On July 19, 1967, Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 collided in midair with a small Cessna over the mountains of North Carolina, killing everyone aboard both aircraft — directly above a children's summer camp at lunchtime. Join Alice and Zach as they trace how a confusing radio clearance, a controller working without radar, and a single misunderstood instruction lined up into catastrophe. Discover the safety technology this disaster helped create, and the questions one investigator was still asking nearly forty years later.

Sources:

• "Aircraft Accident Report AAR 68-AJ" – National Transportation Safety Board
• "The Crash of Piedmont Airlines Flight 22: Completing the Record of the 1967 Midair" – Paul D. Houle (McFarland & Company)
• Asheville Citizen, July 20-22, 1967
• Asheville Times, July 19-20, 1967
• Times-News (Hendersonville), July 19, 1967
• Winston-Salem Journal, July 20, 1967
• Twin-City Sentinel, July 19, 1967
• "Piedmont Flight 22 and the Midair Collision Over Hendersonville" – Legeros Fire Blog
• "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" – Robert McNamara
• The Pentagon Papers

Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: [email protected]
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Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.