Talk:United Airlines Flight 718

September 15, 2006 edit
I hope nobody minds the changes I've made to this article. I made the changes because there were some details in the articles (and in the references themselves) that didn't agree with the evidence in the CAB report or with subsequent events.


 * The Painted Desert line of position was referred to as a "checkpoint". It wasn't a point but a line 175 miles long. The fact that the pilots used a long line and not a checkpoint as a reference was one direct cause of the accident; there was no way to know where along that line either aircraft was going to cross, so it wouldn't have been possible for ATC to provide separation even if ATC had been able to do so. The second flight was cleared to "1000 on top" and not 21,000 feet not because of any conflict at the Painted Desert line but because of a possible conflict further on in controlled airspace in southern Colorado.


 * The accident didn't prompt the creation of the FAA. The CAA, a predecessor organization, was created in the post-World War I era, almost 40 years before this accident took place. (This error is in one of the references, however, and is not at all the fault of the Wikipedian who wrote the story.) The reorganization of the CAA into the FAA took place over a decade after this accident and had more to do with the reorganization of NASA during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations than with this or any other specific accident. The first US aircraft accident reports were published in the 30s.


 * The accident did prompt a huge number of changes to air traffic safety, but the use of radar was only one (and some aviation historian consider it the least important of all, given the inadequate radar of the time). Arguably, more important was the ability of aircraft to talk with ATC directly at all times and to hear each other's clearances and reports over a common ATC frequency. This wasn't possible until the CAA spent the money to install repeaters in remote areas. In this case, United and TWA received their clearances over different company frequencies; if either had known that another aircraft was estimating the PD line at the same time, they might have been more situationally aware.

I wish I could clean up the tables, though, so that we didn't have one aircraft fully described and the other partially described in a table of a different format. I don't know enough about Wikipedia tables to do that.

Accessing the Accident Report
I initially had problems using the direct link to the Accident Report that was listed in the article. I was getting re-directed to a Minnesota page for unknown reasons, and the accident report was not there. If this happens to you, try this procedure:


 * First visit: http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/
 * Next, click the link that says "Historical Aircraft Accident Reports (1934-1965)"
 * Then click the "1956" link
 * Finally, choose "TRANS WORLD AIRLINES AND UNITED AIRLINES"

I suspect that an initial visit to the special collection main page is necessary first, in order to set some cookies. Once the cookies were set I could access any and all reports directly, including using the original direct link in the wikipedia article (which didn't work for me at first.) - Itsfullofstars 22:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right; how frustrating. I wish there was a way to link directly. Argh. Thanks for pointing this out. -- Charlene 08:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)