Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 Crash (1991)
On the evening of April 5, 1991, an Atlantic Southeast Airlines Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia crashed in a wooded area short of the runway while approaching Glynco Jetport in Brunswick, Georgia, killing all 23 people aboard. Among the dead were former U.S. Senator John Tower of Texas, his daughter Marian, and NASA astronaut Manley Lanier "Sonny" Carter Jr., making the disaster one of the most high-profile regional airline accidents in American history.
The Flight and the Crash
Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 departed Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta on the evening of April 5, 1991, operating as a Delta Connection flight bound for Brunswick, Georgia, with a continuing leg to Jacksonville, Florida. The twin-engine turboprop, an Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia, carried 20 passengers and three crew members. As the aircraft descended toward Glynco Jetport, it suddenly rolled and pitched downward, plunging into a stand of pine trees and marshy ground roughly a mile short of the runway threshold at approximately 7:04 p.m. local time. The impact and resulting fire destroyed the aircraft, and none of the 23 people aboard survived. Emergency crews faced difficulty reaching the remote crash site, which lay in swampy terrain near the Turtle River, and the wreckage was scattered across a wide debris field. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched investigators the following day to begin piecing together the sequence of events during the final moments of the flight, focusing on the aircraft's flight control and propeller systems.
Did You Know?
Sonny Carter, one of the astronauts killed in the crash, had a lunar crater indirectly honored later when NASA named the agency's Sonny Carter Training Facility in Houston after him in 1993—home to the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory where astronauts still train for spacewalks today.
Notable Victims
The crash drew national attention largely because of two prominent passengers. Former Senator John Tower, a Republican who had represented Texas in the U.S. Senate from 1961 to 1985 and had chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, was traveling with his daughter Marian, an attorney. Tower had gained wider fame in 1989 when his nomination as Secretary of Defense was rejected by the Senate over concerns about his personal conduct, one of the few cabinet nominations of a sitting president's choosing to be voted down in the twentieth century. The other high-profile victim was Manley "Sonny" Carter Jr., a NASA astronaut and former Navy flight surgeon who had flown aboard the space shuttle Discovery during mission STS-33 in November 1989. Carter, an accomplished athlete who had also played professional soccer, was traveling on NASA business related to an award ceremony in Brunswick. The presence of both a former senator and an active astronaut on the same doomed flight ensured the crash received extensive media coverage and prompted tributes from Congress and NASA alike.
Investigation and Aftermath
The NTSB's investigation determined that the crash resulted from a mechanical malfunction in the left engine's propeller control system, which produced an uncommanded change in propeller pitch and generated severe asymmetric drag during the approach. This sudden imbalance caused the aircraft to roll and descend rapidly before the flight crew could regain control at the low altitude at which the malfunction occurred. Investigators traced the failure to a component within the EMB-120's propeller control unit, prompting Embraer and the Federal Aviation Administration to issue design reviews and airworthiness directives affecting the Brasilia fleet operated by ASA and other regional carriers. The accident remains one of the deadliest crashes in Atlantic Southeast Airlines' history and one of the few U.S. aviation disasters to claim the lives of both a former U.S. senator and a NASA astronaut. ASA, which had built its business as a Delta Connection carrier out of Atlanta, continued operating for nearly two more decades before merging with ExpressJet in 2010 and adopting the ExpressJet name in 2011, but the Brunswick crash remained a somber chapter in the airline's legacy and a catalyst for scrutiny of turboprop propeller safety systems industry-wide.