Air France Flight 703
Lockheed Constellation · CFIT, Controlled flight into terrain
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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 34
- 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
- 34
- 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
Lockheed Constellation
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed CONSTELLATION
- 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
- F-BAZX
- Operator
- Air France
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Air France Flight 703 was a scheduled flight of the French airline Air France that crashed near Vienna-Schwechat Airport on 24 December 1958. The accident became known as the Christmas Miracle of Schwechat.
Accident sequence
At around 23 o'clock, Air France Flight 703, coming from Paris-Orly via Stuttgart and Munich, was on its landing approach to Vienna. The Lockheed Constellation L-749A approached from the west, but because its speed was too high it was instructed by the tower to pass the airport, fly another circuit and land from the east into the wind. During this circuit the aircraft probably flew too low and too slowly; it struck the pylon of an overhead power line, crashed into a field near Klein-Neusiedl and caught fire.
Although the aircraft exploded shortly afterwards, all 28 passengers and six crew members managed to get out in time. Apart from Captain Pierre Candau and flight engineer George Chasseigne, who had to be treated in hospital for about another two weeks, all the injured were able to be discharged to home care the very next day.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Air-France-Flug 703” (revision 251247645, 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
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Air-France-Flug 703
- Article
- Air-France-Flug 703
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 251247645 · 2024-12-14 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q406537
- 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
- de Wikipedia article "Air-France-Flug 703" (page 6491133, revision 251247645), translated into English with AI assistance
- 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 article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.