‘Unsolved Histories’: Meet the crew of Flight 293

The DC-7C that crashed into the Gulf of Alaska in June 1963 was the workplace for a crew of six professionals from Northwest Airlines, and we met pilot Albert Olsen – with help from his son and daughter –earlier in the series. The early 1960s was a different time, when female flight attendants were called “stewardesses” and weren’t allowed to be married, and the cockpit was the domain of only male aviators.

One of the two stewardesses aboard Flight 293 was a woman in her late 20s named Patricia Moran.

“I’d go up front, and she’d be sitting there, everybody’s sleeping,” said Darlene Jevne, who was also a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years and ago and who considered “Patti” Moran a friend.

“And she’d be scribbling and writing down wonderful things,” Darlene said, because Patti was a poet who published a collection of poems in 1962. “You know, when you look outside of the aircraft when you’re flying,” Darlene continued, “and all the stars in beautiful scenery and the clouds?”

“She put that all to poetry,” Darlene said.

Along with being a poet, Darlene says her friend Patti was already married and pregnant by the time she died aboard Flight 203, and was keeping both a secret from the airline so she could continue working.

Irene Johnson was also a Northwest Airlines flight attendant 60 years ago. She was in the same training class as Patti Moran, but Irene left airline work behind in 1961. She got married earlier that year and then became pregnant, but she worked as long as she could physically still do the job before calling it quits.

Since the “no marriage” rules didn’t apply to Irene’s husband Don Schaap, he kept his job as a steward, what they called male flight attendants in those days, for Northwest Airlines. Don was assigned to work Flight 293.

“There was a knock at the door and it was a colleague of my husband’s and a personal friend, our cabin services supervisor, and he said ‘Irene, can we come in?,’” Irene Johnson said, describing the moment at home with her infant daughter when she first learned that something had gone wrong on Don Schaap’s flight to Anchorage.

“And they said that they’ve ‘lost radio contact with the plane, we want you to know about that,’” Irene continued.

At first, Irene wasn’t overly concerned. She believed in Northwest Airlines’ management and swore by the company’s safety record. And Irene believed in the DC-7C.

“I was so convinced that everything was going to be okay,” Irene said, “because I had such faith in the airline running a good, tight ship.”

And though the search for survivors was called off, Irene clung to this faith for more than a year. It was the summer of 1964 when she ran into a Northwest Airlines executive during a trip to Minnesota to visit her husband’s family.

“‘Irene, give up that hope. I was at the crash scene,’” Irene said the airline executive told her. “’There was nothing but small debris floating,’” the man continued, Irene said. “’That thing had to have come apart in the air,’” he said.

Those particular words contributed to a conspiracy theory that Irene and many other family members left behind by the tragedy of Flight 293 would continue to believe for decades: that Flight 293 had been shot down by an air-to-air missile.

On Episode Six of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, we meet the crew and learn how those they left behind have tried to cope with their loss and to move on with their lives. We also examine the origins of the more sinister theories for why the DC-7C went down and try to get closer to the truth about what could have possibly gone wrong.