Eastern Air Lines Flight 304
Eastern Air Lines Flight 304, was a scheduled flight between Mexico City International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport with intermediate stops at New Orleans International Airport, Atlanta International Airport, and Dulles International Airport. On February 25, 1964, the Douglas DC-8 performing the flight crashed into Lake Pontchartrain approximately 19 miles northeast of New Orleans International Airport. All fifty-one passengers and seven crew were killed. Among the dead were American singer and actor Kenneth Spencer and Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, a women's and human rights activist and member of the French delegation to the United Nations.
Aircraft and crew
The accident aircraft was a Douglas DC-8-21, registration N8607. It was delivered to Eastern Air Lines on May 22, 1960, and had accumulated a total of 11,340 flight hours at the time of the accident. It was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT4A-9 engines.The crew consisted of Captain William B. Zeng, First Officer Grant R. Newby, Flight Engineer Harry Idol and four flight attendants. Captain Zeng had accumulated 19,160 flight hours, of which 916 were in the DC-8. First Officer Newby had accumulated 10,734 flight hours, of which 2,404 were in the DC-8. Flight Engineer Idol had accumulated 8,300 flight hours, of which 1,069 were in the DC-8.
Sequence of events
Flight 304 left New Orleans International Airport for Atlanta at 02:00 CST on the second leg of a flight from Mexico City to New York City, with intermediate stops at New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. The aircraft disappeared from radar approximately five minutes after takeoff, at 02:05 local. Good visibility and calm winds prevailed at the time of the accident, although light rain was also falling. The Coast Guard and other searchers spotted wreckage hours later around dawn in Lake Pontchartrain, about northeast of New Orleans.Investigation
The subsequent investigation concluded that the jet crashed into Lake Pontchartrain en route due to "degradation of aircraft stability characteristics in turbulence, because of abnormal longitudinal trim component positions."The water was only deep, yet only 60 percent of the wreckage was recovered because the breakup was so extensive.
The flight data recorder tape was too damaged to help the investigation. Instead, investigators used the maintenance records of the crashed aircraft and of other DC-8s, to conclude that the pilots had trimmed the horizontal stabilizer to the full nose-down position, to counter the excessive nose-up attitude that, in turn, was caused by a malfunctioning pitch trim compensator that had extended too far. Once the upset occurred, it was not possible to trim the horizontal stabilizer back to the nose-up position, because of the severe G-forces generated by the crew's pulling back on the yoke after the upset.