On 12 March 1950, an Avro 689 Tudor V, Star Girl, owned by Airflight Limited and being operated under the "Fairflight" name,[1] took off from Dublin Airport[3] in Ireland, on a private passenger flight to Llandow aerodrome in South Wales.

Two passengers who were sitting in additional seats bolted in at the back of the tail section walked away unaided, and a third man, who was in the lavatory and knocked unconscious at the time of the crash, survived but was in the hospital for four months.

The March 13, 1950, edition of the New York Times reported thus: "London, 12 March—Eighty men and women were killed in Wales today in an aeroplane crash, the worst disaster in the history of aviation.

The eighty persons lost in Wales went to their destruction in a type of aircraft – the British Avro Tudor – that had already caused fifty-four fatalities and had been banned from passenger service on Britain's publicly owned international airlines."

After a court of enquiry chaired by William McNair KC the Ministry of Civil Aviation announced that the probable cause of the accident was the loading of the aircraft, which had moved the centre of gravity considerably aft of where it should have been, thus reducing the effectiveness of the elevators.

On 25 March in the final game of the 1950 Championship against France at the Cardiff Arms Park, the crowd stood in silence while five buglers sounded a Last Post tribute to the memory of the supporters who had died in the plane crash.