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The Electra arrived in Reno that evening. Shortly after midnight, with Heasley at the controls, the plane took off for Minneapolis. After only two minutes in the air, Copilot Kevin Fieldsa radioed the tower: "We've got to get back on the ground . . . vibration in the aircraft." His voice was shaking with the Electra's tremors.
In the cabin, George Lamson Jr., 17, who had gone to the Super Bowl with his father, 41, realized that "we were going up and down. And all of a sudden I saw the ground coming up, and the pilot said we were going to crash." The Electra skidded into an open field near an apartment complex, jumped a 20-ft.-wide irrigation ditch, careered into a sales lot for recreational vehicles along Interstate 395 and burst into a ball of fire.
The younger Lamson, blown out of the fuselage and still buckled to his seat, undid the strap in a daze. "I ran away and the plane blew up and it knocked me down." He was hospitalized with minor cuts and burns. His father, also hurled from the cabin, was severely burned. Said the son: "God must have been with Dad and me." Robert Miggins, 45, a high school teacher in Plymouth, Minn., ran from the wreckage with his clothes afire. He suffered burns over 90% of his body. The three were the only survivors. Sixty-eight died, making it the worst U.S. air tragedy since 1982, when a Boeing 727 was caught in a wind shear in New Orleans, killing 153 people.