The crew consisted of Captain Thomas H. Carroll (age 45), First Officer Leo M. Smith (42), Flight Engineer Ernest V. Hall (41) and four stewardesses.

As the Constellation emerged from a cloud puff, First Officer Roger I. Holt Jr. saw the Boeing in his right side window at the 2 o'clock position.

Holt shouted, "Look out," placed his hands on the control wheel, and made a rapid application of up elevator simultaneously with Captain White, causing crew members and passengers to be forced down into their seats.

[3] Aboard the Boeing, the crew was preparing for arrival at JFK International, flying in clear air above an overcast sky with good visibility as they approached Carmel.

On seeing an aircraft at his 10 o'clock position on what appeared to be a collision course, he immediately disengaged the autopilot, put the wheel hard over to the right, and pulled back on the yoke.

[4] The Boeing crew recovered from the dive, declared an emergency with New York Center, and received the first of many vectors to JFK International.

Around 2 mi (3.2 km) ahead, White spotted a pasture halfway up Hunt Mountain, a 900 ft (270 m) ridge running perpendicular to the Constellation's flightpath.

He aligned the aircraft using asymmetric thrust, told passengers to brace themselves, and descended into the upward-sloping hillside with wheels and flaps retracted.

At the last moment he jammed the throttles forward to pitch up the aircraft's nose, letting the Constellation pancake into the 15-percent slope.

[4] The crash-landing site was 4.2 mi (6.8 km) north of an area where numerous parts from both aircraft were later found by investigators.

[4] The cockpit and cabin crews survived the crash landing and worked both inside and outside the broken fuselage parts to evacuate the survivors from the wreckage, which was on fire.