CBS Producer Gets USAir Story Hard Way: He Is Crash Survivor

While other news organizations were still scrambling to cover the crash of a USAir jetliner that plunged into the bay near La Guardia Airport Wednesday night, CBS was able to provide viewers with an eyewitness account from the scene. One of its producers had been on the plane.

Producer David Hawthorne had been on his way to North Carolina to coordinate coverage of Hurricane Hugo when the jetliner suddenly skidded in the rain and plunged into the bay near La Guardia Airport at 11:27 p.m., EDT.

“We simply ran out of runway,” Hawthorne, a 29-year-old producer for CBS Newsnet, the network’s service for sharing news footage with local affiliates, recalled Thursday. “I didn’t know that we had hit water until I climbed out onto the wing. The plane had split into three pieces. When someone shone a flashlight into the plane, I saw two people strapped into their seats, with blood around them.”

Two passengers were killed, and 51 of the other 61 people on board were injured in the crash. Hawthorne was holding a passenger’s baby when he realized that he was over water. “I thought, ‘Whoa, I can’t swim well enough to carry a baby.’ ”

Thanks to high tech, what Hawthorne could do was report the story.

“Once everyone was safe, I thought, ‘I’ve got to call CBS News.’ ” Hawthorne returned to his mangled seat, retrieved the cellular phone he was carrying with him on his assignment, and called in to the CBS News desk. The desk put him on the air live on WCBS-TV in New York at 11:59 p.m. At 12:33 a.m. EDT, the network broke into its entertainment programming and Hawthorne--whose previous report for WCBS had been his first on-air experience--reported from the scene, live on the phone to Dan Rather, who had come into the studio to help with the live coverage.

“He had cool-headed intelligence, and it was hard to believe he’d never been on the air before,” Rather said Thursday. “I think he’ll get the equivalent of a battlefield promotion.”

Rescued to the La Guardia runway on a raft along with other passengers, Hawthorne continued to provide off-camera coverage for CBS News producers until nearly 3 a.m. At 7:10 a.m., he was a guest on “CBS News This Morning.”

On his way to the doctor Thursday afternoon to check out soreness and a slight pain in his neck and shoulders, the producer said he had no thoughts of turning his experience into an on-camera career.

“When I called in, I never expected to be on the air,” he said. “I thought they’d send out one of those guys who look good and can tell the story on the air.”