The sea was practically calm with waves about 1-1/2feet high moving from a northerly direction with a period of about five seconds. The condition of the bodies and wreckage all fit too-- the plane ends up in tiny pieces (basically whatever floats). The Board obtained search assistance from the United States Navy. OP, thank you for your work on this, especially noting the numerous sources you cited. She contacted his work--they knew nothing. In Autumn 1960, while in jail, Spears agreed to a taped interview with reporter Ed Barker. Current weather reports and forecasts showed both destination and alternates to be and to remain above the approved minimums. She told them all about her missing husband and his missing pink Plymouth, which sparked a nationwide search. At 0014, while between Crab and NL1, the flight received the 0600 New Orleans weather from National Flight968, which was: "M700 overcast; 2-1/2 miles visibility; very light drizzle; fog; temperature 54; dewpoint 52; wind northeast 3; altimeter 30.14; ceiling ragged; obstruction lights out of service; see NOTAMS.". 2918.5'N, Long. According to Junior, Taylor was carrying over $600 in cash--a lot of money at the time, especially for a man in serious debt. Note that the whereabouts of DB Cooper on these dates is unaccounted for. And who was he? He moved to California and took up hypnotism, his business was with a doctor performing abortions (which were then illegal in the U.S.). All 42 onboard were presumed killed in the accident.The flight originated in Miami at 10:22 PM the previous evening, landed at Tampa at 11:00 PM . Thats another good one if youre not already familiar with it. Early that morning, they spotted something: a small amount of debris, a large oil slick, and several floating bodies. - January 6, 1960, a DC-6B en route from New York to Miami was destroyed by a bomb near Bolivia, North Carolina, killing all 34 on board. 8839'W on March 11, 1960, but the XN3 TV camera revealed it to be marine wreckage. Planes, especially larger passenger ones, were still fairly new back then-- they were still figuring out the kinks. By all accounts, he was in financial difficulties, and had many debts. Tampa Police Detective John C. Daniels was among those who did not buy the hypnosis theory: Taylor was in debt over his head. The mafia? That's where the stories of him driving and Taylor flying, Taylor needing to carry the dynamite, and Taylor accidentally or purposefully igniting it all come from just stories from a guy who was trying not to get accidentally blamed from a plane crash he didn't plan or commit. WOW! arrow_forward Literature guides Concept explainers Writing guide Popular textbooks Popular high school textbooks Popular Q&A Business Accounting Economics Finance Leadership Management Marketing Operations Management Engineering Bioengineering Chemical Engineering Civil Engineering Computer Engineering Computer Science Electrical Engineering . Round-trip. Submissions should outline a mystery and provide a link to a more detailed review of the case such as a Wiki article or news report. James L. Sigman, executive officer of the Coast Guard station at New Orleans, said the plane might have exploded when it struck the water. I was completely drawn in. Seven minutes later, National Airlines flight 2511, which had been carrying 29 passengers and 5 crew members, crashed into a field in Brunswick County. Three days before the crash, (the day Spears had arrived in Tampa) Taylor and Spears were seen together enjoying a lavish meal in the Hillsboro Hotel. Note the use of the word accident, which is used throughout the report. and Long. The cultures of National and Pan Am also proved to be incompatible, making workforce integration difficult. In the weeks after the crash, the mystery of Flight 967 deepened. He added that New Orleans had instrument meteorological conditions, and indicated that the crew had planned to use this method on the approach until the plane was below the low ceiling. Logan points out that much of the public demonization of Spears resulted from the fact that he performed abortions--something that is viewed very differently in todays political discourse. Save your money with discount and promotions and find the best deals on Trip.com! Select the responses you agree with. Or was it all a freak accident? Taylor? Spears had a long history of crime, having been arrested 17 times under 14 different aliases. Summary 185 Max talks about columnist Martha Lunken's flight under a bridge, which led to the revocation of her certificates. All 42 on board were presumed killed in the incident. The flight originated in Miami at 1022 PM the p Shortly thereafter a Coast Guard helicopter arrived. As for the insurance policy taken out by Taylor, Spears said: Taylor was sort of a nut on insurance. In one letter, Spears urged Taylor not to use his real name in future communications, but to refer to him as F. 967. 