Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706
	A Northwest Orient Lockheed L-188 Electra, similar to the accident aircraft
Crash
Date	September 17, 1961
Summary	Maintenance error
Site	O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, US ; 41°57′38″N 87°55′08″W / 41.9606°N 87.9190°W
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Lockheed L-188C Electra
Operator	Northwest Orient Airlines
Registration	N137US
Flight origin	O'Hare International Airport
Destination	Tampa International Airport
Occupants	37
Passengers	32
Crew	5
Fatalities	37
Injuries	0
Survivors	0

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 was a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft, registration N137US,^[1] which crashed on take-off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport September 17, 1961. All 37 on board were killed in the accident.

Flight 706 began its day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was scheduled to stop at Chicago before travelling to Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami, Florida. It arrived at Chicago in the early morning and left soon afterwards, being cleared for takeoff at 8:55 AM. Takeoff was normal until the aircraft reached the altitude of 100 feet above ground level, when witnesses noticed a slight change in the sound of the Electra's engines. The aircraft began a gentle bank to the right as the starboard wing began to drop. The bank angle increased to 35°; at that point the tower controllers picked up a garbled broadcast believed to be from the pilots. The aircraft climbed to approximately 300 feet but continued to bank, eventually reaching a bank angle of over 50°. At that point, the starboard wing nicked a series of high-tension power lines running along the south boundary of the airport; shortly after that, the aircraft struck an embankment and cartwheeled onto its nose. The forward fuselage broke off, the plane pancaked and skidded, then launched into the air and slammed nose-first into the ground, falling over on its back and exploding into a ball of flame. The accident took less than two minutes from the beginning of takeoff until the final crash.

Investigators with the Civil Aeronautics Board determined that the cable physically connecting the first officer's control wheel to the aileron boost unit had disconnected. This had caused the ailerons to put the aircraft in a starboard-wing-down attitude, and had prevented the pilots from being able to correct the bank. The cables attaching the pilots' control wheels to the aileron boost unit had been removed two months before the accident during routine maintenance; a safety cable that held part of the assembly together had not been replaced when the cables were hooked back up. The contact slowly separated, until it completely failed during the takeoff sequence.

References[edit]

^ "FAA Registry (N137US)". Federal Aviation Administration.

External links[edit]

Aircraft Accident Report on Flight 706 - Civil Aeronautics Board
Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
Air Disaster, Vol. 4: The Propeller Era, by Macarthur Job, Aerospace Publications Pty. Ltd. (Australia), 2001 ISBN 1-875671-48-X
The Crash of Flight 706: The Impact and Breakup Sequence ..., by Craig Hagstrom, 2016 [1]

[1] "FAA Registry (N137US)". Federal Aviation Administration.

[1]

v t e Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States and U.S. territories in the 1960s
1960	National Airlines Flight 2511 Capital Airlines Flight 20 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 Chicago Helicopter Airways Flight 698 World Airways Flight 830 Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 Cal Poly football team New York mid-air collision
1961	Goldsboro B-52 American Airlines Flight 1502 Yuba City B-52 United Air Lines Flight 859 Alaska Airlines Flight 779 TWA Flight 529 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 Cincinnati Zantop DC-4
1962	American Airlines Flight 1 Continental Airlines Flight 11 Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 301 United Air Lines Flight 297 Eastern Air Lines Flight 512
1963	Elephant Mountain B-52 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705 Camden PA-24 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 293 Mohawk Airlines Flight 112 Pan Am Flight 214
1964	Savage Mountain B-52 Eastern Air Lines Flight 304 Paradise Airlines Flight 901A Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 United Air Lines Flight 823 Bonanza Air Lines Flight 114 Flying Tiger Line Flight 282
1965	USAF KC-135 Wichita Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 Pan Am Flight 843 Continental Airlines Flight 12 Allegheny Airlines Flight 604 United Air Lines Flight 389 American Airlines Flight 383 United Air Lines Flight 227 Carmel mid-air (Eastern 853, TWA 42)
1966	NASA T-38 American Flyers Airline Flight 280/D Braniff International Airways Flight 250 West Coast Airlines Flight 956
1967	Lake Central Airlines Flight 527 TWA Flight 553 West Coast Airlines Flight 720 Delta Air Lines Flight 9877 Mohawk Airlines Flight 40 Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 Lake Erie skydiving disaster TWA Flight 159 X-15 Flight 3-65-97 TWA Flight 128
1968	Ozark Air Lines Flight 965 Braniff International Airways Flight 352 Los Angeles Airways Flight 841 Los Angeles Airways Flight 417 Northeast Airlines Flight 946 Japan Air Lines Flight 2 Pan Am Flight 281 Wien Consolidated Airlines Flight 55 Allegheny Airlines Flight 736 Pan Am Flight 799 North Central Airlines Flight 458 Ozark Air Lines Flight 982
1969	Allegheny Airlines Flight 737 Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 933 United Air Lines Flight 266 Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708 Prinair Flight 277 Delta Air Lines Flight 821 TWA Flight 5787 Newton Cessna 172 crash Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 Mohawk Airlines Flight 411
This list is incomplete.

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