Romulus Tutors

About Romulus

Romulus is also known as “Gateway City” as it is home to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. (DTW) The Airport is an international airport and is one of the top twenty largest airports in the U.S. It is also the second largest hub for Delta airlines.

Talks began in the late 1920s when commercial travel was beginning to take a footing about the possibility of an airport in Wayne County. It was 1930 when the first airplane touched down in the airport, which was just a fraction of the size of today’s sprawling facility. During the war it provided a perfect place for The United States Army Air Forces to base their operations and for the duration of their term the airport was known as “Romulus Field”. The airport did not see any significant growth until a big investment came in at the tail end of the 1940’s and new runways and buildings were added, it was at this point that it became Detroit’s primary airport. The first passenger planes to fly at Detroit-Wayne Major were Pan-Am in 1954. American Airlines started to operate flights out of DTW in 1958.

Tragically in 1987 Romulus was the location of the crash landing of Northwest Airlines Flight 255. The flight that took off out of Detroit Metropolitan Airport was manned by a flight crew that had been with the aircraft for a series of short haul flights. When they originally joined the aircraft in Minneapolis they flew to Saginaw, Michigan, and from there they were headed to Santa Ana, California with intermediate stops scheduled in Romulus at DTW and Phoenix, Arizona. Romulus tutors say that there was nothing unusual reported about any of the flights that day and that the flight’s pilot was a highly experienced captain who had been with the airline for over thirty years. The incident occurred moments after take off when the plane failed to ascend high enough and its left wing struck a light pole. The damage to the wing was detrimental, it erupted into flames and this caused the planes trajectory to dramatically change. The plane could not be controlled and it struck the roof of a rental car building and careered into a road where it struck and killed on impact two car passengers. Before the plane came to a stop it broke apart and burst into flames. All but one of the crew and passengers perished. The sole survivor was a young four year old girl named Cecelia Cichan, sadly her immediate family was onboard the aircraft with her.

Many years later Cecelia spoke of the incident in a documentary entitled “Sole Survivor”. She is one of four sole survivors who speak out in the film about what it is like to be the only survivor in a deadly airline crash.