East Flight Flight Flight 66 is a regularly scheduled flight from New Orleans to New York City which crashed on June 24, 1975 as it approached John F. Kennedy International Airport of New York, killing 113 of 124 people aboard. The accident was confirmed to be caused by wind caused by a microburst, but the failure of airports and crew to recognize severe weather hazards is also a contributing factor.
Video Eastern Air Lines Flight 66
Flight information
Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 is a regularly scheduled passenger flight from New Orleans, Louisiana's Moisant Field (since renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens, New York. On June 24, 1975, Flight 66 operated using a Boeing 727 trijet, registration number N8845E .
Flights depart from Moisant Square at 1:19 pm Eastern Daylight with 124 people in it, including 116 passengers and 8 crew members. The flight was operating from New Orleans to the New York City area without any reported difficulties.
Maps Eastern Air Lines Flight 66
Crash
A great thunderstorm arrived at JFK airport just as Flight 66 approached the New York City area. At 15:35, Flight 66 was told to contact the JFK approach handler for instructions, and controlled the approach sorted in Flight 66 into an approach pattern for JFK 22L runway. At 15:52, the approach handler warned all of the incoming aircraft that the airport had "very thin rain and fog" and was not visible, and all approaching planes had to land using instrument flight rules.
At 15:53, Flight 66 was diverted to another frequency for the final approach to JFK 22L runway. The controller continues to provide Flight 66 radar vectors to operate around approaching storms and sequences to landing patterns with other traffic. Due to the worsening weather, one of the crew members checked the weather at LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, Queens, an alternative airport flight. At 15:59, the controller alerted all aircraft "severe wind shifts" to the final approach, and suggested that more information would be reported soon. Although communication on frequencies continues to report deteriorating weather, Flight 66 continues its approach to the 22L grounding. At 16:02, Flight 66 was told to contact the JFK tower controller for a landing clearance.
At 16:05, while on the final approach to the 22L platform, the aircraft entered a micro wind or storm environment caused by a severe storm. The plane continued to decline until it started attacking the lights approaching approximately 2,400 feet (730 m) from the 22L grounding threshold. After the initial impact, the plane veered left and continued to attack the landing lights until it burned and spread ruins along Rockaway Boulevard, which stretches across the perimeter of the northeast of the airport. Of the 124 people in it, 107 passengers and 6 crew members were killed in the crash. 11 others in the plane, including 9 passengers and 2 flight attendants, were injured but survived.
At that time, it was the single most deadly single plane crash in US history. The victims included American Basketball Association players, Wendell Ladner; and Rt. Pdt. Iveson B. Noland, bishop of Louisiana Episcopal Diocese.
Investigations and results
The accident was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). When the investigation took place, it was found that 10 minutes before Flight 66 crashed, the jet landing of Flying Tiger Line Douglas DC-8 aircraft on the 22L runway reported an enormous wind on the ground. The pilot warned the wind shear tower, but another plane continued to land. After DC-8, Landhe Lines Lockheed L-1011 landed on the same runway almost falling. Two other aircraft landed before Flight 66. According to a conversation recorded by the Voice of the Cockpit Voice, Flight 66 captained a report of a very strong wind in the path of the final approach (which he confirmed via radio to the Late Vector controller) but decided to continue.
The NTSB published its final report on March 12, 1976. In its report, NTSB determined the following possible causes of accidents:
The National Transportation Safety Council determined that the probable cause of this accident was a meeting of high-flying aircraft associated with powerful lightning storms that lie outside the ILS localizer pathway, resulting in high levels of descent into non-frangible approach tower lights. The recognition and correction of delayed flight crew against high bloodline rates may be related to their dependence on visual cues rather than on aviation instrument references. However, strong winds may be too severe for successful approaches and landings even if they are dependable and respond quickly to aviation instrument indications.
The NTSB also concluded that the failure of air traffic controllers or flight crew to cancel the landing, given the poor weather conditions, also contributed to the accident:
Contribute to accidents is the continuous use of runway 22L when it should be apparent to air traffic control and crew personnel that severe weather hazards exist along the approach path.
Legacy
This accident led to the development of a low-level early warning system by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 1976, installed at 110 FAA airports between 1977 and 1987. The crash also led to the discovery of downbursts, a weather phenomenon that creates vertical sliding winds and poses a danger to landed the plane, which eventually sparked decades of downburst and microburst phenomena and their effects on the plane.
The concept of downbursts was not understood when Flight 66 crashed. During the investigation, meteorologist Ted Fujita worked with NTSB and the aviation safety department of Eastern Airlines to study the weather phenomenon encountered by Flight 66. Fujita identified "strong downdrafts cells" during a storm that caused aircraft to pass through "great difficulty in landing". Fujita names this phenomenon as "downburst cells" and decides that a plane can be "seriously affected" by "falling air currents". Fujita proposed new methods for detecting and identifying downbursts, including the installation of additional weather monitoring equipment on the runway edge runway approach, and also proposed the development of new procedures to immediately communicate downburst detection to oncoming aircraft.
Fujita's downburst theory was not immediately accepted by the aviation meteorology community. However, the Pan Am 759 Flight crash in 1982 and Delta Airlines Flight 191 in 1985 prompted the aviation community to reevaluate and eventually accepted Fujita's downburst theory and began researching downburst/microburst detection and avoidance systems in earnest.
See also
- Flight security
- Delta Air Lines Flight 191
- Iveson B. Noland
- List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
- Flight Pan Am 759
- 1956 Airport Kano BOAC Argonaut crashes
Footnote
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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