New York Airways Flight 901
de Havilland DHC-6 · Loss of control due to wake turbulence
From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
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
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 11
- 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
- 11
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
de Havilland DHC-6
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-6
- 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
- N558MA
- Operator
- New York Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)To Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
- 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
- Turbulence
- 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
- Miscellaneous › Vortex turbulence
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Jamaica, NY, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
New York Airways Flight 901 (flight number: NY901, callsign NEW YORK 901) was a domestic scheduled flight operated by New York Airways from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Newark International Airport in New Jersey. On 15 July 1969, a De Havilland Canada DHC-6-200 Twin Otter crashed on takeoff on this flight. Three occupants of the aircraft were killed in the accident.
Sequence of the accident
The accident occurred at 06:57 local time. Since the aircraft was already 12 minutes behind schedule, the captain tried to expedite the departure by starting the takeoff from the intersection of two runways. Although the air traffic controller warned the captain that a Boeing 707 had just taken off from the same runway, he carried out the takeoff. Shortly after liftoff, the aircraft entered an unstable flight attitude, stalled and crashed. Both pilots and one passenger were killed. The remaining eleven occupants were injured, some of them seriously.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board took over the investigation into the cause of the accident. The investigators concluded that the pilots lost control of their aircraft while flying through wake turbulence generated by the Boeing 707 that had taken off shortly before from the same runway. The investigators criticised the pilots for not having taken the air traffic controller's warning seriously.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “New-York-Airways-Flug 901” (revision 252302231, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB remarks
PLT 12 MIN BEHIND SCHEDULE,MADE INTERSECTION T/O.TWR WARNED OF WAKE TURB FROM RECENTLY DEPART JET.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: New-York-Airways-Flug 901
- Article
- New-York-Airways-Flug 901
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 252302231 · 2025-01-16 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q110220021
- 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
- 19690715P028517
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "New-York-Airways-Flug 901" (page 12045244, revision 252302231), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19690715P028517 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517: 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 NTSB19690715P028517: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19690715P028517: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "New York Airways Flight 901" and NTSB case NTSB19690715P028517, 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.