Flight 8 was flying from San Francisco to Winslow, which was a hub connecting TWA's transcontinental Los Angeles-New York route.

"[2] Two hours after takeoff, the flight encountered a building weather front that developed into the most severe storm on the West Coast in 64 years.

Landry, who was operating the Edison Electric Company power house on Huntington Lake, approximately 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Fresno.

Pelting rain and heavy winds prevented the use of aircraft in the search, forcing searchers to rely on automobiles, which were unsuited for the rugged mountain terrain.

On March 2, 1938, the day after the flight's disappearance, Transcontinental & Western Air headquarters told reporters that it had received a message purporting to be from United Airlines offices in Fresno, which claimed that the missing aircraft had been found.

The telephoned message said that the plane had been found approximately 20 miles from Fresno with "several passengers injured but everybody alive," as later reported in the Ogden Standard Examiner.

Collier of Fresno, began a personal search for the missing plane after interviewing numerous TWA personnel and studying charts of the flight path.

Seventy-one years later, Bob Hoskin of Redlands, California discovered a collection of artifacts from the crash in a cedar chest at a yard sale.