Burning Up From Inside | Mohawk Airlines Flight 40

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This is the story of Mohawk Airlines Flight 40. On the 23rd of june 1967 a BAC 1-11 was flying from Syracuse to Washington DC with a stop over in elmira new york. The BAC 1-11 that they were flying was brand new having only had its first flight the year before. Also Do you think that BAC should have called the one eleven the triple one, you know like how we say 777 today, i think triple one sounds a lot better.

By 2:07 pm local time the plane was at elmira. At elmira a few people got off and a few people got on, bringing the total number of passengers on the flight to 30. Soon after everyone was onboard flight 40 got its IFR or instrument flight rules clearance to washington. Their clearance only allowed them to climb to 6000 feet instead of the requested 16000 feet as there was conflicting traffic in the area.
The plane took off from Elmira at 2:39 and the controllers watched as the plane took off and turned left towards the south. Soon after takeoff the plane was handed off to New York center and the plane continued to climb. At 2:44 Pm new york center cleared the plane to climb and maintain 16000 feet, The controller at new york center listened for acknowledgement , but nothing, Flight 40 was not responding.

The controller turned to his radar scope. The radar screen updated every 12 seconds or one sweep. At first the plane appeared to slow down then it moved latterly during the next sweep.

In the air, as new york center cleared them to climb the first officer remarked, “It's hard to tell just what it is”, something was not going according to plan. They pulled back their speed. For some reason they were having control problems. The first officer said “Theres something screwy here”. The pilots decided to return to elmira, but their transmissions werent going through. No one on the ground knew that flight 40 was in trouble. In the cockpit the captain exclaimed “weve lost all control we dont have anything” as they struggled to turn their plane back towards elmira.
By 2:46 pm the captain was no longer trying to turn the plane back towards the airport. He was trying to keep it level. He then asks his first officer “what have we done to that tail surface? You have any idea” To which the first officer replied with “I dont know I just cant figure it out”, but their attempts were in vain, the plane started to dive the speed of the plane increased from 224 knots to 315 knots. In the cockpit the captain said “ive gone out of control” that was the last thing recorded on the Cockpit voice recorder. At new york center, by the third sweep of the radar screen the blip that represented flight 40 was nowhere to be found. ATC re routed a piper aztec to the last known position of flight 40. The pilot of the aztec radioed in a burning wreck of a plane. It was flight 40. Unfortunately none of the 34 people onboard survived.

People in the town of Mansfield Pennsylvania saw the plane go down. Those eye witness testimonies gave the investigators the first clues to unlocking what happened to flight 40. They saw a plane that was flying lower than other planes in the area and at first it was flying level. But then they saw smoke coming out of the plane, from the back. The witnesses couldnt agree on the color of the smoke. Some said it was grey some said it was black and some said it was brown, almost rust colored. But the eyewitness testimonies pointed to one culprit. An inflight fire.

A look at the wreckage corroborated what the eye witnesses had said