The Crash of Flight 710
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ On October 11, 1983--25 years ago on Saturday--a small commercial airliner (Flight 710) carrying 10 people plunged from the night in a thunderstorm between Pinckneyville and Tamaroa, snatching the hopes and dreams built over 10 individuals' lifetimes.
The crash--the only commercial airliner crash in Perry County's history and a rare miscue in all of Illinois aviation--was an unspeakable loss for Chicago and Carbondale-area families, for local emergency personnel, and for local businessmen who made up the board of directors of Air Illinois.
Carbondale-based Air Illinois, which cropped up as a commuter airline during an era of aviation deregulation in the late 1970s, was decimated by the crash.
The victims included a mother and her two-year-old son, college professors and a teamsters union organizer. Another was an Illinois Labor Department supervisor attending a meeting in place of a vacationing boss.
Jerome Brown--one of the victims--hated the commuter flight from Chicago to Carbondale, but told his wife before he left Meigs Field, "I guess everything will be alright."
"It's a small plane. You feel vibrations and things," Brown's wife explained the morning after the crash.
The plane crashed during a thunderstorm northeast of Pinckneyville at 9:10 p.m. The flight had stopped at Springfield and was enroute to Carbondale.
Brown, 52, of Homewood, a suburb of Chicago, was assistant supervisor for the Bureau of the Employment Security of the Department of Labor.
He told his wife he was headed to Carbondale to attend a meeting of the Private Industry Council, a group of businesses that helped develop jobs--in place of his vacationing boss.
Brown was a Chicago school teacher before he joined the Labor Department 14 years before.
The couple had three grown children.
Two other victims were Southern Illinois University professors--Jerome Lorenz, director of the university's Rehabilitation Institute, and Richard Baker, the institute coordinator.
They had been in Chicago to discuss the SIU program with the U.S. Rehabilitation Services Administration. The program trained about 200 students to work with and help the handicapped.
They were a special breed. They spent their entire careers designing programs and helping disabled people get jobs."
Both professors were editors of national publications within their field.
Another victim was Regina V. Polk, 33, a business agent for Teamster's Local 743.
"She defied categorization," said a colleague, Stacy Metralexis.
Ms. Polk, raised in California, went to Chicago to earn a graduate degree in industrial relations at the University of Chicago.
She sought help from Local 734 after she was fired from her hostess job at a restaurant, where she worked to help pay her tuition. She was fired after leading a workers' protest over salary and conditions.
She won her grievance against the restaurant, but instead of returning to her job, joined Local 743 as an organizer and went on to rise through the ranks of a local members range from Blue Cross-Blue Shield adjusters to University of Chicago employees.\
Other victims of the crash were the pilot, Capt. Lester R. Smith, 32, of Carbondale, an Air Illinois pilot for five years; first officer Frank S. Tudor, 28, of DeSoto, an Air Illinois pilot for three years; flight attendant Barbara Huffman, 32, Murphysboro; Judy Chantos, Springfield, and her two-year-old son, Jonathan, and Dalbir Singh, Barrington.
Inbound Air Illinois Flight 710--on hour overdue because of heavy thunderstorms in Southern Illinois--circled a rural Pinckneyville house twice then crashed in a hilly wooded area.
The crash site was on the John Thomas Fisher property some five miles north-northeast of Pinckneyville.
The plane, a turbo prop Hawker Siddeley 748, originated at Chicago's Meig's Field and had stopped at Springfield.
An inboard flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder were both recovered intact.
Nearly two years later--after an extensive investigation--the National Transportation Safety Board would issue its finding in case DCA84A002: "About 1.5 minutes after departing Springfield, Illinois the flight crew reported a slight electrical problem, but they continued on course. About 33 minutes later and a few minutes before the aircraft should have reached its destination, the aircraft crashed. The impact occurred while the aircraft was descending in a right wing low attitude before crashing. The plane's heading had changed about 180 degrees. A transcript revealed the left generator had failed after takeoff and the first officer had mistakenly isolated the right generator. Attempts to restore the right generator were unsuccessful.
"The captain elected to continue to the destination rather than return to the nearby airport. The cloud bases were at 2000 feet MSL, but ATC could not provide an IFR below 3,000 feet just before crashing.
