TWA Flight 843 was a Trans World Airlinespassenger flight that crashed after an aborted takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport to San Francisco International Airport in July 1992. Despite an intense fire after the crash, the crew was able to evacuate all 280 passengers from the aircraft. There was no loss of life, though the aircraft was destroyed by the fire. The NTSB attributed the crash to pilot error and TWA training and maintenance issues. According to the report, the take-off was improperly aborted by the co-pilot shortly after liftoff, due to the erroneous activation of the stick-shakerstall warning device, when in fact the aircraft was performing normally and could have taken off safely. The extremely hard landing, after the plane gained only in altitude, caused damage to the right wing, spilling fuel that was then ingested into the engines and started the fire. In addition to the nine flight attendantson board, there were five additional off-duty flight attendants who assisted in the evacuation. Although only three of eight exit doors were available for use, the evacuation was completed within two minutes. Oakland rapper Saafir was a passenger on the plane and injured his back while jumping to the ground, which eventually made him a wheelchair user. N11002 had previously been involved in another incident. Flying as TWA Flight 37 on November 26, 1975, it came to within 100 feet of colliding with a DC-10 flying as American AirlinesFlight 182 while cruising at 35,000 feet due to erroneous assumptions of a Cleveland ARTCC controller who thought N11002 had ascended to its assigned altitude of 37,000 feet. The quick actions of the Captain flying the DC-10 prevented the collision as he put the plane into a sharp dive injuring passengers and flight attendants who were serving dinner. The flight crew of N11002 were unaware of the proximity of the 2 planes until they were told on arrival at LAX. There were a combined 309 passengers and crew aboard both flights.
