Pan Am Flight 217
| Pan Am Flight 217 | |
|---|---|
 An identical Boeing 707-321B from Pan Am |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Controlled flight into water through illusion |
| place |
Caribbean Sea , near Caracas , Venezuela.svg){kind=small}
|
| date | December 12, 1968 |
| Fatalities | 51 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type |
 Boeing 707-321B
|
| operator |
Pan American World Airways
|
| Mark |
N494PA
|
| Surname | Clipper Malay |
| Departure airport |
John F. Kennedy International Airport , New York , United States
|
| Destination airport |
Caracas Airport , Venezuela
|
| Passengers | 42 |
| crew | 9 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
Pan Am Flight 217 (Flight number: PA217 , call sign: CLIPPER 217 ) was a line intercontinental flight of Pan American World Airways from New York City to Caracas . On December 12, 1968, the Boeing 707-321B N494PA used on this flight was flown into the sea shortly before landing because the pilots had succumbed to an illusion. All 51 occupants of the machine were killed in the accident.
plane
In the crashed plane, it was a Boeing 707-321B, the beginning of 1968 at the plant of Boeing on the Boeing Field in Washington state than the 688. Boeing 707 off the production line with the serial number 19696 was finally assembled and at the time of the accident was nine months old. The first flight of the machine took place on March 7, 1968, on March 28, 1968 it was delivered to Pan Am, where it went into operation with the aircraft registration N494PA . The machine was given the name Clipper Malay . The four-engine long-range narrow-body aircraft was equipped with four turbofan engines of the type Pratt & Whitney Jt3d-3B equipped.
Crew and passengers
42 passengers had taken the non-stop flight from New York City to Caracas. There was also a crew of nine on board. The three-person cockpit crew consisted of the flight captain Sidney Stillwaugh, who had 24,000 hours of flight experience, of which he had completed 6,737 hours in the Boeing 707, the first officer William John Canell and the flight engineer Richard Hutchinson Titus Jr. The six-person cabin crew included the purser Alfred Carlos Pérez Kruger, the purser Heidi Capian, as well as the flight attendants Marianne Lynn Ambery, Franciska Catherine Buyers, Eva Johansson and Katherine Mary Kane.
the accident
After a three-hour flight, the plane was approaching Simón Bolivar Airport in Caracas at night when radio contact was lost at 10:02 p.m. local time, before reaching the mainland and just one minute before the planned landing.
Rescue operation
Search teams of the Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela were dispatched to the Caribbean Sea shortly afterwards to search for the machine. The wreck was found 18.4 km north of the coast in front of the destination airport. A few debris was found floating in the water. It was found that the machine was in an unrestricted controllable state when it was flown against the surface of the sea ( controlled flight into water ). The rescue operation was made more difficult by the fact that there were sharks in the water around the accident site. When it was reported that 23 bodies had been found two days after the accident, it was said that individual bodies had already been mutilated by sharks. The Pan Am stated that Captain Stillwaugh had reported no problems prior to the accident.
Victim
Most of the victims were Venezuelans, including the oceanographer Rafael Antonio Curra and Miss Venezuela of 1962, Olga Antonetti , who was traveling with her young daughter Liliana Dugarte.
root cause
After investigating the accident, the investigators concluded that the cockpit crew had most likely flown the machine into the sea after an optical illusion. The pilots used the lights of the hilltop town of Maiquetía , which they took to illuminate the airport. This probably led to a premature descent and the collision with the sea surface. The difficult visibility due to the approach carried out at night was probably a contributing factor in the accident. With the announcement of the cause of the accident, first reports by eyewitnesses were refuted, according to which the machine had fallen into the sea as a fireball.
swell
- Accident report B707-321B, N494PA in the Aviation Safety Network
- Crash of a Boeing 707-321B off Caracas: 51 killed , B3A - Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives
- Massive Search Continues for crash victims , The Moring Record , December 14, 1968. Page 5.
- Andrés Correa Guatarasma: Venezolanos recordaron 50 años de la tragedia del vuelo Pan at NY-Caracas , El Universal , December 28, 2018.
- Pan Am Flight 217, 'Clipper Malay' - Franciska Buyers remembered
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Sharks Hinder Work Efforts for 50 Victims of Airliner Crash , St. Petersburg Times , December 14, 1968. Pages 1A and 8A.