Fateful Assumptions: The 1972 Chicago-O’Hare Runway Collision

On the 20th of December 1972, a North Central Airlines DC-9 taking off from Chicago O’Hare International Airport clipped the tail of a taxiing Delta Air Lines flight amid dense fog, sending the plane crashing back to the runway in flames. Aboard the Delta Convair 880, 93 passengers and crew escaped serious injury, but on the burning DC-9, a raging fire and heavy smoke claimed the lives of 10 passengers during the mad rush to evacuate. The collision shut down the world’s busiest airport for several hours, but it had been closed before the crash, too, due to fog — the very same fog which prevented the two crews from seeing each other as North Central Airlines flight 575 sped down the runway and Delta flight 954 wandered into its path. However, the reason the two planes came into contact at all hinged on a series of misunderstandings, ambiguous clearances, and complacency on the part of the Delta crew and the ground controller handling them, as they attempted to reach a holding point in low visibility. The fact that a few words put the planes on a collision course, and the fact that 10 people died in a fire following a survivable crash,  <a href="https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fateful-assumptions-the-1972-chicago-ohare-runway-collision-2d7032dde729">Visit Now</a>