2912.3'N, Long. Long read, but totally worth it! Analysis of this accident must rest almost entirely on circumstantial evidence for the aircraft's wreckage still lies on the bottom of the Gulf. The BITTERN obtained four separate bottom contacts at Lat. We have been unable to find any such relationship. DC-7 Cockpit - From the display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. She later determined that Taylors brown jacket was missing from his apartment, though everything else seemed untouched, just as if he had stepped out to buy a newspaper. A reporter happened to be in her home at the time. As he was leaving the courthouse after his first hearing, he was observed to be whistling. He also had convictions for drunk driving and drug possession. He reported a "smooth flight" and unlimited visibility, but said he could see a solid overcast of fog ahead. See if your flight has been delayed or cancelled and track the live position on a map. At its height, National Airlines had a network of "Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast" flights, linking Florida and the Gulf Coast with cities along the East Coast and large . In this case, the plane likely suffered the same fate. On January 6, 1960 (less than two months after Flight 967) Frank was on board a National Airlines flight which was blown up by dynamite over North Carolina, resulting in 34 deaths. November 5 After suffering an in-flight engine fire, the second North American X-15 (AF 56-6671), piloted by Scott Crossfield, breaks its Back making an emergency landing on Rosamond Dry Lake, California. The aircraft had been called into service on short notice when the normal aircraft used for the evening . Searching continued through November23. But where had he been? I cant believe I dont remember the name but the one where the guy hijacked the plane and parachuted out over Washington state? They even raise the possibility that the two con-men may have been plotting something together. An oil slick estimated to be a mile long and possibly 400yards in width ran in a north-south direction. Spears had a long history of crime, having been arrested 17 times under 14 different aliases. Science Earth Science Question 5 Should national parks be preserved? * Boeing 747-135 A Spirit Airlines flight from Dallas to Orlando was diverted to an airport in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, March 2, 2023, after a battery from a passenger's item caught fire in an overhead bin . Add hotel. It is preliminary and is based on the facts as they are known at this time. Incredible write-up! On November 16, 1959, an airplane vanished over the Gulf of Mexico, with 42 people onboard. Meanwhile she campaigned in the courts to have him declared legally dead (which would give her son access to the life insurance money). For weeks Dr Spears was mourned along with the rest of the victims. Track American Airlines (AA) #967 flight from Austin-Bergstrom Intl to Dallas-Fort Worth Intl. With this information, Mrs Taylor's lawyer called the Tampa police department and the newspapers. Flight status, tracking, and historical data for N967WN 02-Mar-2023 (KPVD-KDCA) including scheduled, estimated, and actual departure and arrival times. 2004. Contact Us. National Airlines Flight 967, registration N4891C, was a Douglas DC7B aircraft that disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico en route from Tampa, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana on November 16, 1959. Our global headquarters is situated in Orlando FL, with several operational hubs across the globe in Buffalo NY, Chicago IL, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Madrid, Dubai, Djibouti, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. AA967 Flight Tracker - Track the real-time flight status of American Airlines AA 967 live using the FlightStats Global Flight Tracker. I've never heard of this and I love aviation mysteries. But even then there would be no point in destroying the plane or himself. For 3-1/2 to 4minutes the flight continued on a normal track of approximately 296 degrees magnetic. National Airlines Flight 967 took off from Tampa (TPA) at 23:32 for a flight to New Orleans (MSY) at FL140. The Flightpath. Some twelve to fifteen minutes later a Coast Guard aircraft arrived and dropped smoke markers. Police seriously looked into the possibility that Al Taylor may still be alive, even working with Mexican law enforcement to explore the possibility that he had fled south of the border. Mrs Taylor? The next morning (November 14), Taylor and Spears were together again--Taylors son Junior saw them drinking and laughing in Spearss hotel room, in a celebratory mood. At this time the flight also contacted New Orleans company radio confirming the ATC clearance and reporting the weather to be CAVU with low solid (undercast) to the WNW. The Civil Aeronautics Board investigated the cause of the crash. Fri, 26 May 23. . Subsequent investigation has failed to reveal the use of any marine signal flash or pyrotechnic, which might have had a somewhat similar appearance, at the time and place. Length approx. Rescuers went out in aircraft and boats, arriving before dawn and still combing the cold, rough seas as the sun came up. Suicide by a passenger holding large life insurance policies was the probable cause. Questions also surround the third man involved in all this--William Turska, the naturopath who Spears went to stay with in the immediate aftermath of the crash. +6 It's possible it was not a direct flight, and the next leg would have been from NO to Dallas. He planned to intimidate the witness in that case somehow with a bomb (not to kill her but to intimidate her). I was kind of expecting to hear Spears was somehow involved in JFK's assassination. Dr Spears (who was calling himself Dr Rhodes) had tried to file down the numbers on the cars registration numbers and had even used dynamite to damage the car's crankcase. Alan C. Logan is among those who dismiss this second story as fiction. Low stratus