Hit the Beach

With heavy weather across the land this week, airlines were in deep trouble.

American Airlines confidently thought that Pilot John E. Boothe could push his scheduled DC-3 flight through from New York to Los Angeles. He got in & out of Baltimore all right, but Washington was shrouded in swirling snow. Refused permission to land, Boothe took his 13 passengers in search of an open airfield. By the time he got back to Baltimore, that was closed. Philadelphia soon shut down. So did New York. Boothe thought of trying Westover, Mass.

But by then he was running out of gas. Droning low over the south shore of Long Island, fearful that he would have to ditch in the Atlantic, Boothe saw a white strip beneath him. He had only five minutes' gas supply left when he leveled off over the deserted sands of Jones Beach, made a belly landing. He and the copilot were cut and shaken up; no one else was hurt, but the ship was wrecked. G.C.A. (see above) might have saved that one.

Not so fortunate were the crew and passengers of a charter plane flying from Miami to Newark the same night. Trying for an emergency landing in southern New Jersey, Pilot Robert Sheker could not see the field, crashed in a patch of woods. Three were killed, 19 hurt.

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