page_title: Southern Airways Flight 242
section_title: Flight
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Airways Flight 242 / Flight
caption_attribution_description: Miami 1977. N1335U, Crashed New Hope, Georgia in April 1977. Clint Groves.
context_page_description: Southern Airways Flight 242 was a DC-9-31 jet, registered N1335U, that executed a forced landing on a highway in New Hope, Paulding County, Georgia, United States, after suffering hail damage and losing thrust on both engines in a severe thunderstorm on April 4, 1977.
  At the time of the accident, the Southern Airways aircraft was flying from Northwest Alabama Regional Airport to Atlanta Municipal Airport. Sixty-three people on the aircraft and nine people on the ground died; 20 passengers survived, as well as the two flight attendants.
context_section_description: The flight crew consisted of Captain William W. "Bill" McKenzie, aged 54, a highly experienced pilot with 19,380 flight hours (including 3,205 hours on the DC-9), and first officer Lyman W. Keele Jr, aged 34, who had 3,878 flight hours, with 235 of them on the DC-9. The crew was advised of the presence of embedded thunderstorms and possible tornadoes along their general route prior to their departure from Huntsville, but they were not subsequently told that the cells had since formed a squall line. The flight crew had flown through that same area from Atlanta earlier in the day, encountering only mild turbulence and light rain.
  The weather system had greatly intensified in the meantime. The peak convective activity was later shown on ground radar to be near Rome, Georgia, to which the flight was cleared to proceed by air traffic control. The crew attempted to pick out a path through the cells using their on-board weather radar display, but they were apparently misled by the radar's attenuation effect, and they proceeded toward what they believed was a low-intensity area, when in fact it was the peak convective activity point, attenuated by rain.
  As the aircraft descended from its cruising altitude of 17,000 to 14,000 ft (5,200 to 4,300 m) near Rome VOR, it apparently entered a thunderstorm cell and encountered a massive amount of rain and hail. The hail was so intense that it broke the aircraft's windshield, and because of the ingestion of both water and hail, both Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7A engines were damaged and underwent flameout.
  The crew attempted unsuccessfully to restart the engines, gliding down unpowered, while simultaneously trying to find an emergency landing field within range. Air traffic control suggested Dobbins Air Force Base, about 20 mi (32 km) east, as a possible landing site, but it was beyond reach. Cartersville Airport, a general-aviation airport about 15 miles (24 km) north with a much shorter runway intended for light aircraft was considered, but it was behind the aircraft and now out of reach. Before the aircraft turned toward Dobbins, the closest airport was another general-aviation airport, Cornelius Moore Airport (now Polk County Airport – Cornelius Moore Field), but the air traffic controllers did not know about it (it was just outside their area of responsibility and not shown on their screens), and it was not considered.
  As the aircraft ran out of altitude and options, gliding with a broken windshield and no engine power, the crew made visual contact with the ground and spotted a straight section of a rural highway below. They executed an unpowered forced landing on that road, but during the rollout, the aircraft collided with a gas station/convenience store and other buildings. The pilots and 61 passengers were killed by impact forces and fire, but 20 of the passengers survived, as well as both flight attendants. Nine people on the ground were also killed, including a family of seven.  Among the passengers killed was rhythm and blues singer Annette Snell.
caption: N1335U, the aircraft involved in the accident, at Miami International Airport
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