Dec. 23, 1983, Anchorage International Airport. Typical foggy December day. A Korean Airline DC-10 hauling cargo with a crew of 3 was cleared to taxi to runway 32 (north) and subsequently cleared for takeoff on runway 32. When the KAL was cleared for takeoff a Southcentral Air Piper PA-31 Navajo with pilot and 8 passengers was "position and hold" on runway 6L (east). Unknown to everyone the KAL had gotten confused/lost in the fog and instead of being on runway 32 they were facing west on the remaining 3000' of runway 24R. The DC-10 began it's takeoff roll and when the Captain saw the Navajo sitting on the runway he attempted to takeoff, the aircraft rotated lifting the nose wheel just enough that it just barely clipped the upper fuselage of the Navajo moving it just enough that the center and right main gear legs passed down either side of the Navajo tearing both wings off. There were only minor injuries to the occupants of the Navajo, IIRC the most serious being a head laceration to one of the passengers.
The DC-10 was unable to liftoff and continued off the end of the runway and went for Mr Toads wild ride along the approach light system for 6L coming to a rest a couple thousand feet later. The crew all suffered back injuries but were able to self evacuate, the aircraft and cargo were destroyed by the post crash fire.
The Navajo wreckage:
That little dent above the right side of the windscreen is where the nose wheel of the DC10 hit. Lucky folks!!
This was taken a few hours after the crash, initial fire is knocked down:
This is a shot of my CFR truck at the crash. I'm in the cab talking to Maggie Holeman (who later that night pulled my handsomehunk out of that burning fuselage -- I'm pretty fond of her
). The guy working the handling is Charles Gilman.
These shots I took the next day, some from a helicopter (loads of fun flying around with the doors off at -5F)
This aerial shot is taken look east, the direction the Navajo was going to take off. The tracks through the snow are from the DC-10, we were hovering about over the location of the DC-10 wreckage. There is a downgrade from the runway to the west, uneven ground…had to be one heck of a ride for the DC-10 guys.
This happened at around 2PM. I happened to be at a coworkers house a few miles from the airport when his "home monitor" alert system activated. (All of us had these at home for recall in case of a major incident such as this). The initial message on the monitor was that 2 747s had collided on takeoff. Mike and I looked at each other, I had a fleeting thought of NO, I DON'T WANT TO SEE 500 DEAD PEOPLE, then he said "I'll be there as soon as I get a baby-sitter" and I ran out the door to go to work.
When I got to work I was assigned Eng 3 with Maggie and Chuck. Using that Walters 3000 Crash truck we put 21000 gallons of water on the wreckage. We weren't able to completely put the fire out due to fuel pooled under the aircraft but had it contained to a smoldering state until the next day when the work began digging through to find the data recorders.
By later that night we were down to just having one truck at the scene to standby and tend to any flareups. I got out to walk around the crash a bit and kind of absorb what had gone on. It was a cold night, -10 or so and kind of foggy. Smoke coming off the wreck, nice eerie setup for a SciFi movie.
As I'm standing on the stub of the right wing I can faintly hear Christmas carols being sung. WTF? Part of the cargo was electronic christmas cards…as the contact would short they would start to play music.
Here's a link to the accident report.,
