In May 1979, 23-year-old David Booth, a Cincinnati office manager, had a well-documented premonition, that came to him in a series of vivid dreams, regarding an American Airlines crash.
Booth feverishly called the FAA and spoke with a representative of American Airlines. He told them in no vague terms that he had had a vision of an airplane going down in flames among tall buildings. Obviously, there was nothing that could be done even though the authorities were eventually convinced of Booth's seriousness and that he wasn't just trying to pull a joke or be a pain in the butt.
On May 26, 1979, Lindsay Wagner - famous at the time as the 'Bionic Woman' - arrived at Chicago's famous O'Hare Airport. She was to board an American Airlines jet but canceled at the last minute due to a sudden sick feeling that left her nauseous without any explanation. David Booth was perhaps not the only person who had the ability to foresee trouble aboard American Airlines DC-10. Shortly after takeoff, an engine fell off the plane, causing it to crash into buildings. Everyone aboard died.
With a sickening feeling, the authorities compared the details of the crash to David Booth's premonition. Although never seriously suspected of complicity they had little choice but to make sure he hadn't had a hand in causing his remarkable feat of foretelling the future to come true. The comparisons were enough to send shivers up and down the spine of anyone reading them. For all intents and purposes, David Booth had predicted with astonishing accuracy the disaster that took place at O'Hare Airport that day. Even so, the question of whether anything could possibly have been done to prevent that disaster was immediately rejected. It was the only time in his life that anything of this magnitude had ever taken place and his inability to do anything to prevent him left him emotionally fragile.
In the book Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings
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American Airlines Flight 191
May 25, 1979, remains the darkest day in American aviation. On that Friday before the Memorial Day Weekend, 270 passengers and crew aboard American Airlines Flight 191 lost their lives when their airplane literally fell out of the sky. To this day, the accident is the most deadly commercial airline crash in United States history. Here is the story of what happened on that blustery Spring day in 1979.
In command of flight 191 was Capt. Walter Lux, a 22,000-hour pilot who had flown the DC-10 nearly since its introduction eight years earlier. Assisting him on the flight deck were First Officer James Dillard and Flight Engineer Alfred Udovich, who had 25,000 flying hours between them. At 2:50 pm, N110AA was cleared to taxi to runway 32R at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, and at 3:02 pm the flight was cleared for takeoff. The wind was Northeast at 22 knots.
In the cockpit and cabin, the takeoff roll seemed totally normal. The view from the cockpit was even broadcast on the airliner's closed-circuit television system for the passengers' enjoyment. But six thousand feet into the takeoff roll, air traffic controllers in O'Hare's control tower saw small parts of the aircraft's no.1 engine pylon fall away, and as the aircraft started its rotation, the entire number one engine separated from the wing.
Behaving exactly as it was designed to, the severed engine flew up and over the left wing, falling to the runway below. Unfortunately, in the process, it ripped out all of the hydraulic lines to the leading edge slats. As a result, pressure slowly started to leak out and the leading edge slats slowly started to retract. The plane continued to climb normally, however.
The tower controller called "American 191 heavy, you wanna come back and to what runway?" There was no response... the crew was too concerned with keeping their wounded beast flying. The Captain, following American's engine-out procedures to the nth degree, pitched the nose up and slowed the aircraft down to V2+6, or 159 knots. Decelerating through 165 knots, something odd began to happen.
The Captain was putting in full right rudder and aileron, yet the aircraft was still rolling left. At an altitude of 400 feet and with an airspeed of 155 knots, the airplane rolled past wings vertically and fell to earth with a bank of 112° and a nose-down attitude of 21°.
The accident investigation revealed that, when the engine separated, it disabled the Captain's control panel, which contained both of the slat disagreement systems. The severed hydraulic lines allowed the slats on the left wing to gradually retract, and the stall speed on the left wing rose considerably. When the aircraft slowed through 164 knots, the left-wing aerodynamically stalled because of its clean configuration, while the right wing continued to produce lift with its slats still in takeoff position. With one wing stalling and one wing producing full lift, the airplane eventually rolled past a 90° bank and fell to the ground. The crash killed two people on the ground when it hit a field directly adjacent to a trailer park. All 270 passengers and crew aboard were also fatally injured. - airdisaster.com
NOTE: Author, Judith Wax was one of many who perished that day in 1979. She was bound to Los Angeles to promote her new book, Starting In the Middle
Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings
Air Crash Investigations: The Worst Single Plane Crash In American History, The Crash Of American Airlines Flight 191
Crash Of Flight 191
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