Southern Storm cover art

Southern Storm

The Tragedy of Flight 242

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Southern Storm

By: Samme Chittum
Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
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About this listen

On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard.

The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying 81 passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope, breaking apart and killing bystanders on the ground before coming to rest in Hurst's front yard.

Ultimately, only 22 people survived, and urgent questions immediately arose: What caused the pilots to fly into the storm instead of away from it? Could the crash have been prevented? Southern Storm addresses these issues and more, offering an insider's look at this disaster and the systemic overhauls that followed it.

©2018 Samme Chittum (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Engineering Aviation Air Force

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All stars
Most relevant
Amazing story and well laid out amazing courage from some people in this disaster and well read

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