Los Angeles Airways Flight 841

Infobox Airliner accident
name=Los Angeles Airways Flight 841
Date=May 22, 1968
Type=Mechanical Failure
Site=Paramount, California
Coordinates =
Fatalities=23
Injuries=0
Aircraft Type=Sikorsky 61L
Operator=Los Angeles Airways
Tail Number=airreg|N|303Y|disaster
Passengers=20
Crew=3
Survivors =0

Los Angeles Airways Flight 841 crashed at 5:50 p.m. on May 22, 1968 in the city of Paramount, California. All twenty passengers and three crewmembers were fatally injured. The aircraft was destroyed by impact and fire. The probable cause of the accident was a mechanical failure in the blade rotor system, which then allowed one blade to strike the side of the fuselage. The other four blades were then thrown out of balance and all five rotor blades broke and then the rear fuselage and tail separated from the rest of the airframe.cite book|last=Gero|title=Aviation Disasters|publisher=Patrick Stephens Limited|location=Sparkford, Somerset, England|date=1993|isbn=1-85260-379-8.] The cause of the mechanical failure is undetermined.cite news|url=http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=13185&key=0|title=NTSB Identification: DCA68A0006|publisher=National Traffic Safety Board|accessdate=2008-06-06] At the time, it was the worst helicopter accident the U.S. aviation history. ["21 Aboard Killed as Copter Falls in Compton Park" William Tully; Dave Larsen "Los Angeles Times"; Aug 15, 1968 pg. 1]

Los Angeles Airways, (LAA), Flight 841, was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Disneyland Heliport in Anaheim, California to Los Angeles International Airport. The flight was westbound at 2,000 feet over Paramount, California when air traffic controllers received a distress message from pilots: "L.A., we’re crashing, help us." The helicopter crashed onto a dairy farm and burst into flames. N303Y, a Sikorsky S-61L, serial number 61060, helicopter had accumulated 12,096 total flying hours prior to the accident.

Wreckage

Much of the debris was contained in the dairy farm where the helicopter crashed. The tail rotor was discovered one block east of the crash site in a used truck yard. A mechanical failure in the helicopter’s main rotor hub caused one of the rotor blades to detach and it sliced into the fuselage. cite web|url=http://members.aol.com/jaydeebee1/crash60s.html|title=1960s Notable California Aviation Disasters]

Notable Passengers

Among those killed was a group of nine vacationers from Ohio; a Hunt-Wesson Foods executive; the mayor of Red Bluff, California; and a University of California, Berkeley professor.

References

External Links

* [http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=13185&key=0 NTSB report on Flight 841]
* [http://matterhorn1959.blogspot.com/2006/08/los-angeles-airways-helicopter-at.html Los Angeles Airways Helicopter at Disneyland]
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20050515/ai_n15829418/pg_6 Readers recall 50 years of Disneyland]
* [http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=14208 Aviation Safety report]

ee also

* Los Angeles Airways Flight 417
* List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners