Braniff International Airways Flight 250

1966 aviation accident

Braniff International Airways Flight 250 crashed near Falls City, Nebraska, on August 6, 1966, en route to Omaha from Kansas City, Missouri. Thirty eight passengers and four crew members were killed in the crash, which occurred in a farm field late on a Saturday night. In flight structural failure due to extreme turbulence in an avoidable weather hazard was cited as the cause.

The aircraft was a BAC 1 11 203AE, registration It was manufactured by British Aircraft Corporation in December 1965.

The cockpit crew consisted of Captain Donald Pauly, 47, and First Officer James Hilliker, 39. Captain Pauly was highly experienced with 20,767 flying hours, 549 of which were in the BAC 1 11. He possessed type ratings in other aircraft including the DC 3, DC 6, DC 7, and the Convair family. First Officer Hilliker was less experienced, with 9,269 flying hours, 685 in the BAC 1 11. According to the NTSB report, he had two type ratings in the BAC 1 11 and the Convair family.

(All times Central Standard Time (UTC–6); Daylight time was used only in Minnesota along the flight's route until 1967.) Flight 250 was operated by Braniff between New Orleans and Minneapolis with stops in between at Shreveport, Fort Smith, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Omaha. it occurred in southeast Nebraska in Richardson County on a farm, about 7 mile (11 km) north northeast of Falls City, in a soybean field only 500 feet (152 m) from a farmhouse. The farm owner and his family were returning home in an automobile at the time of impact (23:12), and were about a half mile (0.8 km) away. Dr. Fujita is recognized as the discoverer of downbursts and microbursts and also developed the Fujita scale, which differentiates tornado intensity and links tornado damage with wind speed. Notably, the accident was the first with a U. S. registered aircraft in which a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was used to aid in the investigation. Just before the breakup, the device recorded Captain Pauly instructing First Officer Hilliker to adjust the engine power settings. He was interrupted mid sentence by buffeting so severe that no more dialog could be discerned on the recording, which continued even after the wings and tail separated from the aircraft. Since the flight data recorder (FDR) was destroyed in the crash, the changes in the buffeting sound would later be used to estimate the airplane's changes in speed and altitude during the accident sequence.

At its fortieth anniversary in 2006, a memorial was placed at the crash site. A fiftieth anniversary memorial event, planned by the county's historical society, was attended by a hundred in 2016. The U. S. television drama Mad Men referenced this accident briefly in the season 5 episode "Signal 30". In the series, client Mohawk Airlines also operated the BAC 1 11.