What the evidence establishes
CLAIM 01CAB attributed Flight 320’s premature descent to crew preoccupation that displaced essential instrument monitoring.
Scope: East River approach to LaGuardia Airport, New York City · 1959-02-03 – 1959-02-03
Assessment: SUPPORTEDFinal cause supports this attribution. The board rejected the large dual-altimeter error described by survivors, while retaining multiple contributors.
What is not established: Attributed CAB finding, not independent fault adjudication. Crew testimony differed; smaller calibration/setting errors and other contributors remain in the report.
CLAIM 02American Airlines Flight 320 crashed in the East River on February 5, 1959.
Scope: East River approach to LaGuardia Airport, New York City · 1959-02-05 – 1959-02-05
Assessment: REFUTEDThe society article says February 5; CAB’s opening identifies the accident as February 3.
What is not established: Other Electra accidents in the article are outside this story; no correction history inferred.
CLAIM 03American Airlines Flight 320 crashed in the East River on February 3, 1969.
Scope: East River approach to LaGuardia Airport, New York City · 1969-02-03 – 1969-02-03
Assessment: REFUTEDThe transcription header’s 1969 conflicts with its own synopsis and the original report’s 1959 date.
What is not established: No formal correction or revision-history mechanism established.
Limits and open questions
Attributed CAB finding, not independent fault adjudication. Crew testimony differed; smaller calibration/setting errors and other contributors remain in the report.
Other Electra accidents in the article are outside this story; no correction history inferred.
No formal correction or revision-history mechanism established.
Crew-testimony dispute is preserved; no independent engineering or later adopted superseding finding established.
Federal archive PDF yielded no extracted text; an indexed original-report copy supplies the findings.