. The plane struck the ground left wing-first. It then cartwheeled wing-over-wing and caught fire.
The co-pilot was flying the plane from the left seat in violation of company policy. Both pilots working together were unable to control the plane, as the wind had shifted from a headwind to a tailwind.
The Civil Aeronautics Board found the cause of the accident to be the pilot's decision to take off in bad weather, and cited the weather itself as a contributing factor.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Mohawk Airlines Flight 112” (revision 1339312939, 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
LOSS OF CONTROL DURING ATTEMPTED T/O INTO SEVERETSTM.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Mohawk Airlines Flight 112
- Article
- Mohawk Airlines Flight 112
- Revision
- 1339312939 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q6893755
- 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
- 19630702P000078
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Mohawk Airlines Flight 112" (page 6928655, revision 1339312939); merged with NTSB case NTSB19630702P000078 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19630702P000078: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19630702P000078
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19630702P000078: 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 NTSB19630702P000078: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19630702P000078: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19630702P000078: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Mohawk Airlines Flight 112" and NTSB case NTSB19630702P000078, 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.
- 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.