Holidays' End

A chill fog hung over Seattle's dark, hill-bordered Boeing Field, and ice glazed the runways. Seattle Air Charter, one of the U.S.'s brood of nonscheduled airlines, postponed the eastbound flight of its DC-3 for an hour, then two hours. The big commercial lines had canceled all flights. But the owner of the DC-3 had a big payload waiting impatiently for a ride--27 Yale students from the Northwest had chartered the plane for the trip back to New Haven after the Christmas holidays.

Finally at 10 o'clock the flight was called; the students called goodbye to waiting parents and girl friends, trooped aboard. The heavily loaded plane (normal load: 21 passengers) waited, engines turning, for half an hour. The fog lifted a little. Against the urgent advice of the control tower, the plane snarled down the runway, lifted off the concrete.

Barely airborne, it lurched. Its right wingtip dropped, scraped the runway. The plane veered crazily, crashed through a hangar with a shattering roar, and burst into flame. Inside its crumpled fuselage, students (some of whose safety belts snapped) crawled dazedly amid bright fire, or lay still. Sixteen managed to tumble out into the arms of hangar crewmen.

But when the fire was finally extinguished and the charred wreck was pulled away, 14--the pilot, copilot, the airline operator and eleven students--were dead.

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