Piedmont Airlines Flight 22

Piedmont Airlines Flight 22

Accident summary
Date	July 19, 1967
Type	Mid-air collision
Site	Hendersonville North Carolina, USA
Total fatalities	82
Total survivors	0
First aircraft
Type	Boeing 727-22
Name	Manhattan Pacemaker
Operator	Piedmont Airlines
Tail number	N68650
Flight origin	Asheville Regional Airport Asheville, North Carolina
Destination	Roanoke Regional Airport Roanoke, Virginia
Passengers	74
Crew	5
Survivors	0
Second aircraft
Type	Cessna 310
Operator	Lanseair, Inc.
Tail number	N3121S
Passengers	2
Crew	1
Survivors	0

Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 was a Piedmont Airlines Boeing 727-22 on a scheduled airline flight in the United States from Asheville Regional Airport in Asheville, North Carolina to Roanoke Regional Airport in Roanoke, Virginia. Shortly after departure, the flight collided with a twin-engine Cessna 310 on approach to the same airport. Both aircraft were destroyed and all passengers and crew killed.

The aircraft were both operating under instrument flight rules and both were in radio contact with the Asheville control tower, though on different frequencies.

Contents 1 Original investigation 2 Controversy and new investigation 3 Notable passengers 4 External links

Original investigation

This was the first major airline accident investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), newly formed to replace the Civil Aeronautics Board. The NTSB's report placed the primary responsibility for the accident on the Cessna pilot, while citing air traffic control procedures as a contributing factor, and recommended a review of minimum pilot skill levels required for instrument flight.

Controversy and new investigation

In 2006, however, 38 years after the accident, the NTSB agreed to reopen the investigation because of apparent irregularities identified by Paul Houle, a historian who spent several years studying the accident. Houle alleged the following problems with the NTSB's original investigation:

• The original NTSB report omitted the fact that the Cessna pilot had properly reported his heading, which should have alerted air traffic control to a potential conflict between the two planes. The report claims that there was a four-second pause at that point, but the transcript shows no such pause (FAA Tower Tapes, Asheville, NC 7/19/67).

• The original NTSB report does not mention that there was a fire in a cockpit ashtray in the 727, which (as shown by the cockpit voice recorder transcript) occupied the attention of the 727 crew for the 35 seconds before the collision (N68650 CVR tapes, 7/19/67).

• The lead NTSB investigator had an apparent conflict of interest, since his brother was a vice president and director of Piedmont Airlines (Court testimony, 1968).

Houle also mentioned that, at the time, the newly-formed NTSB was not fully independent of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), since both reported to the Department of Transportation. Houle claimed that these conflicts of interest led the NTSB to avoid citing either Piedmont or FAA controllers as primary causes of the accident.

In early 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) decided to confirm their biased findings, upholding the probable cause it found in 1968 for the midair collision. In a February 2007 letter, the NTSB notified Paul Houle it had voted 3-1 that his arguments (despite being vitally relevant facts) were unsubstantiated (Letter from Mark Rosenker, NTSB Chairman, February, 2007).

Notable passengers

John T. McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and Robert McNamara's closest advisor, was a passenger on Flight 22, along with his wife and son.

External links

• Full text of the original NTSB report (PDF)
• Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
• NTSB to re-examine cause of 1967 midair collision

← 1966 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1967 (1967) 1968 →     Feb 16  Garuda Indonesia Flight 708 Mar 05  Lake Central Flight 527 Mar 09  TWA Flight 553 Mar 10  West Coast Flight 720 Mar 13  South African Airways Flight 406 Apr 20  Nicosia Britannia disaster Apr 25  EC-121H Warning Star crash Jun 04  Stockport disaster Jun 23  Mohawk Airlines Flight 40 Jun 30  Thai Airways International Flight 601 Jul 19  Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 Oct 12  Cyprus Airways Flight 284 Nov 04  Iberia Airlines Flight 062 Nov 06  TWA Flight 159 Nov 20  TWA Flight 128 Incidents resulting in at least 50 deaths shown in italics     Deadliest incident shown in bold smallcaps