Eastern Air Lines Flight 66
| Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 | |
|---|---|
 An identical Boeing 727 from Eastern Air Lines |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Stall during landing as a result of Fallbö and wind shear |
| place | John F. Kennedy International Airport , New York , USA |
| date | June 24, 1975 |
| Fatalities | 113 |
| Survivors | 11 |
| Injured | 11 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 727-225 |
| operator | Eastern Air Lines |
| Mark | N8845E |
| Passengers | 116 |
| crew | 8th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
In the accident of Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 on June 24, 1975 with a Boeing 727 approaching John F. Kennedy International Airport , 116 of the 124 occupants died. The cause was a downturn .
The Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 was a regular scheduled flight from New Orleans to New York City , where on 24 June 1975 when landing on New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport , a Boeing 727-200 crashed. It was determined that the crash was caused by wind shear as a result of a falling gust , but the failure of the airport and pilots to recognize the threat of severe weather had also contributed.
On Tuesday, June 24, 1975, Flight 66 was operated on a Boeing 727 with the aircraft registration number N8845E. The flight took off from Moisant Field at 1:19 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) with 124 people on board, including 116 passengers and 8 crew members. The flight was en route from New Orleans to New York City airspace with no reported difficulties.
crew
- The captain was 54-year-old John W. Kleven, who had served with Eastern Air Lines for nearly 25 years and was the captain of the Boeing 727 since July 10, 1968. Kleven had a total of 17,381 flight hours, 2,813 hours of which on the Boeing 727.
- First officer was William Eberhart, 34, who had been with Eastern Air Lines for nearly nine years. He had 5,063 flight hours, 4,327 of which on the Boeing 727.
- The flight engineer was the 31-year-old Gary M. Geurin, who had been with Eastern Air Lines since 1968 and completed 3,910 flight hours, 3,123 of which were on board the Boeing 727.
- A second flight engineer, 31-year-old Peter J. McCullough, was also on board and was in training, with Geurin monitoring his progress. McCullough had been with Eastern Air Lines for four years and had completed 3,602 flight hours, including 676 hours on the Boeing 727.
Course of the accident
A violent thunderstorm hit JFK Airport just as Flight 66 was approaching the New York City area. At 3:35 p.m., the pilots were informed to contact the approach controller at JFK's approach control to receive instructions, whereupon the approach controller placed the aircraft in the approach scheme for runway 22L. At 3:52 p.m., the approach controller warned the crews of all arriving aircraft that the airport had "very light rain showers and haze" and that all approaching aircraft would have to land in accordance with the instrument flight rules . At 3:53 p.m., the pilots of Flight 66 were sent to a different frequency for the final approach to runway 22L.
The air traffic controllers continued to give the crew radar vectors in order to avoid the approaching thunderstorms and insert them into the landing pattern with other traffic. Because of the worsening weather, one of the crew members checked the weather at LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, Queens , the flight's planned alternate airport.
At 15:59, the air traffic controller warned all pilots of "a strong wind shift" on the final approach and informed them that further information would be reported shortly. Although communications on the frequency continued to report deteriorating weather, the Flight 66 pilots continued their approach to runway 22L. At 4:02 p.m. the crew were instructed to ask the JFK tower controller for permission to land.
At 4:05 p.m., on the final approach to runway 22L, the aircraft got into a microburst or so-called windshear environment caused by the severe storms. The aircraft continued its descent until it hit the approach lights about 730 m (2400 feet) from the threshold of the runway. After the initial impact, the aircraft leaned to the left and continued to hit the approach lights until it went up in flames and the wreckage was scattered on Rockaway Boulevard, which runs along the northeastern periphery of the airport.
Of the 124 people on board, 107 passengers and six crew members (including all of the cockpit crew) were killed. The other 11 people on board, including nine passengers and two flight attendants, were injured but survived.
At the time, it was the most fatal crash in United States history . The victims included the American basketball association player Wendell Ladner and Iveson B. Noland, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana .
The accident was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In the further course of the investigation it was found that 10 minutes before the Boeing 727 crash, the pilots of a Douglas DC-8 freighter of the Flying Tiger Line , which landed on runway 22L, reported enormous wind shear on the ground. The pilots warned the tower of the windshear conditions, but other planes continued to land. After the DC-8, an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 that landed on the same runway nearly crashed.
Two more aircraft landed in front of Flight 66. According to the conversation recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, the captain of Flight 66 knew of reports of strong wind shear on the final approach path, but decided to continue flying anyway.
The NTSB published its final report on March 12, 1976, in which it found the following likely cause of the accident:
"The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the likely cause of this accident was the aircraft's encounter with adverse winds coupled with a very strong thunderstorm that was astride the course of the ILS landing course transmitter , causing a rapid rate of descent into the approach lights The flight crew's delay in realizing and correcting the high rate of descent was likely related to the fact that the crew relied on visual cues rather than the displays of the flight instruments. However, the adverse wind conditions may have been too strong for a successful approach and landing even if they had relied on the flight instrument displays and reacted to them quickly. "