The official National Transportation Safety Board report states that the probable cause of the accident was a deviation from a prescribed route resulting in instrument flight rules operations in mountainous terrain with a lack of radio navigation aids. The analysis in the report is correct, but there is no explanation as to why an experienced airline captain with over 16,000 hours of flying time would have made such poor decisions that night. Yet even now, decades later, it might still be possible to get inside his head to see what he was thinking.Hawthorne Nevada Airlines (NEVT), the name used for doing business by Mineral County Airlines, was an air taxi operator with Civil Aeronautics Board approval to operate large aircraft in a scheduled operation. The airline had two DC-3s in 1964, and a Lockheed 49 Constellation was later added to the fleet, operated under Federal Aviation regulations Part 121 with authorization to use flight-following in lieu of a flight dispatch system. The company's main business was transporting customers to the Nevada casinos.
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