The story behind the Munich Air Disaster – and its aviation safety legacy

It was a tragedy whose appalling senselessness still rings across the decades; an accident which took a dreadful toll on one of the most gifted sporting sides Britain has produced, and is still remembered with enormous sadness six decades after the event. 

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, the crash which killed eight members of the Manchester United first team (along with 15 other passengers, including pilots, flight crew and journalists), who were returning home from a successful European Cup quarter-final tie in the then-Yugoslavian capital Belgrade.

As with many major aviation incidents, it has echoes in the present - the dead were recalled, as they always are as February 6 approaches, ahead of the modern Manchester United's home fixture with Huddersfield Town on Saturday (February 3). But away from the football pitch, the disaster also had an effect on air safety, and the way we fly.

It was an accident laced with random misfortune. One of its tiniest seeds was an awful journey the United team had endured from Czechoslovakia two months earlier. The team had lost 1-0 to Dukla Prague in the first round of the competition (a deficit that would be overturned with a 3-0 victory in the second leg of the tie at Old Trafford), and faced an exhausting trek back to base amid December fog which took in a flight to Amsterdam, a ferry to Harwich and a train to Manchester. The trip had been tiring for the players, and the club had vowed - once the draw sent them even further into Europe - to charter a British European Airways (BEA) plane for the away portion of the quarter-final.

Initially, the return from Belgrade was uneventful. The layover in Munich was intended, and was meant to be brief - a refuelling stop because the plane, an Airspeed Ambassador (commonly referred to as an "Elizabethan") could not complete the flight from Yugoslavia in one go. But the weather was poor on arrival in West Germany, and was worsening when, after an hour in the lounge for coffee, the passengers re-boarded.

Two aborted take-offs were a forewarning of what was to come. Twice, the men in the cockpit - Captain James Thain, and his co-pilot Captain Kenneth Rayment - eased back on the plane's passage down the runway as the Airspeed Ambassador seemed to over-accelerate in the initial metres. Thain also reported problems with fluctuating pressure gauges. Both pilots were former RAF lieutenants, with considerable flying experience.

United full-back Bill Foulkes would recall a noticeable change in mood after the second take-off had been abandoned. "We'd been playing cards for most of the flight from Belgrade to Munich, and I remember when we left the aircraft thinking how cold it was," he would say. "We had one attempt at taking off, but didn't leave the ground, so I suppose a few of those on board would start to worry a little bit, and when the second take-off failed we were pretty quiet when we went back into the lounge."

There was talk of postponing the flight until the next day, but the decision was taken to attempt a third take-off. This time, the plane reached full power, but became fatally mired in slush in the second half of the 1.2-mile runway. The Airspeed Ambassador began to lose velocity, before skidding off the end of the airstrip. Foulkes described this as "like when a car leaves a smooth road and starts to run over rough ground." The plane would cross a road, then collide with a house beyond the airport compound - as well as a wooden hut which contained a truck filled with tyres and fuel. This exploded. 

The crash would claim the lives of 23 of the 44 passengers and crew, including eight members of the Manchester United first eleven. Their number included midfielder Duncan Edwards, who succumbed to his injuries two weeks after the disaster.

Rayment was also among the victims, dying in hospital an agonising six weeks later. Thain survived, and was left - hugely unfairly - to shoulder much of the blame. German authorities held him responsible amid claims - erroneous, later debunked via clear photographic evidence to the contrary - that he had failed to de-ice the wings. He would be dismissed by BEA in December 1960, and spent the best part of the next decade trying to clear his name. He retired to his Berkshire poultry farm - and although he was eventually exonerated in 1968, he would die of a heart attack, aged only 54, in August 1975, understandably embittered at the way the air industry had treated him.

The premature apportioning of blame was not unsurprising. De-icing the wings was the responsibility of the pilot. Clearing the airstrip of slush was the role of the airport authorities. It was this piling of congealed wet snow on the runway - conditions in which the doughty but unadvanced Airspeed Ambassador struggled - which caused the disaster. The crash would lead to a greater appreciation of the dangers of slush on the tarmac. It would also, ultimately, lead to the phasing out of the Airspeed Ambassador. Following a second fatal incident at Heathrow on July 3 1968 - which cost the lives of all but two of those on board - it was eased out of service, a piston-engined twin-propeller relic of an earlier age of aviation, left behind by the rise in safety standards. 