and fog in the area from Mobile to New Orleans and at the New Orleans terminal would have caused the destination to be below limits at the estimated time of arrival. Several months later, on November 7, 1960, a commercial organization was engaged to conduct a one-month search using techniques proven effective in prospecting for underwater oil structures. In spite of this string of suspicious details, the airplane was still missing, therefore there was no hope of charging Spears with anything relating to the crash. National Airlines Flight967, a DC-7B, N4891C, crashed in the Gulf of Mexico while en route from Tampa, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana, on .mw-parser-output .nowrap,.mw-parser-output .nowrap a:before,.mw-parser-output .nowrap .selflink:before{white-space:nowrap}November 16, 1959, about 0055c.s.t. One or two airlines only recently started offering direct flights to Tampa. Without an aircraft, this was no easy task. This position was determined by VOR bearings taken from 14,000feet altitude. Boeing 747-400BCF National Airlines N702CA Scale 1/400 XX4975. We appreciate you trying our new Live Surface Map feature. NH967 (All Nippon Airways) - Live flight status, scheduled flights, flight arrival and departure times, flight tracks and playback, flight route and airport The world's most popular flight tracker. According to this new story, in November 1959 Spears was extremely worried about the upcoming abortion trial in Los Angeles. The FBI discovered there was much more to the kindly old Dr Spears than met the eye. Spears died in Baylor Medical Center, Dallas on May 2, 1969 of coronary thrombosis. Track National Aeronautics and Space Administration #967 flight from Chennault Intl to Houston Ellington Flugstatus, Tracking und Flugverlaufsdaten fr National Aeronautics and Space Administration 967 (NASA967) 02.03.2023 (KCWF-KEFD) mit geplanten, geschtzten und tatschlichen Start- und Landezeiten Many sonar contacts were obtained by both ships but all were evaluated as marine life. FBI National Academy. [citation needed], Spears was eventually arrested in Phoenix after being turned in by the ex-wife a fellow naturopath in Arizona. Crew qualifications and experience were amply high in all respects and an investigation disclosed no irregularity in this connection. Best write up Ive ever read. Logan asks a number of questions--whether Taylor could have planned a murder-suicide without Spearss knowledge, whether Taylor boarded the flight at all, whether the last-minute insurance policy was an intentional red herring to throw off investigators and utterly confuse everyone? The U.S.S. I can understand him taking out an insurance policy. Upon his arrest in Arizona, the FBI charged him with transporting a stolen vehicle beyond state lines. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Posts about National Airlines Flight 967 written by The Flightpath. Of all the prison terms he served, he never had a single infraction of violence. There was no radio message of impending trouble. These charts have been preserved for possible future use. Investigators were divided on whether the aircraft broke apart on impact with the water, or exploded in the air before it went down. All 42 on board were presumed killed in the accident. This indicated to him that the explosion took place after the plane hit the water. National Airlines Flight 967 Part 01.PDF PDF document, 25,417 kB (26,027,901 bytes) Photographs depicted Dr Spears as a plump, jovial man--in a checkered suit and round spectacles, he embodied the image of a kindly family physician. and then hurry away, accidentally forgetting your luggage. Explosive decompression makes a plane crash look like the plane was blown up with a large bomb, but minus any larger pieces of wreckage as well as explosive residue proving it. November 16 - National Airlines Flight 967, a Douglas DC-7B, crashes into the Gulf of Mexico while on a flight from Tampa, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana, in a possible case of sabotage; all 40 on board perish. 2910'N, and Long. Yet as Logan points out, the crate of dynamite found on Turskas property was actually purchased in Tucson, and Spears had no way of getting into Tuscon from Turska's compound unless Turska himself drove him. Flight status, tracking, and historical data for National Aeronautics and Space Administration 967 (NASA967) 01-Mar-2023 (KEFD-KVCT) including scheduled, estimated, and actual departure and arrival times. Except for the land areas and coastal waters from Mobile westward, skies were virtually clear and visibility excellent. As it turned out, William Turska was not a model citizen himself. Comprehensive flight tracking to enhance your FBO operations and increase sales. Great write up! One passenger, William Taylor, had boarded the flight using a ticket issued to Robert Vernon Spears, a convicted criminal working at the time as a naturopath. Curiously, Al Taylor had recently been reported missing. The cause was suspected to have been an attempted case of Insurance fraud; . Robert Vernon Spears, a nationally known naturopathic doctor from . In fact, he had vanished on November 16, 1959 - the very same day that airplane went down in the Gulf. