Today marks the 40th anniversary of the tragic crash of Delta Air Lines Flight 191 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — one of the deadliest aviation disasters in U.S. history.
After 6 p.m. on Friday, August 2, 1985, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was en route from Fort Lauderdale International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport with a scheduled stop at DFW.
It crashed during its final approach in stormy weather conditions. A total of 137 passengers and crew members died. Of those, many were residents of South Florida's tri-county area.
Remembering a Tragedy
Among the first journalists on the scene was Bryan Glazer, then a reporter for KDFW 4, the CBS affiliate in Dallas at the time. He had just been hired two weeks before the crash, previously reporting for WRAL Raleigh.
Glazer recalls being on a dinner break at a downtown Dallas restaurant when he first heard emergency chatter on his handheld police and fire scanner.
“Because KDFW had just ended a bitter labor unionization process, photographers were not permitted to take their news cars and equipment home,” Glazer told mikemcguff.com. “This crippled the station’s ability to respond and cover the unfolding events, effectively.”
Glazer says he grabbed his two-way radio and contacted the control room.
He says he told the executive producer, "There's a crash at DFW."
Glazer says the producer told him to "Stand by while I have someone check it out.”
Rather than follow the producer’s instructions, Glazer hopped in his car and drove to the airport. A live truck was then sent to him.
“Knowing that the most-compelling interviews would be from people waiting for arriving passengers, I headed for the terminal,” says Glazer.
Glazer says Delta had sheltered most of the people waiting for the flight in a conference room. However, some people were sitting in public spaces, according to Glazer.
“One of them was Christine Greene, who told me she had recently moved to Dallas and bought her brother a plane ticket to come see, as she said, 'Texas for the first time. I hope he can still do that,'" Glazer recalled.
Moments after interviewing Greene, Greene was advised that her brother, Gil, was alive – being treated at Parkland Memorial Hospital, according to Glazer.
“I also interviewed Reverend Richard Brown of Holy Trinity Church of Irving,” recalls Glazer. “I spotted him walking in the terminal wearing clerical clothing. He said he had just left the crash site, where he discovered a live baby amongst the rubble - overlooked by rescue crews.
"On camera, he said, 'As I was blessing the body of a family member, I guess, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he was still breathing, and so I watched real close and sure enough he was still breathing. You could see his stomach going up and down.'"
He continued, “So, me and a survivor, rushed him to an ambulance and I baptized him and they took him to Parkland (hospital).”
During the days following the crash, Glazer says he was assigned to the impact site, covering the NTSB investigation rather than following up on the victim-survivor elements.
“I wonder did the baby survive," Glazer asked. "He would be at least 40 years old today?"
The crash — ultimately blamed on windshear caused by a microburst — helped usher in the development and deployment of Doppler weather radar systems, now standard at airports nationwide.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation, the aircraft encountered severe wind shear just one mile from the runway as it passed through a fast-moving thunderstorm. The sudden downdraft caused the jetliner to lose altitude rapidly. The landing gear struck a car on the Grapevine Expressway, and the aircraft slammed into two large water tanks at the airport perimeter, erupting into flames.
Remarkably, all 27 survivors were seated in the plane’s rear section.
More tragedy to cover
Glazer left KDFW to report in New York City. He eventually became a CNN correspondent in Los Angeles and New York.
Sadly, this would not be the only tragic crash Glazer would cover.
"I covered the crash of TWA flight #800 in 1991 and the crash of American Airlines flight 587 in November of 2021," he told me. "I also reported live for CNN on the attacks of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."
Today, Glazer is the President and Executive Producer of World Satellite Television News, a broadcast news boutique that provides reportage and production services to global news channels. The firm also creates broadcast news media relations campaigns for some of the world’s best-known brands, CEO, and celebrities.
