That old grainy photograph – The Crash of Flight 191

I often find myself looking at old photos, not of people I know or places I’ve been, but people I don’t know and places (at least sometimes) I haven’t been. There is an aviation photo that I find myself looking at over and over again, it is an image that I find captivating but for the wrong reasons: it is such a tragic event captured on film and one that I find so hauntingly interesting. American Airlines Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight departing from O’Hare Airport in Chicago, captained by the captain. Walter Lux should have been a regular flight. Captain Lux had been flying the DC 10 since its introduction in 1971 and with 22,000 flight hours, he was one of the most experienced pilots flying with American Airlines.

As horrible as this clash was, it is not the clash itself that I find so interesting, rather, the idea of ​​the clash, that fraction of time, that fraction of a second frozen in a single frame that I find so intriguing – it is the photograph. To me, it’s a feeling that if I stare at that infamous photo taken by Michael Laughlin in 1971 long enough, I can get Captain Walter Lux along with co-pilot James Dillard fighting with the controls like true heroes, I can hear the alarms from Warning, The ground proximity warning I can see the sheer determination of both the pilot and the first officer.

Looking at this old grainy and faded photo of the accident and looking at the plane (a DC10) it’s easy to imagine the horror the passengers inside must have felt. Most (if not all) could have told that something was wrong with takeoff, hearing a loud bang as the number 1 engine (the left side) detached from the plane flew up and over the wing breaking vital hydraulic lines as it did. made. It is tremendously easy for me to imagine the noise coming from inside the plane, the sound of passengers gasping and luggage falling overhead. I can imagine loved ones holding hands as they sit, helpless strapped to their seats and strangers staring at each other in fear and disbelief. What were they thinking? What did they say? All this from a single photograph.

Unlike many other plane crashes, Flight 191 differs in that there is very little voice recorder audio in the cockpit. One word is all that is collected, “Damn it”, an air traffic controller sees what happened to American Airlines 191 and asks “… do you want to go back to which runway?” – there was no answer. It’s weird how much can be read from a single photo, or rather, how much we think can be read, but with photos like Michael Laughlins’s, the heartbreaking truth is presented to us in a basic and terrifying way. The sense of horror and the sense of “end” is so prevalent in this image that one has an almost overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Rest in peace.