, registration NC28394, was a
Douglas DC-3 aircraft that crashed while preparing to land at
Candler Field (now
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ) in
Atlanta, Georgia , on
February 26 ,
1941 . Sixteen of the 25 on board were killed. Among the injured was
Eddie Rickenbacker ,
World War I hero and (at the time) president of Eastern Air Lines.
Flight 21 departed .
Investigators with the
Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the predecessor of the
NTSB , determined from the evidence at the site and the survivors' testimony that the aircraft had first struck the tops of three small pine trees while the aircraft was flying in a northerly direction. The lowest tree was struck at an elevation of 915 feet above sea level. Flight 21 then apparently continued across a small valley in the same direction in level flight for about 1500 feet before the right wing tip struck the top of a
Poplar and the aircraft crashed into a thick grove of pine trees. Captain Rickenbacker testified that he first felt a slight bump. At that point, he jumped from his seat and started to move toward the rear of the aircraft, but the aircraft crashed and he was thrown from his feet.
At the time of the accident, it was standard practice for each pilot to have two altimeters; one set to 29.92 inches of mercury and referred to during en route flight, and one used for instrument approaches and set to the altimeter setting of the airport the aircraft was about to land at. In this case, the captain's en route altimeter was set at 29.92 inches of mercury, but his instrument approach altimeter was set at 30.33 inches of mercury. The altimeter setting at Candler Field on the morning of February 26 was 28.94; this setting had been transmitted to the aircraft by Eastern Air Lines's company operator at 11:38 PM, but the captain's altimeter had not been set properly.
The CAB issued the following statement as to probable cause:
On the basis of the foregoing findings and the entire record available to us at this time, we find that the probable cause of the accident to NC 28394 (Eastern Air Lines Trip 21) on February 26, 1941, was the failure of the captain in charge of the flight to exercise the proper degree of care by not checking his altimeters to determine whether both were correctly set and properly functioning before commencing his landing approach. A substantial contributing factor was the absence of an established uniform cockpit procedure on Eastern Air Lines by which both the captain and pilot are required to make a complete check of the controls and instruments during landing operations.
