Site Rochester, NY Fatalities 7 Aircraft type Martin 404 Number of deaths 7 Survivor 36 Crew count 3 | Passengers 40 Survivors 36 Date 2 July 1963 Injuries (nonfatal) 36 Passenger count 40 | |
Summary Pilot error, bad weather as a contributing factor Similar 1963 Camden PA‑24 cra, New Zealand National, Aero Flight 217, 1963 BAC One‑Eleven test crash, Northwest Airlines Flight 705 | ||
Mohawk Airlines Flight 121 crashed during takeoff from Rochester-Monroe airport for Newark International Airport on July 2, 1963, killing 7 people and injuring 36.
The aircraft, a Martin 404 with a total of 15,970 hours in-flight, attempted to take-off on runway 28 into a heavy thunderstorm. The pilot was unable to maintain control, and the plane came back down. The left wing impacted ground and the aircraft cartwheeled wing-over-wing and caught fire, killing seven people on board: two crewmembers and five passengers. The weather forecast at the time was found to be entirely accurate. The NTSB found the cause of the accident to be the pilot's poor decision to take off in bad weather, and cited the weather itself as a contributing factor.
References
Mohawk Airlines Flight 121 Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA