The Day the Music Died

What a famous crash says about flying then and now

         About 75 miles west of Nashville, off a small road that winds through the Tennessee hill country, there’s a small parking area from which a path leads down a rather steep hill into a wooded ravine. At the end of the path there’s large boulder on which the names of Patsy Cline, Hankshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and Randy Hughes are inscribed. At this place, on March 5, 1963, all four were killed in the crash of N7000P, a 1960 Comanche 250—perhaps the most famous crash involving a Comanche, the same type of plane that I fly.
          Cline’s death shocked the music world. She was already a huge star, with a string of hits that included “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces,” and “She’s Got You,” and was bound to go on to bigger things. As it came just four years after the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper, there was much speculation—Why would Cline get into a small aircraft in the first place? Was the pilot qualified? Was the plane airworthy? How safe are such planes?

            In retrospect, given the way most celebrities travel today in private Gulfstreams or chartered jets, the idea of a major star travelling by single-engine plane seems almost ludicrous. But much about this tragedy says as much about the times in which it occurred as the circumstances surrounding it.

            The late '50s and early '60s were a time of great optimism in general aviation. Between 1956 and 1963, the number of private pilots in the United States grew from 96,864 to 152,209. Bonanza, Cessna, Piper and a host of other manufacturers vied for what seemed a boundless market. A total of 6,750 new general aviation aircraft were delivered in 1962. Compare this to a total of 1,525 aircraft delivered in 2016 (a number that includes business jets; and of which only 718 were piston-powered planes). Among those catching the flying bug from that era were a number of celebrities. A few, such as Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor and Gene Autry, learned to fly in World War II. Many others, stars, including George Kennedy, Cliff Robertson and Clint Eastwood took it up on their own. 

Commemorative stone at crash site

             Flying too was very different than today. GPS navigation wouldn’t be available for another 30 years. The Victor airway system had been commissioned only 10 years earlier, in 1952. Most pilots were strictly VFR, navigating by dead-reckoning or by a combination of pilotage and VORs. Aeronautical charts still marked commercial AM radio stations that could be tuned using ADFs (which allowed pilots to both navigate and keep up with ball games). Transponders were not yet standard equipment and few aircraft had distance measuring equipment (DME). Most weather briefings were conducted in person at one of hundreds of on-field Flight Service Stations located around the country. The system of VFR flight following was not yet established, and many pilots avoided interaction with air traffic control unless absolutely necessary, simply filing a flight plan as a basic precaution.

            Ramsey Dorris Hughes, also known as Randy, was a Nashville musician, close friend and manager to Patsy Cline. A relatively new pilot, he received his license in May 1962. Soon after, he bought N7000P, a green and yellow 1960 Comanche 250, the same year and model plane my father bought new in 1960, distinctive with its garish paint scheme featuring wide stripes along the fuselage and an odd-looking widget shape decorating the tail (my dad’s was plane was blue and yellow).

            Built at a time when airplane manufacturers were promising “an airplane in every garage,” Piper’s first all-metal single seemed designed to put automobile drivers at ease with idea of flying. It’s interior had the look and feel of a sedan; the airspeed indicator was marked in miles per hour rather than the unfamiliar knots; and the owner’s manual was ridiculously thin, excluding topics that might turn away prospective pilots—like emergency procedures. The standard package for the 1960 Comanche did not come with VOR receiver, but N7000P had an upgraded package, which included the Narco Omnigator Mk. II, a reliable, but by today’s standards a bulky and awkward piece of equipment to use.

            Hughes’s primary instructor was a man named George Mummert, a well-known and respected instructor in Nashville who also gave lessons to singer Jim Reeves, who ironically died in a plane crash a year after the Cline crash. Though the two crashes led some to speculate about the quality of his instruction, Mummert was considered a stern taskmasker and stickler for doing things right.

            Hughes was an active pilot. Between May and the March 1963, according to the Civil Aeronautics Board report, he logged a total of 117 hours in the plane. Some of those flights were for business, flying Cline to distant shows in San Antonio or in Iowa. On other occasions, he’d fly his client to Pensacola for a day at the beach for some much-needed R&R. Cline did not seem a nervous passenger. If anything, having been in a serious automobile accident in 1961, she seemed more at ease in the air than on the highway.

            Of Hughes’s 160 total hours at the time of the crash, he had logged only three at night, presumably all during his primary training. Also, he did not have an instrument rating, nor had he logged any hours in pursuit of it.

            Not long after the hit “I Fall to Pieces” made the pop charts, Cline agreed to a hastily arranged series of shows in Kansas City on March 3. With back-to-back shows in New Orleans and Birmingham the days before the Kansas City gig, the only way she could make the show in time was to travel in the Comanche, according to the biography Honky Tonk Angel (1993). The weather was typical for that time of year, cold and blustery. Upon arriving at the former Kansas City Fairfax Municipal Airport, Cline complained about the cold sitting in the rear seat of the plane (something to which a lot of Comanche passengers can attest).

            After the shows, Cline was eager to get home.  She had come down with the flu, and her husband was taking care of their young children, one of whom was sick. The next morning, however, the airport, which lay in a bend of the Missouri River, was fogged in. Another musician couple offered Cline a ride home in their station wagon, but she turned them down, perhaps figuring the weather would soon lift. It didn’t, which forced Cline, Hughes and musicians Hankshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas (Hughes father-in-law) to spend an extra night in a nearby motel.

