David Booth and the Premonition About American Airlines Flight 191

David Booth had recurring dreams about an aircraft crashing in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Being quite a rational man, he initially dismissed it, but as they continued, he became worried. Hence starts the premonition of the crash that shocked the USA in 1979.

Premonitions, or the ability to foresee events before they occur, have been the subject of human fascination and fear for centuries. Many people claim to have experienced them, from vivid dreams to sudden gut feelings.

While some dismiss them as mere coincidences or figments of imagination, others believe in their validity and power. David Booth’s story exemplifies a premonition that has baffled many.

In May 1979, David Booth, a resident of Ohio, started experiencing the same recurring dream for ten consecutive nights. In his dream, he saw a large passenger jet trying to take off, flipping over and crashing into a fireball.

Every time he reached that point, he would abruptly wake up, drenched in sweat. The dream was so vivid and terrifying that Booth became paranoid and anxious, feeling that it was a warning of something terrible about to happen.

The crash of the American Airlines 191, with 273 fatalities, is the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in the United States.

Booth’s fears became so intense that he soon called the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to report his dreams. The FAA dismissed his concerns, calling them baseless and unfounded. But just two months later, Booth’s premonition came true.

On May 25th, 1979, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, killing all 258 passengers and 13 crew members aboard.

The left engine separated from the wing, leading to a loss of control and a collision less than one mile (1.6 km) from the end of the runway. It is the deadliest aviation tragedy in the US, with 273 fatalities.

The incident shook Booth to the core, leaving him with a sense of guilt and confusion. He had a premonition of the disaster, but no one believed him. Booth’s story raises many questions about the validity of premonitions and the human ability to foresee the future.

While science may not have concrete answers, incidents like this remind us of our world’s mysterious and unexplained aspects.

How Did the American Airlines Flight 191 Crash?

On the flight, the number one engine detached from the left wing as the aircraft approached takeoff speed, ripping away a 3-foot (0.9 m) part of the leading edge.

The united unit landed on the runway by flipping over the top of the wing. American Airlines Robert Graham, the company’s maintenance manager, said:

“When the aircraft drew nearer, I noticed what seemed to be vapor or smoke coming from the number-one engine pylon and the wing’s leading edge. When the aircraft turned to face me and began to move away from me, I observed that the number one engine was bouncing up and down quite a bit.

 At that moment, the engine came apart, flew up over the top of the wing, and rolled back onto the runway. The engine moved forward and up as if it had lifted and was actually rising before crossing the wing.

 It traveled along the airflow of the wing, up and over the top, then down below the tail, avoiding contact with the top of the wing. The aircraft maintained a fairly typical ascent until it began to shift to the left. And at that point, I believed he would return to the airport.”

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) lost power when the engine disconnected, so it is unknown what was stated in the cockpit during the 50 seconds before the final crash. The first officer said, “Damn!” before the tape ended.

The only crash-related audio captured by the recorder is a pounding sound (presumably the sound of the engine splitting). This could be why air traffic control’s attempts to radio the crew and alert them to the loss of an engine were unsuccessful.

The study did, however, benefit from this power outage because it served as a signpost for precisely which circuit in the complex electrical system of the DC-10 had malfunctioned.

Why Did the American Airlines Flight 191 Crash?

Several connected systems failed in addition to the engine. Although the number one hydraulic system, which was also powered by the number one engine, failed, it could still function since hydraulic system three was mechanically linked to it by motor pumps.

Furthermore, damaged hydraulic system three started to leak fluid but kept the pressure and function up to the collision. The second hydraulic system was unharmed. The captain’s instruments, stick shaker, and slat disagreement sensors were among the electrical systems that went offline due to the failure of the number-one electrical bus, whose generator was connected to the number-one engine.

The captain could have turned on a switch in the overhead panel to power up his equipment, but he didn’t. To restart the number-one electrical bus, the flight engineer may have reached the backup power switch (as part of an abnormal scenario checklist—rather than as part of their takeoff emergency routine).

That would have worked had the primary electrical system been free of electrical defects. The flight engineer would have needed to rise, unbuckle his safety belt, and swivel his seat to reach the backup power switch.

Yet, the aircraft was only in the air for 50 seconds from when the engine separated to when it crashed; there was not enough time to carry out such an activity. The aircraft never rose above 350 feet (110 m). In any case, the first officer controlled the aircraft, and his instruments were still working well.

A white mist trail of gasoline and hydraulic fluid was emitted from the left wing as the aircraft soared roughly 325 feet (100 meters) above the earth.

The plane banking to the left, moments before the crash

The airspeed was decreased from 165 knots to the takeoff safety airspeed of 153 knots, the speed at which the aircraft could safely climb after experiencing an engine failure, by the first officer following the flight director and raising the nose to 14°.

The outboard slats (to the left of the number one engine) retracted under air pressure due to the engine separation, which severed the hydraulic fluid lines controlling the leading-edge slats on the left wing and locked them in place.

The left wing’s stall speed increased due to the slats being retracted to approximately 159 knots which are 6 knots faster than the recommended takeoff safety airspeed of 153 knots.

The left-wing consequently went into a complete aerodynamic stall. The aircraft’s left wing stalled, so it started banking to the left and rolled onto its side until it was partially inverted at a 112° bank angle with its right-wing over its left wing.

