Eastern Air Lines Flight 304, a

Douglas DC-8 The Douglas DC-8 (sometimes McDonnell Douglas DC-8) is a long-range narrow-body airliner built by the American Douglas Aircraft Company. After losing the May 1954 US Air Force tanker competition to the Boeing KC-135, Douglas announced in Ju ...

flying from

New Orleans International Airport Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport ( French: ''Aéroport international Louis Armstrong de La Nouvelle-Orléans'') is an international airport under Class B airspace in Kenner, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is ...

Washington Dulles International Airport Washington Dulles International Airport , typically referred to as Dulles International Airport, Dulles Airport, Washington Dulles, or simply Dulles ( ), is an international airport in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Eastern United States, loc ...

, crashed on February 25, 1964. All 51 passengers and 7 crew were killed. Among the dead were American singer and actor Kenneth Spencer and

Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux (26 February 1904 – 25 February 1964) was a French women's and human rights activist. During World War II, she was a member of the French Resistance and orchestrated her husband's release from Buchenwald concentratio ...

, a women's and human rights activist and member of the French delegation to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

Sequence of events

Flight 304 left New Orleans International Airport for Atlanta at 2:01 a.m. Central Standard Time on the second leg of a flight from

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, with intermediate stops at

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, and

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

The aircraft disappeared from radar nine minutes after takeoff, at 2:10 a.m. 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 Lake Pontchartrain ( ) is an estuary located in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It covers an area of with an average depth of . Some shipping channels are kept deeper through dredging. It is roughly oval in shape, about from west ...

, 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 In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to a laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers, with no disruption between ...

, 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 A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to as a "black box", an outdated name which has ...

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 A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplan ...

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.

Victims

American singer Kenneth Spencer was also killed in the crash.

References

External links

*
NTSB Brief
about the crash. {{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1964 Airliner accidents and incidents in Louisiana Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1964 1964 in Louisiana 304 20th century in New Orleans Accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-8 February 1964 events in the United States

Sequence of events

Investigation

Victims

See also

References

External links