On this day in 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 was working a scheduled service from Anchorage to Seattle with stops in southeast Alaska. The aircraft was a Boeing 727-100, registered N2969G, built in 1966. On the leg into Juneau, on approach, it struck a mountainside in the Chilkat Range, in Haines Borough, about eighteen miles west of the airport.
One hundred and four passengers and seven crew were aboard. All of them died. The investigation found that erroneous navigation readouts led the crew to descend too soon; no definitive cause for the misleading data was ever established.
It was the first fatal jet accident in Alaska Airlines' history, and at the time the deadliest single-aircraft accident in the United States. A short flight on a routine timetable, into an airport many of those aboard knew well. I will leave the day there.
Thank you for the care here, Harold. Accidents of this kind in those years led to ground-proximity warning equipment being required on US airliners by 1974, a small instrument that has since called out to a great many crews in time.
Harold, thank you for setting it down plainly. The approach into Juneau runs through a narrow channel with mountains close on both sides, and the weather there can shut in within minutes; navigators who worked that route treated every reading as something to check twice. One hundred and eleven people were aboard, and none came home.