Eastern Air Lines Flight 66

Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 was a regularly scheduled flight from New Orleans to New York City that crashed on June 24, 1975, when a Boeing 727-225 went on approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing 113 of the 124 people on board. The accident was determined to be caused by wind shear stemming from a microburst, but the failure of the airport and the flight crew to recognize the severe weather hazard was also a contributing factor.

Background

Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from New Orleans International Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens, New York. On Tuesday June 24, 1975, Flight 66 was operated using a Boeing 727 trijet, registration number N8845E.

The flight departed from New Orleans at 13:19 EDT with 124 people on board, including 116 passengers and eight crew members. The flight operated from New Orleans to the New York City area without any reported difficulty.

The flight crew consisted of the following:

The captain was 54-year-old John W. Kleven, who had been serving with Eastern Air Lines for nearly 25 years and had been a 727 captain since July 10, 1968. Kleven had a total of 17,381 flight hours, including 2,813 hours on the Boeing 727.

The first officer was 34-year-old William Eberhart, who had been with Eastern Air Lines for nearly nine years. He had 5,063 flight hours, of which 4,327 were on the Boeing 727.

The flight engineer was 31-year-old Gary M. Geurin, who had been with Eastern Air Lines since 1968 and had 3,910 flight hours, 3,123 of which were on the Boeing 727.

The second flight engineer, 33-year-old Peter J. McCullough, had been with Eastern Air Lines for four years and had 3,602 military flying hours and 1,767 civil flying hours, including 676 hours on the Boeing 727. He was administering a required flight check on Geurin.

Accident

A severe thunderstorm arrived at JFK just as Flight 66 was approaching the New York City area. At 15:35, the crew was instructed to contact the JFK approach controller for instructions, and the approach controller sequenced it into the approach pattern for Runway 22L. At 15:52, the approach controller warned all incoming aircraft that the airport was experiencing "very light rain showers and haze" and zero visibility and that all approaching aircraft must land using instrument flight rules.

At 15:53, Flight 66 was switched to another frequency for final approach to Runway 22L. Controllers sent the crew radar vectors to operate around the approaching thunderstorms and sequence into the landing pattern with other traffic. Because of the deteriorating weather, one of the crew members checked the weather at LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, Queens, the flight's alternate airport. At 15:59, the controller warned all aircraft of "a severe wind shift" on final approach and advised that more information would be reported shortly. Although communications on the frequency continued to report deteriorating weather, Flight 66 continued on its approach to Runway 22L. At 16:02, the crew was told to contact the JFK tower controller for landing clearance.

At 16:05, on final approach to Runway 22L, the aircraft entered a microburst or wind shear environment caused by the severe storms. The aircraft continued its descent until it struck the approach lights approximately 2400 ft from the threshold of the runway. After the initial impact, the plane banked to the left and continued to strike the approach lights until it burst into flames and scattered the wreckage along Rockaway Boulevard, which runs along the northeast perimeter of the airport. Of the 124 people on board, 107 passengers and six crew members (including all four cockpit crew members) were killed. The other 11 people on board, including nine passengers and two flight attendants, were injured but survived.

The accident was the deadliest single-aircraft accident in United States history to date, and would remain so until the crash of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 on September 25, 1978 in San Diego, which killed 135 persons on the Boeing 727, and nine more on the ground and in the Cessna which collided with it. This unfortunate record was surpassed only eight months later, with the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 on May 25, 1979, which killed 273 and still stands as America's deadliest. The victims of the Eastern crash included New York Nets player Wendell Ladner, Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana Iveson B. Noland, and construction executive Saul Horowitz Jr.