It was March 3, 1972, a quiet, snowy Friday evening in Albany with temperatures reaching only in the teens.
John and Katherine Pjontek went out shopping and to eat dinner.
“We heard the bartender talking about a plane crash,” Katherine Pjontek recalled. “They said it was either Washington or Western Avenue.”
The couple were living on Melrose Avenue at that time. Their three kids were home with a babysitter. The Pjonteks rushed home; however, the Route 85 overpass on Western Avenue was blocked by police, so the pair traveled by foot the rest of the way.
Across the street from them, Bonnie and Vincent Perry were home with their four children watching a PBS program.
“When the plane hit, it shook our house,” Bonnie Perry said. “And we thought it was a plow on Colvin Avenue.”
It wasn’t a plow.
Just around the corner from them, Mohawk Airlines Flight 405 had crashed into a home at 50 Edgewood Ave., with 48 people on board. Relatives soon started calling them to ask about the plane crash in their neighborhood.
“It was a nine iron away from where we lived,” Vincent Perry said. “That’s how close it was.”
Lou Margiasso was driving down Central Avenue when he heard the news over the radio. He lived nearby, so he decided to head to the scene to check it out.
“I started walking toward the plane. As I approached, it was Mayor [Erastus] Corning on the top of the hill by the plane’s wings, along with another friend of mine who was a Capitol policeman,” said Margiasso.
Albany police officer Rich Sleasman remembered how congested and chaotic the street was. He was 23 years old at the time, with only two years on the force.
“It lifted it right off its foundation,” said Sleasman, pointing to what he recalled five decades earlier. “The plane went in under it and came up, so the nose of the plane is facing upward on this side of the house.”
He remained at the scene throughout the evening and early morning. Sleasman recalled the heavy smell of jet fuel, as well as how somber the neighborhood was.
“It was a makeshift morgue in one of the driveways here for the deceased, which was a tough scene,” Sleasman said. “It was in the driveway and then the garage, and then in the homes.”
According to the National Transporation Safety Board (NTSB) report, Flight 405 departed from LaGuardia Airport at 8:05 that evening. At 8:45 p.m., one of the pilots reported a problem with the left engine about eight miles from Albany County Airport.
Over the next three minutes, they tried to feather the left propeller. Unable to fix the issue, the pilots told Albany Approach Control they were going to land short.
At 8:48 p.m., the plane crashed into 50 Edgewood Ave., just three and a half miles south of its destination.
In total, 17 people -- 14 passengers, the pilots and a resident on the ground -- were killed, but 31 passengers, one flight attendant and four people inside the home survived.
“I think that’s the thing I remember, how lucky we were there wasn’t any explosions,” John Pjontek said.
He and his wife made coffee over the next several hours for those working at the scene. The Perrys' front porch was used as a command post for first responders.
One of the survivors was Christopher Aldi.
“I fell asleep on the plane, and I basically woke up in the emergency room,” Aldi said.
He and his sister Cathy had spent the week in Florida with their mother’s friend. Aldi was 16 years old and Cathy was 20 at the time.
“I remember we sat right underneath the wings,” said Aldi, who grew up in Pattersonville. He took the window seat and Cathy took the aisle seat at the center of the plane.
The flight went as planned for most of the trip. At some point, Aldi blacked out. He recalled briefly waking up while being rescued and then later remembers being at the hospital.
“I do remember the first words probably out of my mouth was, ‘where is my sister?’ ” Aldi said.
Cathy was one of the 17 killed in the crash. Aldi suferred a broken jaw and recovered at Albany Medical Center.
“I firmly believe that my sister kept me asleep until I was safe in the ER,” Aldi said. “So I never had any nightmares, any visions, anything of the accident, and I never even saw the plane crash into the house afterward.”
A couple months later, he got a call from the family who lived at 50 Edgewood Avenue. The Rosens found an item belonging to him.
“My camera that I had taken pictures with in Florida was found by the Rosens. They developed the film and they researched, and they actually brought the pictures to our house,” Aldi said. “So I actually have pictures that I would have lost.”
He cherishes the photos, but the decades that followed the crash were difficult for him. Aldi dealt with survivor guilt, and schools then didn’t have guidance counselors to offer him the support he needed.
“For the most part, if you’d ask me if I had any siblings, I would have said, ‘no, I’m an only child.’ Only someone that was close to me that I knew I could trust would I give them my history, tell them the truth,” Aldi said.
His high school drama teacher helped him a bit. But it wasn’t until 40 years later that Aldi found a therapist who helped him open up. Instead of mourning his sister’s death, he started celebrating her life.
“This picture that I have here, this is the last picture of my sister and I taken together. This is on a beach in Florida,” said Aldi, holding up the photo. “This was taken by my mother’s friend. But I now have this hanging in our house.”
The events of March 3, 1972, would change the course of other people’s lives as well.
The Perrys moved to Voorheesville to get out of the flight path. Margiasso would unknowingly return to the site of the crash two years later, and buy the home right next to 50 Edgewood Ave.
“I look back and feel sad for those that have lost loved ones,” Margiasso said. “But there’s not much else you can say about it.”
The NTSB ruled human error was the probable cause of the crash, citing “the inability of the crew to feather the left propeller, in combination with the descent of the aircraft, below the prescribed minimum altitude for the approach.”
Aldi is sharing his story for the first time since that fateful night because he believes he was meant to survive, as he puts it, to take care of his mother, his three sons and, more recently, a 5-week-old granddaughter.
“There’s just other things that if I hadn’t been here wouldn’t have happened,” Aldi said. “So my faith tells me I’m where I am today because that’s where God wants me to be.”