'"The crew indicated a total loss of electrical power. The left generator drive shaft had sheared. The reason for the right generator not to reset was not determined. There was evidence that recurrent flight crew training did not prepare the crew to understand and cope with the electrical problem and the FAA did not detect the training deficiency. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows: "In-flight planning/decision improper. Pilot in command spatial, disorientation."
The plane's "black box" and flight recorder were recovered, offering 18 pieces of information about the crash.
Several weeks after the crash the FAA grounded the company--which had cropped up as a commuter air carrier after deregulation--and began official hearings. Most company employees were placed on furlough and after an extensive rewrite of the company's operations manual the FAA granted an operating certificate for a portion of the operations.
Founded in 1970, it primarily operated small twin turboprop aircraft such as the Beech 99. By 1978, the company had acquired two of the 36-seat Hawker-Siddeley HS 748 turboprops, which were mostly used to connect Springfield with Chicago's Meigs Field. The airline also utilized the DeHavilland twin otter, an 18 passenger aircraft noted for short takeoffs. As the airline grew, it would service Springfield, St. Louis, Evansville, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids and Chicago. It also operated government and casino charter flights.
Airline officials say the British Aerospace Hawker last made contact with controllers in Centralia during a routine check minutes before the crash.
The aircraft had been tracked by the Kansas City radar center and at about the same time the turbo prop aircraft disappeared from their screen. Illinois State Police at Du Quoin received a call from Mrs. John Fisher that an aircraft had crashed on their property.
It is thought that the aircraft circled the 40-acre farm two times and the pilot may have been trying to crash-land the aircraft on a series of hills and hollows that ripple across the back of the Fisher property.
Others speculate a now-disoriented pilot mistook lights from a strip mining operation for approach lighting at the Carbondale Airport.
Mort Edelstein said the FAA's Kansas City radar center reported the plane was in the middle of a thunder and lightning storm when it cashed. The plane was said to be flying at 3,000 feet and was making its gradual descent into the Carbondale Airport light path.
While the plane has a cruising speed of 210-220 knots, it is thought that the aircraft was probably traveling at about 110 knots and was beginning to drop its flaps to reduce its airspeed.
Air Illinois president Roger Street, who was at the crash scene with other local and area board members, said all indications were that the plane was in its normal approach pattern between Springfield and Carbondale. Air Illinois would work tirelessly in the following weeks and months to try and repair the lives of the affected families. The 10 victims wound up claiming the future viability of an airline.
"It was a normal, routine enroute report from air traffic controllers," he said. The plane disintegrated as it skidded along the rugged countryside between Tamaroa and Pinckneyville.
Rescuers used the White Walnut Road and the 204 School Road to gain access to the area.
"The plane is so wrecked, it's just pieces of sheet meal," said state police Lt. John Richter. "It's quite a scene of carnage," commented Melvin Kersten of Illinois State Police. " I doubt that we will find any intact bodies."
Some of the debris ran across a diagonal route behind the Fisher home. One victim was within 100 feet of the back porch of the home. Another was found on the dam of a pond. Two others were close by. The rest were laying further to the southeast. A window in a truck camper top near where one body was found had been broken out.
All of the bodies were found over the ground in approximately a quarter mile radius, although an Illinois State Police dive team searched two small farm ponds for other debris and any personal affects.
Helicopters from Scott Field at Belleville were flown by the Air Command to light the area and assist in the extraordinary effort.
Mrs. Fisher said, "It was raining pretty hard at the time" of the crash and there had been lightning in the area early in the evening.
She said the plane got louder as it spiraled down around her home. "I heard what sounded like a plane circling the house one time and then I hear it come around again. It made a lot more noise the second time around," she said.
"I ran to the back porch. I saw one flash and then a heard a lot of noise. We could smell gas and fuel."
Police said that the "flash" seen by Mrs. Fisher was a brief flash fire from spewing fuel, but that no explosion actually took place.
The Hawker was one of 11 planes in the Air Illinois fleet. The airlines carried approximately 25,000 passengers a month in the six-state area.
The largest recoverable section of the plane included the baggage compartment and a landing gear and wheel section. The landing gear was partially submerged in one of the two farm ponds on the property.
Leather boots hung from tree branches, jackets stretched from tree limbs, red stakes marked body locations, suit bags and small carry-on luggage were mired in the mud of a small corn field with papers strewn over a half mile on a "this can't be happening" night.