Flight Six Two Three One: The Storm King Crash
New York
On December first, nineteen seventy-four, a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing seven twenty-seven departed John F. Kennedy International Airport on a routine ferry flight to Buffalo. The aircraft encountered severe atmospheric icing over the Hudson Highlands.
With no passengers aboard but a crew of three, it went down on this hillside in the mountains west of the Hudson River, killing all on board. The crash prompted federal investigators to tighten icing-certification standards for commercial jets operating in the Northeast corridor. The site sits in the rugged terrain above the Hudson Valley that generations of pilots had come to respect for its unpredictable winter weather.
A marker here remembers the crew lost on that December night.
