{"id":19022288,"date":"2026-09-01T21:04:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T19:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/southern-airways-242-dc-9-highway-landing-new-hope-1977\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T08:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:42:17","slug":"southern-airways-242-dc-9-atterraggio-su-strada-a-new-hope-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/southern-airways-242-dc-9-highway-landing-new-hope-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Airways 242: il DC-9 atterrato su un&#039;autostrada"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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It had a hole punched through the windshield by hail. It was descending through 4,000 feet over rural Georgia with nothing on the charts within reach, and the only runway left in the world was a two-lane road called Georgia State Route 381.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:18px;line-height:1.8\"><li><strong>Flight:<\/strong> Southern Airways Flight 242, Muscle Shoals to Atlanta via Huntsville<\/li><li><strong>Date:<\/strong> 4 April 1977<\/li><li><strong>Aircraft:<\/strong> Douglas DC-9-31, registration N1335U<\/li><li><strong>What happened:<\/strong> Both Pratt &amp; Whitney JT8D-7A engines destroyed by water and hail ingestion<\/li><li><strong>Landing site:<\/strong> Georgia State Route 381, New Hope, Paulding County, Georgia<\/li><li><strong>Toll:<\/strong> 63 of the 85 people aboard and nine on the ground died; counts vary slightly by source<\/li><li><strong>Distinction:<\/strong> Still the deadliest aviation accident in the state of Georgia<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The storm they could not see<\/h2>\r\n<p>The crew had flown the same stretch of sky earlier that day and met nothing worse than light rain. In the hours since, the weather had gone from scattered cells to one of the worst systems on record for the region &mdash; a system that would eventually spawn 20 tornadoes and 30 severe thunderstorms.<\/p>\r\n<p>Nobody told them. They had been warned of embedded thunderstorms before leaving Huntsville, but not that the cells had merged into a squall line. So Captain Bill McKenzie and Keele did what crews did: they read their onboard radar and looked for a gap.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=274161656  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/southern-airways-dc-9-airliner-1970s.jpg\" alt=\"A Southern Airways DC-9 in 1970s colours\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Southern Airways flew the DC-9 across the American South. Flight 242 was a routine 4 April hop from Huntsville to Atlanta. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>The gap was not a gap. Heavy rain nearer the aircraft was absorbing the radar energy and painting the ferocious cell behind it as calm &mdash; the effect known as attenuation. On the tape the captain sounds unconvinced right up to the moment they commit.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not showing a hole; see it?&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Captain Bill McKenzie<\/strong> &mdash; Cockpit voice recorder, 4:03:57 pm, moments before Flight 242 entered the cell<\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Ninety seconds that ended both engines<\/h2>\r\n<p>Descending from 17,000 to 14,000 feet near the Rome VOR, the DC-9 flew into hail so violent it broke the windshield. Both JT8D engines swallowed water and ice, stalled, suffered serious internal damage and flamed out. The electrical power failed for 36 seconds, came back, then failed again for over two minutes.<\/p>\r\n<p>The crew's exchanges compress from procedure into something rawer. &ldquo;Left engine won&rsquo;t spool.&rdquo; Then, seconds later, the other one. Then: &ldquo;Stand by &mdash; we lost both engines.&rdquo;<\/p>\r\n<p>Nothing in the DC-9 flight manual told them what to do next. Until that afternoon, no airliner had ever had both engines put out by a thunderstorm. The possibility was considered too remote to write a procedure for.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dmLgyqsvSA4\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Thirty-two and a half miles<\/h2>\r\n<p>What the two pilots did next deserves to be remembered independently of how it ended. From 14,000 feet the DC-9's theoretical maximum glide was about 34 miles. McKenzie and Keele coaxed roughly 32.5 miles out of it, hand-flying an aircraft neither had ever been trained to fly as a glider, while working restarts and talking to controllers.<\/p>\r\n<p>Atlanta offered Dobbins Air Force Base, 20 miles east. Too far. Cartersville, 15 miles north, had a 3,200-foot runway meant for light aircraft &mdash; and it was behind them. A third field, Cornelius Moore, sat closer still, but it lay outside the controllers' airspace and never appeared on their screens.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1348979161  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/southern-airways-douglas-dc-9-n3313l.jpg\" alt=\"A Southern Airways Douglas DC-9\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">With both engines destroyed, the crew glided roughly 32.5 miles &mdash; close to the DC-9&rsquo;s theoretical maximum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>So they picked a road. The aircraft touched down on Route 381 and slid roughly 1,830 feet before its wing struck a combined grocery store and gas station. It swerved, broke up and burned.<\/p>\r\n<p>Sixty-three people aboard died, both pilots among them. Nine people on the ground were killed, including a family of seven. The rhythm and blues singer Annette Snell was among the passengers lost. Twenty-two people walked out of it, including both flight attendants.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The dissent that got it right<\/h2>\r\n<p>The NTSB's official probable cause named the mechanism: the &ldquo;total and unique loss of thrust from both engines while the aircraft was penetrating an area of severe thunderstorms,&rdquo; caused by ingesting massive amounts of water and hail.<\/p>\r\n<p>One board member thought that explained nothing at all.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;This accident involves the captain&rsquo;s critical decision to penetrate rather than avoid a known area of severe weather. It is obvious that the captain flew a route or directed the FO to fly a route into an area which aircraft should not have entered.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Francis McAdams<\/strong> &mdash; NTSB Board member, dissenting from the majority probable cause<\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>McAdams argued the majority had described what happened rather than why. His view has largely won. The lasting lessons of Flight 242 are about weather radar attenuation, about the gap between a forecast at departure and the sky an hour later, and about the fact that airborne radar shows you rain, not danger.<\/p>\r\n<p>Modern crews get datalink weather, ground-based composite radar and dispatch updates in flight. All of it exists because of afternoons like this one.