Capital Airlines Flight 20
Vickers 745D Viscount · Loss of control after total engine failure due to icing
From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) to Norfolk International Airport (ORF)
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
- Event fatalities
- 50 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Vickers 745D Viscount
- Aircraft type
- Vickers 745
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- N7462
- Operator
- Capital Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 50
- Route
- From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW)To Norfolk International Airport (ORF)
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Organizational issues › Management
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Capital Airlines Flight 20 was a U.S. scheduled passenger flight from Washington, D.C. to Norfolk, Virginia. A Vickers Viscount flying the route crashed into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, on January 18, 1960. The accident was the fourth fatal crash involving a Capital Viscount in less than two years; the first three were Capital Airlines Flight 67 (April 1958), Capital Airlines Flight 300 (May 1958) and Capital Airlines Flight 75 (May 1959).
Accident
The plane was cruising at an altitude of 8,000 feet when it encountered icing. This caused two engines to fail. As the craft descended, the other two engines also failed, causing the propellers to autofeather. The crew tried and failed to restart the engines, and were unable to unfeather the propellers normally; they then put the plane into a dive in an attempt to force the propellers from their feathered position. Eventually they succeeded in restarting engine number four. They applied full power to this engine, which caused the craft to enter a circling descent until crashing into trees; at the time of impact it had almost no forward velocity. Five trees were driven through the fuselage, yet their trunks remained intact.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The crash was attributed to the fact that, as per airline policy, the pilots had delayed arming the engine ice protection systems even though they were flying in icy conditions; causing the 2 engines to lose too much power. Capital Airlines changed its emergency checklist after the crash, deleting the instruction that pilots were to descend to a warmer climate to relight the systems and instructing them that, provided that correct procedure was followed, the engine could be restarted at any height.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Capital Airlines Flight 20” (revision 1339317286, 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
Sources
Wikipedia article: Capital Airlines Flight 20
- Article
- Capital Airlines Flight 20
- Revision
- 1339317286 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5035447
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Capital Airlines Flight 20" (page 9863525, revision 1339317286)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Wikipedia article's infobox and coordinates, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.