Flight 90 Crashes into Potomac: 78 Dead in Icy Disaster

Air Florida Flight 90 sat on the runway at Washington National Airport for forty-nine minutes while ground crews attempted to de-ice the Boeing 737. The delay was not long enough. When the plane finally lifted off at 3:59 p.m. on January 13, 1982, during one of the worst snowstorms to hit Washington in years, ice on the wings and engine sensors had already compromised the aircraft beyond recovery. The pilots knew something was wrong almost immediately. The first officer mentioned the abnormal engine readings during the takeoff roll, and the cockpit voice recorder captured his increasingly urgent warnings. But the captain continued the takeoff. The 737 climbed sluggishly, stalled, and struck the 14th Street Bridge spanning the Potomac River at rush hour. The plane sheared the tops off seven vehicles on the bridge, killing four motorists, before plunging through the ice into the frozen river. Of the seventy-nine passengers and crew on board, seventy-four died on impact or drowned in the frigid water. Five survivors clung to wreckage in the icy Potomac as a U.S. Park Police helicopter rushed to the scene. The rescue produced one of the most indelible images of the decade: Arland Williams, a passenger later identified as a balding man in his mid-forties, repeatedly passed the helicopter's lifeline to other survivors instead of taking it himself. By the time rescuers returned for him, he had slipped beneath the surface. The 14th Street Bridge was later renamed in his honor. Bystander Lenny Skutnik dove into the frozen river to pull passenger Priscilla Tirado to safety after she lost her grip on the helicopter line, an act of courage that earned him a seat next to the First Lady at the State of the Union address two weeks later. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on the crew's failure to properly de-ice and their decision to take off with ice contamination. The disaster led to sweeping changes in airline de-icing procedures and pilot training for cold-weather operations, reforms that have prevented a similar accident in American commercial aviation since.