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. He did not log the incident. She ultimately succeeded, and her son Junior received an undisclosed settlement. He had actually been hiding out with an old associate named William Turska (also a naturopath), in Turskas remote bungalow in the desert 40 miles from Phoenix, Arizona. The aircraft was then spiralled over the spot down to an altitude of 500feet through a stratus deck with a base of approximately 800 feet, and tops of 1,200 to 1,400feet. In 1954 before this case, England lost several planes to it within months of each other, thanks to metal fatigue causing the decompressions. Turska claimed that once he found out about the plane crash fiasco, he immediately told Spears to leave, and then went straight to see his attorney. Great post! Taylor, investigators discovered, was wanted in Washington DC and Philadephlia under a variety of assumed names at the time of his disappearance. EVERETT ENGERSOL, Evergreen Park, Illinois, PEDRO MARCO, arrived in Miami from Havana, A. VINAS, Havana and Loma Linda, California, The REV. Logan says Taylors ex-wife was media-savvy--and points out that she had a potential financial motive to portray Taylor as an unwitting passenger on that flight. Despite these strange details, Mrs Taylor stuck to her story--her ex-husband had been hypnotized. The unplanned water landing caught everyone . It revealed that Al Taylor had bought a $37,500 life insurance policy-- in Tampa airport--at 12:16 am, just nine minutes before Flight 967 departed. Debt collectors got involved--suddenly "every repo man in America" was looking for a pink Plymouth. Over the course of their long friendship, Spears and Taylor had worked together on confidence schemes throughout the USA. Pensacola replied by delivering a clearance to Flight967, which stipulated that it was cleared from NL1 direct to the MSY (New Orleans) omni via the 116-degree radial, and to descend and maintain 6,000feet at the pilot's discretion. His wife, who had recently given birth to twins, even collected a partial payout from his $120,000 life insurance policy. Clearly in shock, she turned to the reporter and said: "What can I say? DL967 Flight Tracker - Track the real-time flight status of Delta Air Lines DL 967 live using the FlightStats Global Flight Tracker. She had never liked Spears. It was founded in 1934 as a Florida-based airline. At the time of his disappearance, Al Taylor lived in Tampa and worked as a salesman for the Pioneer Tire Company. National Airlines Flight 967, a DC-7B on a flight from Tampa, Florida to New Orleans, crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. National Airlines Flight 967, registration N4891C, was a Douglas DC-7B aircraft that disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico en route from Tampa, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana, on November 16, 1959. National Airlines Flight 967, registration N4891C, was a Douglas DC-7B aircraft which disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico en route from Tampa, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana on November 16, 1959. Mrs Spears replied that she had not. He said he had persuaded Al Taylor to take the dynamite on the airplane by promising to pay him $10,000 to do it. It has been claimed that Dr Spears tried to access a vial of cyanide before his sentencing--but some have disputed this. 65 years old at the time of the crash, he had been the national secretary of the National Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the head of the Texas Naturopath Association. The car belonged to a man named Al Taylor, a longtime friend of Dr Spears, who had been the best man at his wedding. The crew consisted of Captain William R. Broocke (age 54), employed by National Airlines since 1946, who had qualified to fly the DC-10 in 1972 and accumulated 21,853 flight hours in his career with 801 hours on the DC-10; First Officer Edward H. Saunders (33), employed by National Airlines since 1965, with 7,086 flight hours of which 445 hours were on the DC-10; and Flight . It was a starlit night, and good weather conditions were reported all along the route. Flight status, tracking, and historical data for American Airlines 967 (AA967/AAL967) including scheduled, estimated, and actual departure and arrival times. 02:55. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. . We work hard to keep our advertising relevant and unobtrusive to create a great experience. Delta Air Lines was scheduled to operate the flight between New Orleans, and its next stop, Dallas, TX, where American Airlines was to take over and operate the same aircraft from Dallas nonstop to Los Angeles. - February 11, 1952, a DC-6 crashed near Newark Airport, killing 29 out of 63 people on board. The combination of the auto theft charge and his existing abortion charge eventually got him ten years in prison. Texas International walked away from their foiled attempt with a multi-million dollar stock profit and was poised for Lorenzo's next venturesa startup airline in the high-density East coast corridor (New York Air), and subsequent acquisition of Continental Airlines. -, Press J to jump to the feed. November 10 of 1958, National became the first airline to introduce domestic jet service in the United States, with a flight between Miami 's international airport and Idlewild International Airport in New York. Sun 4/2. All employment decisions are made without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, disability, military leave or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law. Ronald Reagan National Airport. [Some context here: In the 50s, life insurance vending machines were commonplace in airports.