Arrow Air Crash

On December 11, 1985, Arrow Air Flight MF1285R, a Douglas DC-8-63 with U.S. registration N95OJW, departed Cairo on an international charter flight to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, via Cologne and Gander. On board were 8 crew members and 248 passengers, all members of the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, returning from peacekeeping duties in the Sinai Desert on a flight chartered by the Multinational Force Observers as part of a planned troop rotation. After a technical stop in Cologne and a complete crew change, the flight continued to Gander, where passengers deplaned and the aircraft was refueled and serviced. Departing Gander at 6:45 am on runway 22, the aircraft gained little altitude after rotation, began to descend, crossed the Trans Canada Highway about 900 feet beyond the departure end of the runway, and struck downsloping terrain about 3000 feet beyond the runway. The aircraft was destroyed by impact forces and a severe fuel-fed fire, and all 256 occupants were killed. The crash, which occurred at 6:46 am in darkness, was the worst air disaster on Canadian soil. On June 24, 1990, a dedication ceremony was held in memory of the 101st Airborne Division at the crash site overlooking Gander Lake toward Fort Campbell. The memorial depicts an unarmed American soldier standing on a massive rock holding the hands of two civilian children, a boy and a girl, each carrying an olive branch to signify the division’s peacekeeping mission on the Sinai peninsula, with Canadian, American, and Newfoundland flags rising behind them. Designed by Lorne Rostotski of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and sculpted by Stephen Shields of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, it was dedicated in June 1990 before several hundred attendees including family members, friends, dignitaries, and Canadian and American government and military representatives. On December 12, 1995, a memorial service was held ten years after the disaster, and a cross was dedicated to those who had died. The twenty-two-foot Cross of Sacrifice, funded by donations from visitors, bears the inscription “Rendezvous with Destiny,” the motto of the 101st Airborne Division, crafted from the remains of the DC-8’s emergency exit door, and is surrounded by 256 native trees planted in tribute to the victims.

Newfoundland and Labrador · Canada