The Curse of Flight 191

On 5 March 1963, Aeroflot Flight 191, a U.S.S.R domestic passenger flight from Vnukovo International Airport, was attempting to land at Ashgabat International Airport in a dust storm. Owing to the weather conditions the flight ought to have been diverted elsewhere, however the option to divert was neither suggested by air traffic control nor requested by the pilots. The landing was a disaster. The aircraft skidded on the runway, lost both of its wings and the cockpit was completely destroyed. The fuselage tipped over on its left side and a fire destroyed the entire middle section of the airliner. Of the 54 people on board, all 8 cockpit crew members died along with 4 passengers.

The X-15 was an experimental hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft, operated by the United States Air Force between 1959 and 1968. On 15 November 1967, X-15 Flight 191, piloted by Michael J Adams, was 10 minutes and 35 seconds into its test flight over Randsburg, California, U.S.A. when it got into technical difficulties and broke apart, killing the sole occupant of the airplane.

 Prinair (Puerto Rico International Airlines) Flight 191 was flying from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Mercedita Airport in Ponce, Puerto Rico. At the controls were Captain Donald Price aged 28, and first officer was Gary Belejeu, who was 27 at the time. At approximately 11:15pm on 24 June 1972, the aircraft attempted to land at Mercedita Airport. As the flight was late at night, the airport control tower was closed, and as a consequence the flight crew had sole responsibility for the landing clearance. Just after touching down on the runway, Price and Belejeu were not happy with the situation, and so took the decision to go around, meaning they would take-off again and circle the airport before landing. However, the pilot over-rotated the aircraft and caused it to stall at a low level and crash. Three passengers and the two flight crew were killed, and the other fifteen passengers were injured. The subsequent air crash investigation cited pilot error as the main cause of the accident although heavy fog was also listed as a contributing factor.

American Airlines Flight 191 was a scheduled passenger flight from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. On May 25, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 was taking off from O’Hare’s runway 32R, when the left engine detached from the wing. This catastrophic failure caused the aircraft to roll to the left, and resulted in it crashing in a field by a trailer park, near the end of the runway. The loss of the engine was the result of damage to the pylon structure holding the engine to the wing, and was caused by improper maintenance procedures. All 258 passengers and 13 crew on board were killed, along with 2 people on the ground. At 273 fatalities, it is, to date, the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in the United States.

On August 2, 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 was coming into land at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, U.S.A., during a thunderstorm. Whilst approaching the runway, the aircraft encountered a microburst. A microburst is an unusual weather phenomenon which produces a column of sinking air that is capable of producing damaging winds of over 240 km/h (150 mph), often producing damage similar to that of a tornado. The downdraft forced the airplane into the ground, and it impacted over one mile (1.6 km) short of the runway, struck a car near the airport, collided with two water tanks, and disintegrated. The crash killed 137 people and injured 26. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the crash resulted from the flight crew’s decision to fly through a thunderstorm, the lack of procedures or training to avoid or escape microbursts, and the lack of hazard information on wind shear.

On the morning of August 27, 2006, at around 6:07am, Comair Flight 5191 crashed while attempting to take off from Blue Grass Airport in Fayette County, Kentucky, U.S.A. The aircraft had been assigned the airport’s runway 22 for the take-off, but inexplicably the pilot used runway 26 instead. Runway 26 was too short for a safe take-off the Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet 100ER being used for the flight, and consequently the aircraft overran the end of the runway before it could become airborne. It crashed just past the end of the runway, killing all 47 passengers and two of the three crew. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the likely cause of the crash was pilot error.

JetBlue Flight 191 was a scheduled domestic commercial passenger flight from New York to Las Vegas, U.S.A. On March 27, 2012, the Airbus A320 diverted to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, in Amarillo, Texas, after the captain, suffered a mental breakdown and began behaving erratically. Captain Clayton Osbon was locked out of the cockpit by First Officer Jason Dowd and was restrained by passengers after he started acting irrationally, ranting about terrorists and 9/11. Fortunately, on this occasion there were no fatalities.

These incidents have caused the number 191 to be seen by some as unlucky in the aviation industry, and as a consequence, many commercial airlines no longer use it as a flight number. However, some still do. So, you have been warned. If you book yourself on a flight and discover its flight number is 191, you might like to consider an alternative ground based form of transport instead.

Sources:

Wikipedia.org