The passengers may have seen these occurrences as the aircraft plummeted towards the ground from the cockpit. It was outfitted with a closed-circuit television camera mounted behind the captain’s shoulder and connected to view screens in the passenger compartment.

The deadly crash of Flight 191

Then, the plane crashed. Five trailers and many cars were destroyed, along with large pieces of airplane wreckage propelled into a trailer park nearby by the force of impact. At the outskirts of the airport, where Ravenswood Airport once stood, a DC-10 also crashed into an old airplane hangar used for storage.

Except for the engines and tail section, the aircraft was completely destroyed by the force of contact and the burning of the virtually full load of 21,000 gallons of fuel.

With the 271 passengers, two workers at a neighboring repair shop also perished, and two more suffered severe burns.

What Did David Booth Dream About American Airlines Flight 191?

David Booth, a former car rental store employee from Ohio, experienced a series of terrifying nightmares that left him shaken to his core. It all started in the days leading up to May 25th, 1979, when Booth began having a recurring dream that felt too real to be a mere figment of his imagination.

In the dream, Booth would find himself standing at the corner of a one-story yellow brick building with a gravel roof. As he gazed out onto the field, he noticed that the windows facing the outside world appeared to have paper cutouts pasted on them, making it difficult for him to see what was happening beyond.

He understood that he stood before a school building, peering at a vast field that seemed to stretch forever.

Behind the school, a massive parking lot loomed, with a driveway snaking its way around it. Booth could feel a sense of dread gnawing at him as he gazed at the northwest and southeast tree line. The grass and trees were a sickly shade of green, and the sun was setting in the West, casting eerie shadows across the field.

Gazing beyond the tree line to the northeast, his eyes were suddenly seized by a gargantuan aircraft soaring through the sky. But as he took in its close proximity, his initial expectation of a deafening roar was replaced with a creeping sense of unease.

Something wasn’t quite right with the engines.

The metal behemoth began to tilt to the right, slowly at first, its western wing ascending into the air in a way that was not slow-motion but still somehow sluggish. Then, the plane inverted itself with a sickening roll and plunged earthward.

He watched, transfixed, as the doomed craft hurtled straight ahead, directly towards him, before exploding upon impact in a ball of flame.

The magnitude of the explosion was so immense that he struggled to articulate it with words. As the deafening echoes of the blast subsided, he would jump awake. The aircraft remained the same throughout his dreams —It was a three-engine jet belonging to American Airlines.

For nine long, harrowing days, Booth had been haunted by the ominous presence of that airplane in his dreams. Visions of the disaster plagued his sleep; his mind was gripped by an inexplicable unease that left him feeling cold and hollow.

David Booth, the man who had the premonition about the American Airlines flight 191 crash

And then, on the 25th of May 1970, at precisely 3:03 PM, the nightmare became a reality. A DC 10, just like the one that had tormented him in his sleep, crashed shortly after takeoff at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Booth’s heart froze in his chest as he watched the news reports flood in, each confirming what he already knew in his bones: this was the plane he had seen in his dreams.

The details were grim: the aircraft had lost an engine almost immediately after takeoff, throwing it off balance and causing it to plummet toward the earth below.

The passengers and crew would have screamed in terror as the plane entered a deadly stall, hurtling toward the ground with sickening speed.

But what struck Booth most was the eerie silence that accompanied the crash. Witnesses and bystanders reported a stillness in the air as if the world had gone quiet and held its breath as the tragedy unfolded.

It was a feeling he couldn’t shake, a sense that something deeply unsettling had occurred, something beyond human understanding.

For Booth, the crash was not just a news event but a confirmation of his deepest fears. The airplane that had haunted his dreams had become a harbinger of doom, a messenger of death that had come to claim its victims in a blaze of silence.

At first, one might dismiss this tale as the ramblings of a madman, a fanciful fabrication spun from the threads of a fevered imagination. But the evidence, much like the twisted dreams that plagued Booth’s mind, cannot be ignored.

As the nightmares took hold and Booth became increasingly consumed by the fear of a plane crash, he turned to the authorities for help. He reached out to American Airlines and the FAA, desperate for someone to take his fears seriously.

And though the FAA had taken note of his troubled testimony, they could do nothing to avert the tragedy that would soon unfold.

However, after the crash, the total weight of the authorities bore down on Booth. The police and FAA officials swarmed around him, their questions laced with suspicion and mistrust. They probed and poked, searching for some hint of guilt or wrongdoing in his past.

But what they found was a broken man, shattered by the weight of his foreknowledge. After investigating Booth and finding no evidence of wrongdoing, the FAA decided to hand over their notes on his testimony to the Institute of Parapsychology in Durham, North Carolina.

A team of researchers examined the case but ultimately could not find an explanation for Booth’s prophetic dreams.

Booth’s dreams ended abruptly on the day of the crash, leaving many questions unanswered. The researchers did not know whether this was a coincidence or Booth’s gift had somehow been taken away. But they did know that something extraordinary had happened and defied explanation.

The story of Booth’s prophetic dreams is a haunting reminder of the unknown forces that lie beyond our understanding. It serves as a warning that there are things in this world that we may never fully comprehend and will forever remain shrouded in mystery.

RIP Victims.

Next, read about the True Story of the Kadamattathu Kathanar, the Demon Hunting Priest of Kerala. Then, about the N844AA, the Aircraft that Vanished!