Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashes on landing in Mexico City, killing 73 people.
Western Airlines Flight 2605, nicknamed the "Night Owl", was an international scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City, Mexico. On October 31, 1979, at 5:42 a.m. CST (UTC−06:00), the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed at Mexico City International Airport in fog after landing on a runway that was closed for maintenance. Of the 89 people on board, 72 were killed, in addition to a maintenance worker who died when the plane struck his vehicle.Flight 2605 remains the deadliest air accident to have occurred in Mexico City. The event is the third-deadliest aviation accident to occur on Mexican soil after the crashes of two Boeing 727s: the 1969 crash of Mexicana de Aviación Flight 704 and Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 in 1986. The crash was one of three fatal DC-10 accidents in 1979, having occurred just over five months after the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and less than a month before the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 on Mount Erebus in Antarctica.