Western Airlines Flight 2605, nicknamed the "Night Owl", was an international scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City, Mexico. On October 31, 1979, at 5:42 a.m. CST (UTC−06:00), the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed at Mexico City International Airport in fog after landing on a runway that was closed for maintenance. Of the 89 people on board, 72 were killed, in addition to a maintenance worker who died when the plane struck his vehicle.Flight 2605 remains the deadliest air accident to have occurred in Mexico City. The event is the third-deadliest aviation accident to occur on Mexican soil after the crashes of two Boeing 727s: the 1969 crash of Mexicana de Aviación Flight 704 and Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940 in 1986. The crash was one of three fatal DC-10 accidents in 1979, having occurred just over five months after the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and less than a month before the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 on Mount Erebus in Antarctica.