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9ISV3gQEx5I\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\n\n\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What happened to Southern Airways Flight 242?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">On 4 April 1977 the Douglas DC-9-31 flying Southern Airways 242 from Huntsville to Atlanta penetrated a severe thunderstorm. Hail broke the windshield and both engines ingested massive amounts of water and hail, suffered serious internal damage and flamed out. The crew glided the aircraft onto Georgia State Route 381 at New Hope.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did both engines fail on Southern Airways 242?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The aircraft flew into an intense thunderstorm cell while descending from 17,000 to 14,000 feet near the Rome VOR. Both Pratt and Whitney JT8D-7A engines swallowed water and hail, which caused severe compressor stalling and major internal damage. Until that afternoon no airliner had ever had both engines put out by a thunderstorm.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did the crew fly into the storm?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">They were misled by their own radar. Heavy rain nearer the aircraft absorbed the radar energy and painted the ferocious cell behind it as calm, an effect known as attenuation. The crew had been warned of embedded thunderstorms before departure but were never told the cells had merged into a squall line.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How far did the DC-9 glide without engines?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">From 14,000 feet the DC-9 theoretical maximum glide was about 34 miles. Captain Bill McKenzie and First Officer Lyman Keele coaxed roughly 32.5 miles out of it, hand-flying an aircraft neither had been trained to fly as a glider while working restarts and talking to controllers. No runway was within reach.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many people died on Southern Airways 242?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Sixty-three of the 85 people aboard were killed, including both pilots, and nine people on the ground died, among them a family of seven. Twenty-two people survived, including both flight attendants. It remains the deadliest aviation accident to occur in the state of Georgia.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did the NTSB conclude about Flight 242?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The board named the total and unique loss of thrust from both engines while penetrating severe thunderstorms. Board member Francis McAdams dissented, arguing that described what happened rather than why, and pointed instead to the captain decision to penetrate rather than avoid a known area of severe weather. His view has largely prevailed.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What happened to Southern Airways Flight 242?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"On 4 April 1977 the Douglas DC-9-31 flying Southern Airways 242 from Huntsville to Atlanta penetrated a severe thunderstorm. Hail broke the windshield and both engines ingested massive amounts of water and hail, suffered serious internal damage and flamed out. The crew glided the aircraft onto Georgia State Route 381 at New Hope.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why did both engines fail on Southern Airways 242?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The aircraft flew into an intense thunderstorm cell while descending from 17,000 to 14,000 feet near the Rome VOR. Both Pratt and Whitney JT8D-7A engines swallowed water and hail, which caused severe compressor stalling and major internal damage. Until that afternoon no airliner had ever had both engines put out by a thunderstorm.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why did the crew fly into the storm?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"They were misled by their own radar. Heavy rain nearer the aircraft absorbed the radar energy and painted the ferocious cell behind it as calm, an effect known as attenuation. The crew had been warned of embedded thunderstorms before departure but were never told the cells had merged into a squall line.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How far did the DC-9 glide without engines?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"From 14,000 feet the DC-9 theoretical maximum glide was about 34 miles. Captain Bill McKenzie and First Officer Lyman Keele coaxed roughly 32.5 miles out of it, hand-flying an aircraft neither had been trained to fly as a glider while working restarts and talking to controllers. No runway was within reach.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many people died on Southern Airways 242?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Sixty-three of the 85 people aboard were killed, including both pilots, and nine people on the ground died, among them a family of seven. Twenty-two people survived, including both flight attendants. It remains the deadliest aviation accident to occur in the state of Georgia.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What did the NTSB conclude about Flight 242?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The board named the total and unique loss of thrust from both engines while penetrating severe thunderstorms. Board member Francis McAdams dissented, arguing that described what happened rather than why, and pointed instead to the captain decision to penetrate rather than avoid a known area of severe weather. His view has largely prevailed.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: NTSB final report, Wikipedia, Tailstrike CVR archive, AOPA, and Smithsonian Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/kegworth-air-disaster-1989-british-midland-737-wrong-engine\/\">Kegworth: The Crew That Shut Down the Wrong Engine<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/1956-grand-canyon-mid-air-collision-faa\/\">The 1956 Grand Canyon Collision That Created the FAA<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share this story At 4:17 in the afternoon on 4 April 1977, a first officer named Lyman Keele said nine words into a cockpit voice recorder that would be played back for decades afterwards. &ldquo;Bill, you&rsquo;ve got to find me a highway.&rdquo; His DC-9 had no engines. It had a hole punched through the windshield [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":19021866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,666],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19022288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-history-and-legends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Southern Airways 242: The DC-9 That Landed on a Highway | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hail killed both engines of Southern Airways 242 in 1977. The crew glided 32 miles and put the DC-9 on a Georgia road. 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