Patsy Cline Plane Crash 1963 Story

As a pilot myself who’s been flying for almost 35 yrs i can’t wrap my head around patsy’s pilots thought process. Here he has three passengers trusting his judgement and he elects to go ahead and take off from an airport reporting a cloud ceiling of 500 ft overcast at night as an non instrument rated pilot. My only surprise is how far he made it. What a scary and horrific few seconds of life all on board experienced as they slammed into the ground at 175 mph. WTF !!!

It's too bad that inexperienced pilots don't learn lessons from previous plane crashes. This crash was eerily similar to the Buddy Holly crash 4 years earlier. Bad weather, low visibility, 3 music stars and one pilot who is not instrument rated, decide to take off into oblivion rather than stay the night. Pilot gets disoriented and flies them all into the ground. It's good to learn lessons from other people's tragic failures.

A year ago I drove from Rockford IL to Camden, TN (505 miles) to visit this crash site. I sat there on a bench for an hour thinking about about that event. It was a surreal moment. Thank you Mr. Narrator guy for a more detailed occurrence of this tragedy. It means a lot.

Randy Hughes was flying the plane that day, and he was told not to fly because of the weather. Well, of course he didn't listen. The plane clipped some trees and crashed with no survivors. It's sad but a lot of plane crashes could have been avoided if the pilot had only listened.

To make the tragedy even worse, a few days later, Jack Anglin, half of the longtime duo Johnnie and Jack, died in a car wreck on the way to the memorial service. I remember hearing that story several years ago.

Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, Rick Nelson and sadly the list seems endless. So many talented artists were lost to small planes and the skies. RIP

Thank you for your wonderful yet terribly sad video. I was fortunate enough to meet and know both Patsy's mother, Hilda Hensley, and Patsy's 2nd husband, Charlie Dick. It's still so amazing of what she accomplished in such a relatively short period of time... May God bless her, her family, friends, and fans always... 🙏❤ 😇

My dad flew a Piper Comanche. I went with him many times as a young child. He swore is was one of his favorite planes, being well built and reliable. As a pilot, he never took any risk. I still appreciate that about him.

Nobody was in a hurry, but the pilot needed to prove to himself that he could make it . Four people, including himself, died a terrifying death . These kinds of stories always make me feel sad and morbid .

I'm not in to country music but I can listen to Patsy all day long her voice was Beautiful in it's self. Love you Patsy. Hope to meet you on the other side.

This is a great video. Thank you for this. I was too young to remember Patsy Cline growing up in her hometown. But as a resident of Winchester Va. My family owned businesses and Patsy and her mother were frequent customers to their store. She put our area on the map and this was another tragic loss. Ironically her daughter and I share the same birth date and Patsy's grave site is also right next to my mother's.

In ground school I learned about attitudes that affect pilots. I think once someone gets a couple hundred hours, give or take the one attitude that kills people is over confident or "it won't happen to me". Spacial disorientation can happen to ever the most experienced pilots but what separates them is a trust in their instruments and letting go of their feel of the aircraft or their middle ear response. Spacial disorientation kills a lot of folks just like the Bryant helicopter crash. Folks if your gonna fly and there is a risk of IMC, either don't fly or get IFR training and learn to fly by instruments. Your body is not designed to fly and your inner ear will trick you. Acceleration in IMC will feel like a pitch up even if your pitching down. I think we should train GA pilots better even VFR pilots so these kind of accidents don't happen. Maybe go through an IFR type of training so pilots will be aware if in the event of an IMC condition, at least they have an understanding of what to do. Too many crashes due to spacial disorientation. The biggest killers are this, stall spin and CFIT. Time to get control of this in GA and put a stop to it by training. FAA you listening?

I remember the day of the crash well, it was in all the news. The visual depiction of Cornelia Fort (M88) is very realistic, how it looks today, but was quite different back then. I began flying lessons there in 1966. Runway 4/22 was a 2400’ long, dirt strip and very muddy after a rainfall. The runway lights then were a single row of lights to the west of the runway with 2 green lights to mark the runway ends. Very difficult to land at at night though I did it successfully for many years. It was also very rural with none of the surrounding area being lit, also being prone to fog at night from the Cumberland River. Impossible if there was any weather such as low clouds. The site where Opryland sits now was a swampy river bottom back then during the winter and cornfields in the summer with no highways anywhere. The field also 300’ lower in elevation than BNA which truly made landing there look like a “black hole.” Very fond memories of working there at Colemill through my high school and college years. P.S. The asphalt runway you see now was added around 1971 and was 2800’ long then if I remember correctly; but it didn’t make it any easier to land on at a night!

Having run into a terrible storm upon taking off from Dyersburg airport at approximately the same time of day. I think I can say without doubt that they were flying totally blind in the high winds and heavy rain. They were undoubtedly frightened into complete neurological shutdown. They didn't feel a thing! I will always consider Patsy the best.

It’s no wonder Elvis Presley’s mom was terrified for him to fly back then. I’m glad Elvis rode a train. Elvis flew for years till a plane engine problem encouraged Elvis to buy his own plane. He knew if anything was going to be wrong with his plane it would be something he had more control over. The only problem Elvis ever had with his plane was ice on a runway one time as they landed in Memphis.

I'm a longtime flight simmer (Flight Sim X, Steam Edition). I read the NTSB report on this crash and then simulated the flight with the same weather and time conditions. The closet plane I had was a 4-place Mooney. I flew the route VFR as well (although I know how to fly IFR, but used no GPS assistance at all). Scud running below the clouds and darkening skies, I also lost sight of the horizon except I kept my eye on the Artificial Horizon and the Altitude indicator to avoid spatial disorientation. Wondering where I was I looked up from my instruments just long enough to attempt to see any sign of the horizon, caught a glimpse of treetops coming right at me and pulled up just in time and just missed them. I climbed again and skimmed along just under the ceiling of the clouds until I caught sight of a city and found an airport which turned out to be Benton Co. Airport south of Camden, landed there and said to myself, "screw this", taxied to a stop and stopped the simulation. I found myself literally shaking after that SIMULATED flight!

Back when the Patsy Cline movie came out I had only been flying for a couple of years. In the movie, it showed the engine shutting off and after a loss of altitude, it started again. Of course, the pilot was pleased with himself and did not take any evasive action to regain the lost altitude. At that point, I leaned over to my girl friend that flew all the time with me and said that I would be in the tightest climbing turn possible but I didn't get a chance to finish what I was saying because in the movie it showed the aircraft coming out of the clouds and crashing into a mountain. It was many years later when I heard how the airplane really crashed.

Excellent presentation. Such a senseless tragedy. 😢

I know the guy she sent home to be with family. He's 99 years old, still has the jacket he wore when he played in her band (wore it to his grandson's wedding a few years ago) and is 99 and it bothers him to this very day...and he's still a member of the Grand Ole Opry and not doing well and will soon see her and his band mates again...

I am no longer a young man. By now I can agree with the statement : "youth is wasted on the young" .