48°43′N 2°22′E / 48.72°N 2.37°E / 48.72; 2.37

Air France Flight 007

An Air France Boeing 707-328 similar to the one involved
Accident
Date	3 June 1962
Summary	Rejected takeoff due to mechanical failure
Site	Orly Airport, Paris, France
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 707-328
Aircraft name	Chateau de Sully
Operator	Air France
Registration	F-BHSM
Flight origin	Paris-Orly Airport, Paris, France
1st stopover	Idlewild Airport, New York City, United States
2nd stopover	Atlanta Municipal Airport, Atlanta, United States
Destination	Houston Municipal Airport, Houston, United States
Occupants	132
Passengers	122
Crew	10
Fatalities	130
Injuries	2
Survivors	2

Air France Flight 007 crashed on 3 June 1962 while on take-off from Orly Airport. The only survivors of the disaster were two flight attendants; the other eight crew members, and all 122 passengers on board the Boeing 707, were killed. The crash was at the time the worst single-aircraft disaster and the deadliest crash involving a Boeing 707. It was also the first single civilian jet airliner disaster with more than 100 deaths.

Accident

According to witnesses, during the takeoff roll on runway 8, the nose of Flight 007 lifted off the runway, but the main landing gear remained on the ground. Though the aircraft had already exceeded the maximum speed at which the takeoff could be safely aborted within the remaining runway length, the flight crew had no other choice and attempted to abort the take off.

With less than 3,000 feet (910 m) of runway remaining, the pilots used wheel brakes and reverse thrust to attempt to stop the 707. They braked so hard, they destroyed the main landing gear tires and wheels, but the aircraft ran off the end of the runway. They plowed into the town of Villeneuve-le-Roi. The left undercarriage failed and a fire broke out from the fuselage. Three flight attendants initially survived the disaster. Two attendants survived, but the third died in the hospital. At the time, it was the world's worst air disaster involving one aircraft. This death toll would be surpassed over 3.5 years later, when in February 1966, All Nippon Airways Flight 60 crashed into Tokyo Bay for reasons unknown, killing all 133 people.

Later investigation found indications that a motor driving the elevator trim may have failed, leaving pilot Captain Roland Hoche and First Officer Jacques Pitoiset unable to complete rotation and liftoff.^[1]

Impact on Atlanta, Georgia

The Atlanta Art Association had sponsored a month-long tour of the art treasures of Europe, and 106^[2] of the passengers were art patrons heading home to Atlanta on this charter flight. The tour group included many of Atlanta's cultural and civic leaders. Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr. went to Orly to inspect the crash site where so many Atlantans perished.^[3]

During their visit to Paris, the Atlanta arts patrons had seen Whistler's Mother at the Louvre.^[4] In late 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent Whistler's Mother to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street.^[5]

The crash occurred during the civil rights movement in the United States. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte announced cancellation of a sit-in in downtown Atlanta (a protest of the city's racial segregation) as a conciliatory gesture to the grieving city. However, Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, speaking in Los Angeles, expressed joy over the deaths of the all-white group from Atlanta, saying

I would like to announce a very beautiful thing that has happened...I got a wire from God today...well, all right, somebody came and told me that he really had answered our prayers over in France. He dropped an airplane out of the sky with over 120 white people on it because the Muslims believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But thanks to God, or Jehovah, or Allah, we will continue to pray, and we hope that every day another plane falls out of the sky.

These remarks led Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty to denounce him as a "fiend" and Dr. King to voice disagreement with his statement. Malcolm later remarked, "The Messenger should have done more." This incident was the first in which Malcolm X gained widespread national attention.^[6] Malcolm later explained what he meant: "When that plane crashed in France with a 130 white people on it and we learned that 120 of them were from the state of Georgia, the state where my own grandfather was a slave in, well to me it couldn't have been anything but an act of God, a blessing from God (...)"^[7]

Atlanta's Center Stage (a theatre now primarily used as a music venue) was built as a memorial to Helen Lee Cartledge, a victim of the plane crash. It was almost entirely funded by her mother Frania Lee, heiress to the Hunt Oil fortune. The theatre opened in 1966.

The Woodruff Arts Center, originally called the Memorial Arts Center and one of the United States' largest, was founded in 1968 in memory of those who died in the crash.^[8] The loss to the city was a catalyst for the arts in Atlanta, helped create this memorial to the victims, and led to the creation of the Atlanta Arts Alliance. The French government donated a Rodin sculpture, The Shade, to the High Museum of Art in memory of the victims of the crash.^[9]

Ann Uhry Abrams, the author of Explosion at Orly: The True Account of the Disaster that Transformed Atlanta, described the incident as "Atlanta's version of September 11 in that the impact on the city in 1962 was comparable to New York of September 11."^[2]

One of the victims of the flight was artist Douglas Davis Jr., known for his astonishing portraits of singer Edith Piaf that can be seen on album covers late in her career. Davis had a studio in Paris and he returned to Atlanta at the urging of his friends who were part of the Atlanta Arts patrons on board the flight. Douglas's father was Douglas Davis Sr., an accomplished air racer, who died after crashing his plane at the National Air Races in September 1934. His son was about the same age as his father when he died in the Air France 707 Boeing crash.

In art and popular culture

Andy Warhol painted his first "disaster painting", 129 Die in Jet!,^[10] based on the 4 June 1962 cover of New York Daily Mirror, the day after the crash. At that time, the death count was 129.^[11] The two known paintings are one in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, and one in a private collection.

Jack Kerouac mentions the disaster in the opening chapters of "Satori in Paris", 1966.

Flight number

Air France continues to use the flight number AF7 today (with AFR007 as the ICAO flight number and callsign). However, the flight number is used on the trip back to France, from New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport. The forward trip is now Flight 6, terminating in New York.^[12] The airline operates Boeing 777 aircraft on the route; until June 2020, Boeing 777 and Airbus A380 aircraft were used interchangeably.