PBIA Has Been Spared Fatal Crash
We’ve often pointed out — while tossing salt over our shoulder — that there’s never been a fatal commercial air accident at Palm Beach International Airport.
It’s a trick statistic of sorts. The first commercial flight ever from PBIA (then Morrison Field), on Dec. 19, 1936, crashed en route to Newark, N.J., but remarkably, no one died. And a 1980 gambling junket from PBIA to the Bahamas dropped into the ocean, killing 34 people.
Now longtime reader and occasional inquirer Wayne Miner of Belle Glade asks about two military planes that crashed in 1956 at or near PBIA while it was operating as Palm Beach Air Force Base.
We wrote about the incidents in October 2000. Let’s revisit.
The base operated during World War II as Morrison Field and was reactivated as the Palm Beach Air Force Base when the Korean conflict broke out.
A Stratofreighter crashed and exploded on Feb. 21, 1956, killing all five aboard. Then, on Aug. 21, a giant C-124 slammed into a nursery 3 miles southeast of the base, killing three aboard; three others were hurt but walked away.
In the 2000 column, Steve Giddens of North Palm Beach recalled one of the two crashes:
“I was a child at the time, but will never forget the pictures the Post ran. The prop plane crashed into Belvedere Homes. One front page picture showed the pilot, who ended up in the kitchen of one of the homes. If I’m not mistaken, on the stove. It was very graphic, and for a child, terrifying. I shall never forget it.”
Tags: airports
