19-02-2025
Locals mark 70 years since TWA flight that killed 16 in Sandia Mountains
Feb. 18—Longtime resident Linda Higgins remembers growing up on Hyder Avenue in Southeast Albuquerque, where hearing planes take off nearby at the former Albuquerque Municipal Airport was commonplace.
But Feb. 19, 1955, was different, she said.
That morning, when Higgins was just 5 years old, the family heard a loud noise and went outside, where they saw a plane flying low.
"I remember my mom saying how unusual it was ... and then we heard the crash," Higgins, 75, said.
Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 260, carrying 13 passengers and three crew members bound for Santa Fe, crashed minutes after takeoff in the Sandia Mountains, killing everyone on board, including four Albuquerque residents and one from Socorro. The official cause of the crash remains unsolved.
The anniversary comes amid new aviation disasters that have garnered national attention. On Monday, a Delta Air Lines flight from Minnesota crashed on a runway in Toronto and flipped upside down; happily, all 80 passengers survived. On Jan. 31, a medical jet crashed shortly after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, killing seven and injuring dozens on the ground. And on Jan. 29, an American Airlines flight from Kansas collided with a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., killing 67 people between the two aircraft. That was the first fatal commercial airline crash in 16 years in the U.S.
Wednesday is the 70th anniversary of the TWA tragedy in Albuquerque, and some local residents, including Higgins, marked the occasion by listening to a presentation on Sunday at the Albuquerque Museum. The event was preceded by a hike up to Domingo Baca Canyon (also known as "TWA Canyon"), where the wreckage remains with a memorial plaque.
Terry Owen, who has hiked to the TWA 260 crash site many times, told attendees during his presentation that there may be a life lesson that can be learned from the crash.
"Maybe think about being kind to others because you don't know where you are going to be in 15 minutes," Owen said, referencing the approximate duration of the TWA flight.
The flight, search and findings
TWA Flight 260, a Martin 4-0-4 prop plane, took off just after 7 a.m. with Capt. Ivan Spong and First Officer Jesse James Creason Jr. piloting the flight amid heavy clouds around the Sandias.
Spong and Creason headed east toward the mountain range, a deviation from their intended course, which would have flown the plane immediately west of the airport before heading northeast to Santa Fe, according to Owen.
Around 7:12 a.m., the plane's terrain warning bell sounded, and Spong spotted the sheer cliffside off of the right wing through the clouds, according to Owen. Spong took evasive action and rolled the plane to the left and pulled the nose up, Owen said.
But it was no use. At 7:13 a.m., TWA Flight 260's left wing struck the cliffside at 230 mph, Owen said.
After a two-day search involving hundreds of people and numerous entities, the first bit of wreckage, the plane's tail section, was spotted by a private air deliveryman, according to Owen, citing archive reports from the Journal.
The Civil Aeronautics Board rejected navigation equipment error or failure in its initial report and erroneously blamed Spong for the crash. Later, Spong was cleared of wrongdoing, and the CAB amended its report to say the crash was "unsolved" and the flight path deviation was "unknown" after another TWA pilot, J.L. Decelles, re-investigated the incident.
Higgins, whose father participated in the search efforts, took her 10-year-old grandson to hear Owen's presentation at the museum.
"To lose so many lives and to have it happen so quickly, it shows how quickly things can change," Higgins said. "When we think our lives are bad, but we see the tragedy that happens to other people, we appreciate our own lives."
Memorial hike
Members from several search and rescue entities, including the Mountain Rescue Council, carried an American flag representing one of the 16 victims in the crash. There was a short ceremony at the site where the flags were placed in the litter before members carried them down the mountain.
Duke Pignott, vice president of the council, said the group thought about the morning of the crash when they got up to the site of the wreckage.
"I think it became quite personal for all of us," Pignott said. "I think we all felt a closeness to those victims and their families, and it was an honor to recognize them 70 years later."