Five more air disasters with a safety legacy

Tenerife Airport Disaster

When: March 27 1977

What happened: The deadliest disaster in aviation history. Amid overcrowding at Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife (now Tenerife North Airport) - caused partially by a terrorist incident at the airport on neighbouring Gran Canaria, which led to a number of flights being diverted - two planes collided on the runway. Heavy fog also played a role, with KLM Flight 4805 beginning to take off while Pan Am Flight 1736 - which was also preparing for departure - was ahead of it on the runway. The collision killed all passengers and crew on the KLM flight, and all but 61 of those on the Pan Am jet.

Fatalities: 583 of the 644 people on board the two aircraft.

Legacy: Although KLM accepted blame for the disaster, having mistakenly initiated take-off before clearance had been issued by air traffic control, wider questions looked at communication problems between the tower and the two cockpits. This would result in the introduction of standard phrases to avoid misunderstandings (the pilots of the Pan Am jet had been unsure as to exactly where they were meant to be positioned as they prepared to leave) - and a greater use of English as the common language of aviation.

TWA Flight 800

When: July 17 1996

What happened: A Trans World Airlines flight, aboard a Boeing 747-100, from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Rome (via Paris), exploded 12 minutes after take-off above Long Island Sound. Aside from the loss of life, the disaster would prove catastrophic for the airline. Already in financial trouble, TWA went bankrupt in 2001.

Fatalities: All 230 passengers and crew.

Legacy: A four-year investigation - the longest and most expensive in US aviation history - concluded that the most likely cause was explosion of vapours in the plane's near-empty central fuel tank. Flight 800 had been delayed on the tarmac for over an hour, leading - extensive study suggested - to a build up of flammable gas. A short circuit caused by faulty wiring was deemed to be the probable cause of ignition. In July 2008, almost exactly 12 years after the accident, America's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would finally introduce a rule requiring airlines to pump inert gases into under-filled tanks to nullify the threat of explosion caused by a stray spark.

Pan Am Flight 103

When: December 21 1988

What happened: In what is more generally known as the Lockerbie Disaster, a Boeing 747–121 aircraft, Clipper Maid of the Seas, was destroyed over Dumfries and Galloway by a bomb, likely to have been made of semtex explosive, which had been planted into a cassette player in passenger baggage in the hold. The plane was on the transatlantic leg of a journey from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York. Considerable controversy clings to the disaster, despite Libya's formal admission of responsibility for the crash in 2003. The accepted view of the tragedy is that it was a state terror attack in response to American military action in and around Libya in 1986.

Fatalities: 270 people - all 259 passengers and crew on the aircraft, and another 11 victims on the ground in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Investigations concluded that the bomb was detonated via a timer, and should have exploded when the aircraft was over the sea. This would have significantly reduced the amount of debris that could be gathered as evidence. However, the plane was delayed in its departure from Heathrow.

Legacy: A huge tightening of screening procedures for bags checked onto aircraft.

Air Florida Flight 90

When: January 13 1982

What happened: A US domestic service, scheduled to fly from Washington National Airport in the capital to Fort Lauderdale in Florida (with a stop in Tampa), crashed into the River Potomac in the centre of the city immediately after take off. The Boeing 737-222 struck the 14th Street Bridge over the water as it descended, killing several people on the ground - before plunging through the frozen surface during a severe snowstorm.

Fatalities: 74 passengers and crew; four people in cars on the bridge.

Legacy: The disaster was found to have been caused by ice on the plane's wings, and several procedural failings in the minutes before take-off. The aircraft had been improperly de-iced prior to departure, using heated water and monopropylene glycol mixed to an incorrect ratio. It then waited in a queue for take-off for 49 minutes before receiving clearance to depart - during which time snow acccumulated on the wings.

Further investigation showed that the pilots failed to switch on the engines' internal ice protection systems, and even tried to use the exhaust of the plane in front in the queue to melt the build-up on the wings as an interim measure. The crash led to a much stricter enforcement of the de-icing process. "Contributing to the accident were the prolonged ground delay between deicing and the receipt of take-off clearance during which the aircraft was exposed to continual precipitation... and the limited experience of the flight crew in jet transport winter operations", the NTSB report would conclude.

Air France Flight 447

When: June 1 2009

What happened: An Airbus A330, operated by Air France, entered a high-altitude stall en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, some three hours after departure. The flight was brought down by a deadly combination of extreme turbulence and irregular air-speed readings caused by ice crystals forming on external 'pitot tube' speed sensors - which in turn caused autopilot to disengage. Despite their experience, the three pilots were unable to correct the subsequent stall.

Fatalities: All 228 passengers and crew.

Legacy: In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Air France replaced the "pitot tubes" on its Airbus planes, removing the versions made by European electronics firm Thales and replacing them with models made by US manufacturer Goodrich. Airbus then asked all other airlines using its planes to do the same. America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would enforce this move via a fresh regulation in October 2009.