Catastrophe over New York: The 1960 collision of United Airlines flight 826 and TWA flight 266

The crash, the deadliest in history at the time, immediately led to soul-searching in America’s aviation industry, which had spent the last four years embarking on an ambitious modernization program aimed at reducing the risk of mid-air collisions. Huge sums of money were spent to rapidly expand radar coverage throughout the country and incorporate its use into day-to-day operations, and yet two airliners under radar control in the skies over America’s largest city had come together anyway. What went wrong? What gaps remained in the system? Looking back from over six decades later, there were quite a few. In fact, despite the introduction of radar, it was still commonplace for aircraft to find themselves under their own navigation in some of the nation’s busiest airspace, which was just one ingredient in a recipe for disaster that also involved faulty equipment, a complicated navigational puzzle, and an air crew’s unfamiliarity with the performance of their brand new jet airliner. This sequence of events not only revealed how the air traffic control system remained immature and incomplete, but also led to changes in the way we fly that many pilots today probably take for granted. <a href="https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/catastrophe-over-new-york-the-1960-collision-of-united-airlines-flight-826-and-twa-flight-266-2310331dd57c">Website</a>