TWA Flight 1

Transcontinental and Western Airways Flight 1 (TWA 1), a Douglas DC-2, crashed into Cheat Mountain, near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, approximately 10:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on April 7, 1936, killing 12 of the 14 passengers and crew aboard. Flight 1 was a regularly scheduled TWA Sun Racer flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, with almost a dozen intermediate stops between. Approaching the flight's second stop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Allegheny County Airport, pilot Otto Ferguson lost contact with the airport's radio navigation signal, and tracked several miles in a southwestern line off course. Fearing icing conditions, he descended in an attempt to find visual landmarks for navigation. Thick fog hindered him, and his descent continued until Flight 1 hit ice-covered trees atop Cheat Mountain, about 40 miles (64 km) south of Pittsburgh on the West Virginia line and near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. When the plane crashed it was aiming in a northern flight direction indicating that the pilot finally realized he had tracked south of his flightplan and may have been trying to correct it. (The flight should have been aimed due west not north or hours prior south-southwest.)

The plane's two pilots were killed instantly, as were several passengers. Flight attendant Nellie Granger, though injured in the crash, got help for the surviving passengers by following nearby telephone wires to a home, where she called for help. Though one of the survivors later died of his injuries, Granger was hailed as a hero for her efforts to help them despite her own injuries.