The last transmission from United Airlines Flight 2860 was routine. ‘Salt Lake, United Two Eight Six Zero, we have a problem, we’re descending.’ It was 5:41 a.m. on December 18, 1977. The DC-8-54F, operating as a cargo flight from Chicago to Portland, was over the Wasatch Range in heavy clouds. Radar showed the jet at 10,000 feet. Then it began a rapid, 4,200-feet-per-minute descent. It vanished from radar at 7,200 feet. The wreckage was found on the slopes of Mount Wire, just north of Kaysville. All three crew members—Captain Robert M. Boody, First Officer Michael L. Kerkow, and Flight Engineer Ronald R. Christensen—were killed.
The investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board faced an unusual challenge. The crash site revealed no evidence of in-flight fire, explosion, or structural failure. The engines were developing power at impact. The crew was experienced and well-rested. The plane was properly loaded. The NTSB’s final report, published over two years later, could only conclude the probable cause was the crew’s ‘unexplained loss of altitude awareness during a descent from cruising altitude.’ It was a finding that admitted bafflement.
This obscurity fuels speculation. The most persistent theory suggests spatial disorientation in the cloud-covered darkness, possibly compounded by a rare instrument failure. Yet the cockpit voice recorder, which might have clarified the crew’s actions, was not required on all-cargo flights at the time. The ‘problem’ mentioned on the radio was never specified.
The crash of Flight 2860 had a direct and tangible outcome. It became a key data point in the long push for expanded flight recorder mandates. The argument that cargo pilots deserved the same safety oversight as passenger pilots gained force from this unexplained tragedy. The crash itself remains a cold case in aviation history, a brief, cryptic transmission followed by silence on a mountainside.