PITTSBURGH, PA – On a clear late summer evening, USAir Flight 427 began its approach into Pittsburgh. Shortly after 7 p.m., the 127 passengers and five crew members on board were less than 10 minutes away from landing after a quick flight from Chicago.
Captain Peter Germano and First Officer Charles Emmett were bantering pleasantly about the weather. The plane suddenly yawed to the left and began to spiral downward.
What happened next was horrifying. A transcript of the cockpit flight recorder captured the terror of the two men as they desperately attempted to keep the jetliner in the air.
Germano: “Hang on.”
Emmett: “Oh (expletive).
Germano: “Hang on What the hell is this…what the…”
Emmett: “Oh.”
Germano: “Oh God! Oh God…427 emergency!”
Emmett: (Scream)
Germano: “Pull!”
Emmett: “Oh…”
Germano: “Pull! Pull!”
Emmett: “God…”
Germano: (Screaming).
Emmett: “No!”
In 23 seconds, USAir Flight 427 plummeted 6,000 feet and was traveling 300 mph when it crashed nose-first into a wooded hillside near the Green Garden Plaza in Hopewell, just a few miles from the airport. All 132 people on board died instantly.
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The crash scene was gruesome. The severity of the impact fragmented most of the bodies, so respondes and investigators had to don biohazard suits at the site; more than 2,000 body bags were used for the 6,000 recovered human remains.
“The force of the crash, people who viewed the scene said, had left the victims unrecognizable, with limbs hanging from trees or left in blood-smeared patches up to 200 yards from the point of impact, The New York Times reported at the time. “Everyone who had been to the crash scene Thursday night or this morning was ordered to get hepatitis shots in case they had come in contact with contaminated blood.”
The plane’s fatal plunge took less than 30 seconds, but the National Transportation Safety Board took five years to determine the cause of the crash. Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, blamed the crash on pilot error.
But in 1999, the NTSB concluded that the accident’s probable cause was a rudder issue that resulted in the crew losing control of the aircraft. The rudder is used to make the plane rotate on its vertical axis.
Survivors of the victims formed a group, the Flight 427 Air Disaster Support League, which advocated for increased airline safety and held annual picnics for years. A quarter of a century after the crash, the organization appears to be inactive; its website hasn’t been updated since 2012.
Today, the crash site is owned by the Pine Creek Land Trust and no one is permitted on it except land trust members and victims’ family members who have cards allowing them to access the property.
A photo on the air disaster support league website shows idyllic greenery long cleared of the wreckage A monument offers this simple tribute to the victims:
“This site is dedicated to the fond and loving memory of the 132 passengers and crew on USAir Flight 427, which crashed here at 7:03 p.m. on September 8, 1994.”