Eastern Air Lines Flight 304
Douglas DC-8 · Loss of control caused by pitch trim failure
From Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 58 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 58
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Douglas DC-8
- Flight
- EA304
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-8
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8607
- Operator
- Eastern Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)To John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled international passenger service)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Uncontrolled descent
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Material failure
- Systems › Horizontal stabilizer drive system
- Weather › Turbulence, associated w/clouds and/or thunderstorms
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
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.
Sequence of events
Flight 304 left New Orleans International Airport for Atlanta at 02:00 CST (local) 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 20 mi northeast of New Orleans.
Investigation and cause
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 20 ft 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.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Eastern Air Lines Flight 304” (revision 1339308892, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
AIRCRAFT CRASHED IN LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN WITH DISINTEGRATING FORCE.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Eastern Air Lines Flight 304
- Article
- Eastern Air Lines Flight 304
- Revision
- 1339308892 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5329958
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19640225P000174
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Eastern Air Lines Flight 304" (page 11818987, revision 1339308892); merged with NTSB case NTSB19640225P000174 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled intl passg service)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19640225P000174: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Eastern Air Lines Flight 304" and NTSB case NTSB19640225P000174, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.