United Airlines Flight 409 was a scheduled flight which originated in New York , New York . The final flight destination was San Francisco , California , with stops in Chicago , Denver and Salt Lake City . The aircraft operating the service , a Douglas DC-4 propliner , registration crashed into Medicine Bow Peak , near Laramie , Wyoming , killing all 66 people on board ( 63 passengers , 3 crew members ) . The victims included five female members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and military personnel . At the time , this was the deadliest airline crash in the history of American commercial aviation . Another 66 lives had been lost earlier that year in the March 22 crash in Hawaii of a United States Navy Douglas R6D-1 Liftmaster military transport aircraft , and 66 had also died in the mid-air collision of two United States Air Force C-119G Flying Boxcars over West Germany on August 11 , placing the three crashes in a three-way tie as the deadliest aviation incidents in 1955
March 22 crash
1955 Hawaii R6D-1 crash
United Airlines Flight 409