            The next day the weather was only marginally better. A front had moved through, creating a line of showers and storms along the flight path home. The straight-line distance between Kansas City and Nashville is 417 nautical miles, or about a three-hour flight—easily within the range of the Comanche with its 60-gallon tanks. But low clouds grounded all planes. Hughes shuttled between the motel and the airport for updates on the weather.

            By noon, the ceilings had lifted a bit and the temperature rose to 43 degrees. Hughes made his decision. The four checked out of the motel at 12:30 p.m. and headed to the field. Airport owner Eddie Fisher later recalled that Hughes seemed “level-headed” despite Fisher’s warnings about the weather. Hughes assured Fisher, saying, “If I can’t handle it I’ll come back and fly west or go someplace else.”  The four climbed aboard, with Cline sitting in the rear seat behind the pilot, and took off at about 1:30 p.m.

            Instead of turning on course to the east, however, Hughes headed due south, most likely trying to work his way around the weather, and perhaps following the local highways (Interstate 49 had yet to be built). He flew across Missouri and into Arkansas, landing in Rogers, about an hour’s flight, where he reportedly checked the weather again and took on fuel. Little Rock, about 130 nautical miles to the southeast, was reporting rain and sleet.

            Hughes filed no flight plan, so his exact route cannot be known, but given the weather, he likely had to dodge clouds and precipitation flying under the overcast. He next landed in Dyersburg, Tennessee, about 230 nautical miles to the east, at about 5:15 p.m., a flight of a little over an hour and one-half. While Cline and the other passengers ducked into an on-field restaurant, Hughes checked in on the Flight Service Station.

            A briefer told Hughes that continued flight was not recommended. Visibility was down to five miles in a mixture of rain and light snow, with winds of 20 knots, gusting to 31 knots and heavy turbulence. Conditions were marginal at best, and the low visibility and overcast would obscure obstructions such as hills and radio towers. The weather in Nashville, an hour away, was below VFR minimums and was likely to deteriorate further before any improvement.

            Hughes asked what time the sun set (about 5:45 p.m.), and was told that the overcast would make it darker much sooner. Hughes was not night current, and thus not legal to carry passengers at night.

            Hughes then left the station and went to the restaurant to tell the others. There was a brief debate, but by all accounts it was clear that Cline really wanted to get home. Hughes called his wife in Nashville to ask her about the weather conditions there. She told him that it had been raining and stormy all day, but the rain had stopped, “and it looked as if it were trying to clear up,” she later recalled. Hughes may have misunderstood this to mean the weather had cleared up or interpreted it to mean the weather was clearing up. Whatever the case, he told the others to get ready to leave, then went to pay for the 27 gallons of fuel he took on.

            Airport manager William Braese told investigators he urged Hughes to stay over, that the weather for a non-instrument rated pilot was not good, especially for a flight at night, over a rural area with no lights. He even offered to loan Hughes his car to drive to Nashville and that he would fly his plane back the next day. But Hughes was undeterred.

            Crash investigators often refer to “tunnel vision,” a mental state in which a pilot becomes so fixated on a goal that all other information is blocked out. Hughes, facing the pressure to get his prized client home after all the delays getting out of Kansas City, and after the stress of scud-running his way across the Midwest that afternoon, might have been suffering from such a state. When interviewed by the Civil Aeronautics Board, Braese said everyone appeared exhausted, including Hughes.

            Just before take off, Hughes asked for another weather observation. He then took off into the dusk at 6:07 p.m. About 20 minutes later, according to the investigation report, a witness near Camden, Tennessee, heard the sounds of an aircraft flying low. He then observed the plane as it descended out of the low overcast at an estimated 45-degree nose-down angle. He then heard the sound of a dull crash.

            The debris was strewn across a path 166 feet long and 130 feet wide. The engine was buried in a four-foot crater. The violence of the impact left nothing intact. Plane, contents and occupants were scattered in pieces. News of the crash quickly spread. After the bodies were removed, looters descended onto the scene, taking away clothing, jewelry, pieces of musical instruments, parts of the plane. On YouTube, there’s a video of a reporter interviewing a local man who recalls the crash and then proudly displays one of the plane’s control yokes.

            Investigators found nothing to indicate anything was wrong with the plane. The engine was developing normal power at the time of the crash. The board concluded that the “non-instrument pilot attempted visual flight in adverse conditions, resulting in loss of control” and blamed the “judgment of the pilot in initiating flight in the existing conditions.”

Hawkins' guitar strap

            On one level, the circumstances of this crash are an old story, a story about poor weather, pressure to get home and pilot hubris. Time has shown that there’s really nothing to prevent someone from going up in a small aircraft and killing himself. Like Hughes, my father never got his instrument rating, but my father was cautious to a fault. I remember being stuck for days waiting out the weather—in Douglas, Arizona, in Hermosillo, Mexico, in St. Louis and in San Diego. There were times we eventually boarded an airliner to get where we wanted to go and my father would ferry the plane home another time. One truism about flying small aircraft that hasn't changed over time is that if you absolutely have to be somewhere, take the airlines.

            But things have gotten better. Technology that improves our situational awareness and reduces workload—GPS, onboard weather, cheaper and more reliable autopilots—together with improved training and procedures—the requirement of transponders in controlled airspace, the availability of ATC flight following, for example, along with an industry-wide emphasis on safety (partly the result of the liability crisis of 20 years ago) have all made flying safer, The numbers bear this out. In 1963, the accident rate per 100,000 flying hours was 31. In 2009, that number dropped to 7.2. That isn’t to say Randy Hughes would not have crashed had these tools been available to him, just that he might have had a better chance not to, in which case Patsy Cline might still be singing today.