Warning: Some readers may find images in this story disturbing.
It was just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1988, a sunny Wednesday morning.
Delta Flight 1141 began its takeoff roll down the runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, carrying 101 passengers on their way to Salt Lake City.
Everything seemed normal until the wheels of the speeding jet lifted off the cement.
Suddenly, the Boeing 727 began to wobble ferociously from side to side as it strained to gain altitude. Passengers thrashed around their seats as if they were on a roller coaster. The plane smacked the ground and bounced violently back into the air.
“The minute we took off the ground I knew were were going to crash,” Michelle Christensen, a 25-year-old marketing director for a Dallas real estate company, told the Star-Telegram that day. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’”
Jim Hammack was seated in an emergency exit row. “When it turned sideways and bounced two or three times, I broke into a cold sweat. I looked over and saw my business associate flopping around in the seat while the plane was bouncing. I didn’t see flames until the third bounce.”
After 22 seconds of terror, the Delta jet smashed through antennas about 1,000 feet beyond the runway 18L and slid sideways into a field on the south end of the airport, disintegrating the right wing. Erupting flames lapped the rear of the plane. The force of the impact ripped open sections of the fuselage like tissue paper.
Aug. 31, 1988: Aerial view of the Delta Flight 1141 crash at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The deceased were placed in a makeshift morgue transport truck, set up on site by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. Twelve passengers and two crew members perished.
For a moment, the cabin was silent. Smoke billowed in.
“I thought, ‘I have to get off the plane,’” Christensen told a reporter. “I made a beeline for the door. My side of the plane was on fire. When I opened the door, the flames started to come in, and everybody screamed, ‘Shut the door!’ which I did immediately.”
She saw passengers open an emergency exit on the opposite side. “We all just jumped off the plane. The field behind us was on fire.”
She was among the 68 passengers who escaped with minor or no injuries that morning. Of the 108 souls on board, 12 passengers and two flight attendants were killed, including one passenger who had escaped but reentered the burning fuselage to help his wife and others.
The crash of Delta Flight 1141 was the last major commercial accident at Dallas-Fort Worth. To some degree, it remains obscured in collective memory by the larger disaster at DFW three years earlier — the 1985 crash of Delta Flight 191, downed by a microburst during approach; 137 people died, including a motorist on Texas 114.
The horrors of that 1985 crash were on the minds of Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporters and photographers who raced to the scene of Delta 1141. By today’s tight security standards, the journalists had extraordinary access to the accident site. Star-Telegram photographers captured rescues from the burning wreckage. Reporters interviewed survivors who escaped. Their reporting filled pages and pages of the newspaper that afternoon and the days that followed.
The Aug. 31, 1988, evening edition of the Star-Telegram carried the first reports from the crash of Delta 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board would later determine that the Flight 1141 crew did not properly configure the wing flaps and slats before trying to take off, which prevented the plane from developing sufficient lift. Regulators found that the crew violated rules about non-relevant conversations in the cockpit before takeoff, which can distract from focusing on checklists.
The Star-Telegram shot scores of photos of the crash site. Some of these images published in the newspaper in 1988 but have not been seen since. Others were never published. The UT Arlington Library’s Special Collections, which stores thousands of Star-Telegram negatives, has digitized these photos for the first time.
Warning: Some readers may find images in this story disturbing.
Aug. 31, 1988: Crews remove one of the first victims of the Delta 1141 crash from the plane’s rear, which had been on fire. Twelve passengers and two flight attendants died in the disaster at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Emergency medical personnel aid three of the survivors of the Delta 1141 crash about 200 yards from the wreckage. Sixty-eight people walked away from the disaster with minor or no injuries.
Aug. 31, 1988: Firefighters inspect the damage after extinguishing the flames that destroyed Delta 1141 after it crashed during takeoff from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Paramedics rush a conscious crash victim from Delta 1141 to a rescue CareFlite helicopter while a television reporter captures the scene. The plane crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Medical workers set up a triage system, separating the injured according to the seriousness of the wounds after Delta 1141 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Injured passengers from the crash of Delta 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were taken to the nearby HEB Hospital. Of the 101 passengers, 12 died in the accident, 22 were seriously injured, 49 sustained minor injuries and 18 walked away unharmed. Two of the four flight attendants died.
Aug. 31, 1988: Investigators climb through the wreckage of Delta 1141, which crashed during takeoff from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Investigators examine the charred and melted fuselage of Delta 1141 after it crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Three investigators examine a portion of the destroyed wing of Delta Flight 1141, a Boeing 727 that crashed that morning during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: A police officer stands in front of crime scene tape as firefighters and other emergency workers examine the charred fuselage of Delta 1141, which crashed that morning during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Rescue workers labor at the rear of Delta 1141, which had been on fire as the jet’s pilot was being rescued at the front.
Aug. 31, 1988: Rescuers pull a member of the Delta 1141 crew from the wreckage after the Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Emergency workers tend to an injured person, possibly a crew member, who was pulled from the wreckage of Delta Flight 1141 after it crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Delta pilot Larry Davis, who suffered serious injuries, was the last survivor removed from the wreckage of Delta Flight 1141 after it crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Rescue workers carry the pilot of Delta 1141 to an ambulance. Most of the other survivors were able to walk away from the crash at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Emergency responders carry a victim of Delta Flight 1141 that crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Emergency responders carry a victim of Delta 1141 to a temporary morgue set up on site at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Emergency personnel carry a victim of Delta 1141 from the wreckage at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Injured survivors were taken to nearby HEB Hospital while the dead were moved into a makeshift morgue set up on site by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Aug. 31, 1988: The right wing of the Boeing 727 was completely destroyed in the Delta 1141 crash at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The three crew members in the cockpit survived.
Aug. 31, 1988: The broken fuselage of Delta 1141 after it crashed at the end of a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Investigators at the crash of Delta 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Most of the deaths occurred in the rear of the plane.
Aug. 31, 1988: A man peers into the cockpit of the Boeing 727 that crashed during takeoff from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The captain and first officer of Delta Flight 1141 suffered serious injuries; the flight engineer had minor injuries.
Aug. 31, 1988: This photo shows damage to the underside of the front of the fuselage of Delta Flight 1141 on the day the Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Firefighters huddle near the rear of Delta 1141 after extinguishing the blaze. The Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: The smoldering wreckage of Delta Flight 1141 on the day the Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: The wreckage of Delta 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A Boeing 727 with Delta livery similar to the one that crashed is seen in the distance to the right.
Aug. 31, 1988: A closer view of a break near the front of the fuselage of Delta 1141. Numerous passengers escaped through holes in the wreckage. The crash was during takeoff from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: Firefighters are seen after extinguishing the blaze from Delta 1141’s crash after a failed takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The FAA Control Tower is visible in the background.
Aug. 31, 1988: What appears to be a piece of the Boeing 727’s wing assembly in the dirt along the path of where Delta 1141 skidded into the grass after a failed takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: An aerial view of the Delta Flight 1141 plane crash at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A Red Cross van is seen parked near the scene of the wreckage. The deceased were placed in the makeshift refrigerated morgue transport truck, set up on site by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. The Boeing 727 struck an antenna array about 1,000 feet beyond the end of runway 18L and came to rest about 3,200 feet beyond the end of the pavement.
Aug. 31, 1988: The rear of the Boeing 727, to the left in this photo, sustained the most damage during the crash of Delta 1141 during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Most of the fuselage burned during the subsequent fire.
Aug. 31, 1988: The wreckage of Delta Flight 1141 on the day the Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Aug. 31, 1988: The sun begins to set over the wreckage of Delta 1141 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
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