When TWA Flight 6963 Crashed While Trying to Find a Dark Airport

On Saturday, December 28, 1946, a Lockheed Constellation airliner, known as the Cairo Skychief, was beginning the landing sequence at Shannon Airport on the western coast of Ireland. It was 2 o’clock in the morning so, naturally, it was dark. But it was also quite cloudy with low ceilings, fog and light rain – the visibility of the crew was restricted quite a bit. But this crew was experienced and the airport, despite being relatively new, was well known amongst international aircrews, as it was – and is – used regularly for both westbound and eastbound Transatlantic air traffic. Its location puts it in line with most direct flights to and from Canada and the United States.

Yet oddly, as the crew was given clearance to land by the Shannon control tower and the plane turned toward the runway, the lights of the airport went dark. As the pilot struggled to compute this unprecedented turn of events, the left wingtip struck the ground. The aircraft then quickly crashed and caught fire.

Like so many other aircraft accidents that are featured here on Radar Contact Lost, the weather at the time of the crash played a key role, yet it was not the sole cause – or even the primary cause of the crash. It would take months for investigators to understand what happened, but when the accident report was completed and made public, and the primary cause of the crash was revealed, it became clear that there was something much more significant than the weather that caused this crash. Of all the aviation accidents we’ve looked at on this podcast, we’ve never had a primary cause of an aviation accident like this one.