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1962 Air France Orly crash

A Boeing 707 taking off
Accident summary
Date	June 3, 1962
Type	Rejected takeoff
Site	Orly Airport, Paris, France
Passengers	122
Crew	10
Injuries	2
Fatalities	130
Survivors	2
Aircraft type	Boeing 707-300
Aircraft name	Chateau de Sully
Operator	Air France
Tail number	F-BHSM
Flight origin	Paris-Orly Airport
Stopover	Idlewild Airport
Destination	Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

F-BHSM was the registration and callsign of a Boeing 707 named Chateau de Sully used by Air France for a charter flight, which crashed on June 3, 1962 while attempting to depart Paris's Orly Airport en route to Atlanta, Georgia via New York City's Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport). The 707 carried 122 passengers and 10 crew, of whom 130 died.

Accident narrative

According to witnesses, during the takeoff roll on runway 8, the nose of the aircraft rotated off the runway, but the jet failed to lift off, its main landing gear remaining on the ground. A motor driving the elevator trim had failed, leaving the pilots with insufficient control authority to complete rotation and liftoff.^[1] With no other choice, the flight crew attempted to abort the take off even though the aircraft had already exceeded V₁, the maximum speed at which a takeoff can be aborted and the aircraft stopped within the available runway length.

With less than 3,000 feet (910 m) of runway remaining, the pilots attempted to stop the 707 using wheel brakes and reverse thrust. After braking hard enough to destroy tires and wheels on the main landing gear, the plane ran off the end of the runway and burst into flame after the left undercarriage failed. Two flight attendants seated in the back of the cabin survived the crash and fire. A third flight attendant survived the disaster but later died in hospital. At the time, it was the world's worst air disaster involving one aircraft.

Impact on Atlanta, Georgia

The Atlanta Art Association sponsored a month long tour of the art treasures of Europe and 106^[2] of the passengers were art patrons heading home to Atlanta on this charter flight. The tour group included many of Atlanta's cultural and civic leaders. Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr. went to Orly to inspect the crash site where so many important Atlantans perished.^[3]

During their visit to Paris, the Atlanta arts patrons had seen Whistler's Mother at the Louvre.^[4] In the fall of 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent Whistler's Mother to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street.^[5]

The Woodruff Arts Center, originally called the Memorial Arts Center and one of the United States' largest, was founded in 1968 in memory of those who died from the crash. The loss to the city was a catalyst for the arts in Atlanta, helped create this memorial to the victims, and led to the creation of the Atlanta Arts Alliance. Ann Uhry Abrams, the author of Explosion at Orly: The True Account of the Disaster that Transformed Atlanta, described the incident as "Atlanta’s version of Sept. 11 in that the impact on the city in 1962 was comparable to New York of Sept. 11."^[2]

In art and popular culture

Andy Warhol painted his first "disaster painting", 129 Die in Jet!^[6] for the June 4, 1962 cover of New York Mirror, the day after the crash. At that time, the death count was 129.^[7]

Ann Uhry Abrams wrote a biography of the passengers entitled Explosion at Orly^[8], published in 2002. It detailed the lives of the passengers prior to their trip to Paris and the resulting effect the disaster had on Atlanta.

References

External links

• The Day Atlanta Died, from About North Georgia
• Orly Air Crash of 1962, from the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• 1962: 130 die in Paris air crash, On This Day, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
• Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
• Article on the crash at PilotFriend.com
• (French) Official report by the enquiry board of French ministry in charge of transportation
• 1962 newsreel footage (silent) at British Pathe (requires Adobe Flash)

← 1961 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1962 1963→ American Airlines Flight 1 (March 1) - Caledonian Airways Flight 153 (March 4) - Turkish Airlines Taurus Mt Crash (March 8) - Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 (March 16) - Continental Airlines Flight 11 (May 22) - Air France Orly crash (June 3) - Air France Flight 117 (June 22) - Aeroflot tail number CCCP-42370 (June 30) - Alitalia Flight 771 (July 7) - United Arab Airlines Flight 869 (July 9) - United Airlines Flight 297 (November 23) - Eastern Air Lines Flight 512 (November 30) Bold blue indicates incidents resulting at least 50 deaths (current article is always in bold black) Red indicates the deadliest incident in 1962