:1, The flight departed from Moisant Field at 13:19 Eastern Daylight Time with 124 people on board, including 116 passengers and 8 crew. Although the NTSB's final report only lists 112 "fatal" injuries, a total of 113 people died as a result of the crash. Microsoft has removed the Birds Eye imagery for this map. If it was more than this, then safety became their primary consideration. :3. Eastern 401 Memorial becomes a reality in time for the 50th anniversary of the crash. Of the 36 simulated approaches that did not end in a crash, 31 ended with a go-around, and only five continued to a safe landing. Vehicle Accidents. Uh, I would suggest that you do, someone said. The automatic terminal information service (ATIS) reported: "Kennedy weather, VFR, sky partially obscured, estimated ceiling 4,000 broken, 5 miles with haze wind 210 at 10, altimeter 30.15, Expect vectors to an ILS runway 22L, landing runway 22L, departures are off 22R " At 15:52:43, the controller transmitted, "All aircraft this frequency, we just went IFR with 2 miles very light rain showers and haze. With First Officer Eberhart at the controls, flight 66 locked on to the instrument landing system and began to descend toward the runway. Untapped New York unearths New York Citys secrets and hidden gems. Portion of a 6pm newscast from the NBC O&O in New York that covered that day's passenger jet crash. According to the conversation recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, the captain of Flight 66 was aware of reports of severe wind shear on the final approach path (which he confirmed by radio to the final-vector controller), but decided to continue nonetheless. Please support me by Subscribing, Commenting, Sharing and Lik. The first officer was 34-year-old William Eberhart, who had been with Eastern Air Lines for nearly nine years. Then the fuselage plowed into the approach lights again, tearing through towers 13 through 17 before slamming into the ground. [1]:12 The flight operated from New Orleans to the New York City area without any reported difficulty. [1][2] Take-off proceeded normally, and the airport control tower prepared to hand over control to the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) on Long Island, noting that Flight 663 was executing a "Dutch seven departure", a routine takeoff procedure that required a series of turns over the Atlantic Ocean to avoid flying over New York City. Following is a tentative list of passengers on Flight 66, issued by Eastern Airlines: ANDRE, M. ANDRE, Mrs. ALEXANDRIDIS. :39. [1]:1, The flight departed from Moisant Field at 13:19 Eastern Daylight Time[b] with 124 people on board, including 116 passengers and 8 crew. Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 was a regularly scheduled flight from New Orleans to New York City that crashed on June 24, 1975 while on approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing 113 of the 124 people on board. The flight crew's delayed recognition and correction of the high descent rate were probably associated with their reliance upon visual cues rather than on flight instrument reference. As the downdraft was gaining speed, the headwind almost entirely vanished, which resulted in the aircraft losing lift and altitude. Rescue workers go about the grim task of collecting bodies of casualties of the crash of an Eastern Airlines 727, flight 66 at Kennedy Airport. Since the bc approach to runway 34 was notamed as inop, the crew continued to runway 16, using 50 of flaps. An Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashes into landing lights at JFK International Airport. Of the 124 people on board, 107 passengers and six crew members (including all four flight crew members) were killed. Join Untapped New Yorks First Trivia Night with The Gotham Center! After crossing Dakon intersection about 55 NM southeast of La Paz, the crew was cleared to descend from FL250 to FL180. 7 approach light tower at an elevation of 27 feet above the mean low-water level and 2,400 feet from the threshold of runway 22L. Winds of Change: The crash of Eastern Airlines flight 66 In the back of the plane, the only area that was substantially intact, the two aft flight attendants realized that they had survived the crash with only moderate injuries. As a direct result of the crash, the FAA helped develop the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, or LLWSAS (LLWAS today), a network of anemometers surrounding an airport that can detect divergent wind directions and velocities and sound a wind shear alarm in the control tower. The circumstances leading to the accident shared a number of similarities with those faced by Eastern 66.) So it was not with great trepidation that the crew of Eastern Airlines flight 66, a regularly scheduled service from New Orleans to New York City, read out the weather report prior to departure: the prediction was for widely scattered thunderstorms with possible light rain after 20:00. All would be fine, they thought; they were scheduled to arrive around 16:00, well before the worst of the weather. The NTSB describes all times in its final report using Eastern Daylight Time. On the basis of yet another NTSB recommendation, the FAA began requiring that all new structures near runways, such as approach lighting piers, be made frangible so that they dont do so much damage to airplanes during accidents. This resulted in none of the pilots realizing that the planes descent rate had more than doubled to 1,500 feet per minute. But by 1975, no appreciable progress on such a system had been made, a fact which the NTSB lamented in its report on the crash of Eastern Airlines flight 66. matter of seconds and soon the impact of the ground shattered the plane An unidentified crewmember responded, "I wonder if they're covering for themselves." With the controllers continuing to vector all inbound traffic onto runway 22L, it would have been very difficult for the crew of Eastern Airlines flight 66 to request a different runway. After many years, the EAL flight 401 is now a reality thanks to the relentless efforts of flight attendants and survivors Beverly, Mercy, Patty, Ron and so many friends. Air traffic controllers today receive detailed weather information gleaned from a variety of sources including many sensors located around the airport, allowing them to quickly make informed decisions about where to direct traffic and what runways to designate for takeoffs and landings. Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 - Wikipedia Failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final 4 minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Neither plane reported the conditions they encountered, believing that the controller was already well aware of the problem. Indeed, right as the wind shear reached its peak intensity, the captain spotted the runway, causing the other crewmembers to divert their attention away from their instruments. Although the crew of flight 66 did increase their approach speed somewhat in response to the report from flight 902, their preparations were inadequate to counteract the incredible strength of the wind shear that they encountered. Then the wind changed direction so rapidly that they lost 24 knots of airspeed in ten seconds and their descent rate increased from 750 feet per minute to 1,215. On the 24th of June 1975, the crew of an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 lined up to land on runway 22L at New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport. Eastern Air Lines Flight 902, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, had abandoned its approach to runway 22L earlier. And in a seminal report that laid the foundations for numerous future safety improvements, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed how the near total absence of a system for dealing with the problem of wind shear led to the loss of 113 lives on a stormy afternoon in New York City.