Subscribe today to Plane & Pilot magazine for industry news, reviews and much more delivered straight to you!
Why do pilots continue flying into mountainsides with the airplane fully under control? The term controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) puts an objective and rather cold label on a type of accident which has defied prevention. For example, I was going through some old Civil Aeronautics Board documents and noticed that on March 1, 1938, a TWA DC-2 en route from San Francisco to Winslow, Arizona, crashed into a mountain in Yosemite National Park near Wawona, California. All nine on board were killed. The DC-2 departed visually but it soon entered instrument conditions and the weather kept deteriorating. The pilot elected to divert to Fresno but apparently became confused about his position in relation to the Fresno Radio Range. The airplane’s wreckage was located about three months later about 200 feet below the summit of the mountain.
