Archive Report
Archive Report
Air Disasters and the Accident Record
Concern Over Recent Rash of Plane Crashes
A series of fatal accidents on American scheduled airlines in the last months of 1959 and the first months of 1960 has provoked a searching re-examination of air safety practices by the airlines and by branches of the government concerned with aviation. The Senate Commerce Committee's Aviation subcommittee held hearings last winter to try to find out if there was a dominant pattern of causes for the rash of disasters. The Federal Aviation Agency in turn issued various new regulations intended to raise safety standards on the nation's airlines and to improve an already generally favorable accident record.
Three airliner crashes in the first three months of this year took 147 lives. Thirty-four died ...