Llandow air disaster

51°26′04″N 3°28′39″W / 51.43445°N 3.47739°W / 51.43445; -3.47739AircraftAircraft typeAvro 689 Tudor VOperatorAirflight operating as Fairflight^[1]RegistrationG-AKBYFlight originDublin AirportDestinationLlandow aerodromePassengers78Crew5Fatalities80Injuries3Survivors3

The Llandow air disaster was an aircraft accident in Wales in 1950. At that time it was the world's worst air disaster, with a total of 80 fatalities.^[2] The aircraft, an Avro Tudor V, had been privately hired to fly rugby union enthusiasts to and from an international game in Ireland. On the return flight the aircraft stalled and crashed on its approach to land.

Course of events

On 12 March 1950, an Avro 689 Tudor V, Star Girl, owned by Airflight Limited and being operated under the "Fairflight" name,^[1] took off from Dublin Airport^[3] in Ireland, on a private passenger flight to Llandow aerodrome in South Wales. The aircraft had 78 passengers and 5 crew on the manifest. The flight had been chartered privately for a trip to Belfast to watch the Welsh rugby union team compete against the Irish in the Five Nations Championship at the Ravenhill Stadium. The aircraft had been initially booked for 72 passengers, but the plane had been stripped to accommodate another six.^[4]

The weather conditions were clear, and no incident was reported after the outbound journey aboard the same aircraft.

Eyewitnesses (including a Mr Russell) state that at 3:05 pm the Avro Tudor was approaching runway 28 of Llandow aerodrome at an abnormally low altitude with the undercarriage down. The pilot attempted to correct the descent by increasing the power of the engines and brought the plane up. The aircraft rose steeply to 100 m (300 ft) attaining a nose-up attitude of 35 degrees to the vertical, and then the aircraft stalled.^[5]

Star Girl plummeted towards the ground with the right wingtip hitting the ground first, followed in turn by the plane's nose and left wing, which separated from the fuselage when it made contact. The plane turned clockwise and finally came to a rest near a field beside Park Farm close to the small hamlet of Sigingstone (or Sigginstone). There was no explosion on impact or ground fire.

Two passengers who were sitting in additional seats bolted in at the back of the tail section walked away unaided, and a third man, who was in the lavatory and knocked unconscious at the time of the crash, survived but was in the hospital for four months.^[6][7] Eight more survivors of the initial impact died later in hospitals of their injuries, bringing the final death toll to 80, 75 passengers and all five crew.

The March 13, 1950, edition of the New York Times reported thus: "London, 12 March—Eighty men and women were killed in Wales today in an aeroplane crash, the worst disaster in the history of aviation. Three men survived. The death toll eclipsed the previous record for airplanes, set last Nov. 2, when a fighter plane rammed an airliner near the National Airport in Washington, causing the deaths of fifty-five persons. It also exceeded the toll of seventy-three dead in the loss of the United States Navy dirigible Akron off Barnegat, N.J., on 4 April 1933. The eighty persons lost in Wales went to their destruction in a type of aircraft – the British Avro Tudor – that had already caused fifty-four fatalities and had been banned from passenger service on Britain's publicly owned international airlines."

Fatalities

The death toll of 80 exceeded the previous aviation fatality record, which was the 73 lives lost on the US Navy dirigible Akron in 1933. This in turn would be surpassed on 20 December 1952, when 87 people died when a US Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashed near Moses Lake, Washington. As far as civilian aviation-related deaths, the Avro disaster resulted in the highest loss of lives until 128 died in the 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision. The Tudor's single death toll for a civilian aircraft was the highest on record until 1958, when a KLM Super Constellation went down off Ireland, claiming 99 lives.

Investigation

After a court of enquiry chaired by William McNair KC the Ministry of Civil Aviation announced that the probable cause of the accident was the loading of the aircraft, which had moved the centre of gravity considerably aft of where it should have been, thus reducing the effectiveness of the elevators.^[5]

Memorial

Amongst those who died were three members of Abercarn Rugby Football Club. Llanharan RFC lost six members of their playing team. Both clubs remember the victims with symbolism on their club badges. On 25 March in the final game of the 1950 Championship against France at the Cardiff Arms Park, the crowd stood in silence while five buglers sounded a Last Post tribute to the memory of the supporters who had died in the plane crash.^[8]

See also

• 1950 in aviation
• List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft

Notes

External links

• South Wales Police, Official Report
• South Wales Police Museum – crash narrative and photographs of the aftermath
• The 1950 Welsh Triple Crown & Llandow Air Disaster via rugbyrelics.com   (archive)
• "After the Game", TIME, 20 March 1950 – brief article includes eyewitness descriptions and survivor names
• Sigingstone Memorial – plaque dedicated in 1990 on 40th anniversary of the air disaster
• Contemporary account in Life magazine (pages 42 & 43) via books.google.com
• Newsreel footage of the crash debris (1950) from British Pathé (Record No:33482) at YouTube
• Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network