of rescue boats available to serve the city's two airports may have helped. The House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee asked the head of the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to report on the accident in a closed session in the days after the accident. After the two and a half hour meeting, a special House subcommittee was named to investigate the crash and the overall safety issues raised by the transition to jet and turboprop aircraft. Days after the crash, reports surfaced that there were safety systems that could have helped prevent the crash if they had been in place at the airport. A representative of the Air Line Pilots Association said that a system of flashing lights known as the Electronic Flash Approach System could have helped the pilot judge his altitude, if it had been installed. The association also called for the installation of a more comprehensive instrument landing system that would have provided altitude and horizontal guidance to flight crews landing on runway 22. The system in place at the time of the accident only provided horizontal guidance, although such a system was already installed for the same runway for aircraft approaching from the opposite direction. At the time, there were only two airports in the United States that had such a system installed for approaches on both directions of a runway. At a meeting on February 5, commissioners of the Port of New York Authority explained that the installation of such systems on runway 22 was considered to be very difficult because the approach lighting system would block the waterway used by ships to reach docks in Queens. Aircraft The aircraft was a Lockheed L-188 Electra turbine propeller aircraft, serial number 1015, registered as tail number N6101A. This was the first Electra delivered to American Airlines. Construction had been completed by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation on November 27, 1958. At the time of the crash, the aircraft had flown for a total of 302 hours. It was powered by four Allison 501-D13 engines. Promoted as an efficient, fast, and profitable aircraft, the Electra was the first turbine propeller aircraft to be produced in the United States. The first plane was delivered to Eastern Air Lines in October1958, who began operating commercial flights with the aircraft on January 1, 1959. American Airlines took delivery of its first Electra in December1958, and its first commercial flight was twelve