Pan Am Flight 799
Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 · Crashed shortly after takeoff
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Cam Ranh International Airport / Cam Ranh Air Base (CXR)
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
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 3
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 707
- Flight
- PA799
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 707
- 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
- N799PA
- Operator
- Pan American World Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)To Cam Ranh International Airport / Cam Ranh Air Base (CXR)
- 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 135: Air taxi & commuter (international military cargo contract)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Misused or failed to use flaps
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Pan Am Flight 799 was an international cargo flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cam Ranh Airport in South Vietnam that crashed on December 26, 1968, near Anchorage, Alaska. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 707 aircraft operated by Pan American World Airways. All three crew members died in the crash.
Accident
The aircraft carried out a regular postal shipment from San Francisco, California to Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam with intermediate stops in Anchorage, Alaska; Tokyo, Japan; and Da Nang, South Vietnam. An interim landing in Anchorage, Alaska was done for refueling and crew change. At 10:54 p.m., Flight 799 took off from San Francisco to Anchorage, and the flight initially took place without any problems. However, since Anchorage Airport was closed due to weather conditions, Captain Moen had to land at nearby Elmendorf Air Force Base, as planned ahead of time. The crew noted that there were problems with the No. 4 engine's thrust-reverser.
Flight 799 was delayed in leaving Elmendorf for two hours. Eventually, at 5:55 a.m., Captain Moen started the engines, and, at 6:02 a.m., the craft was allowed to taxi to the runway: Air Traffic Control gave permission to proceed to Runway 5, but the crew requested Runway 23, as the latter had greater effective length. When the crew were offered a "follow me" truck due to lack of knowledge of the facility, they were pre-occupied with the taxi checklist. Captain Moen had not re-lowered the flaps after raising them to prevent icing, during which time First Officer Markestein remarked "Okay, let's not forget them." As Flight 799 reached the runway's end thanks to the "follow me" truck guiding them there, two Air Force flights took off before them, and then Flight 799 was cleared for takeoff at 6:15 a.m.
Take-off would be performed by First Officer Markestein, and he proceeded to power up all four engines. Immediately after the plane left the ground, the cockpit stick shaker began to vibrate, a safety feature to alert pilots of imminent aerodynamic stall. The aircraft then banked to the right, the right wing touched the ground, and the plane crashed 59.2 seconds after takeoff just beyond Runway 23, exploding from ground impact and being consumed by explosion and fire. All three crew members were killed upon impact.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) came to the conclusion that probable causes of the crash were (a) a defective checklist, (b) the 707's defective takeoff warning hardware, (c) ineffective implementation of Boeing's Service Bulletins, and (d) stress caused by a rushed flight schedule. The immediate mechanical cause was takeoff with flaps retracted, leading to loss of attitudinal control and altitude. NTSB discovered that a lower-flaps item appeared only on the taxi checklist, and was not included in the pre-takeoff checklist (which comes after the taxi checklist) so that it could remind the pilots that flaps must be lowered to ensure safe takeoff. The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) showed that First Officer Markestein lowered flaps during initial reading of the taxi checklist, but Captain Moen then retracted flaps, initially without Markestein's knowledge, in accordance with Pan Am's cold weather operating procedures to prevent icing. Markestein was made aware of Moen's flaps retraction only during the taxi checklist's second reading, but neither officer remembered to revisit flaps, that item being absent from the pre-takeoff checklist. Any time a 707's flaps aren't extended (lowered) for takeoff, upon the crew applying thrust, the takeoff warning system should sound an audible warning signal (horn), but this didn't happen on flight 799, because Pan American had failed to implement Boeing's January 31, 1967 Service Bulletin 2384 recommending the warning system's throttle actuation point be reduced from 42 degrees of thrust-lever advancement to 25 degrees in order to work correctly in cold-weather conditions (where very cold air provides greater lift, as was the case with flight 799, hence less need for thrust): Pan Am's operations engineering group had decided (incorrectly) that Boeing's service bulletin was inapplicable to Pan Am aircraft, for reasons they never documented.
The NTSB recommended that checklists be revised so that items critical for safe flight be accomplished prior to takeoff, and that Boeing Service Bulletin No. 2384 be immediately made mandatory via an FAA airworthiness directive. FAA (belatedly) issued the requested airworthiness directive five months later, on May 28, 1969.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Pan Am Flight 799” (revision 1363711453, 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
ATC T/O DEADLINE,UNFAMILIAR ARPT,INADQT CHECKLIST PRO.INEFECTIVE CTL SERVICE BULLS,INADQT WARN SYS
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Pan Am Flight 799
- Article
- Pan Am Flight 799
- Revision
- 1363711453 · 2026-07-11 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q18543266
- 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
- 19681226P023278
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Pan Am Flight 799" (page 59104984, revision 1363711453); merged with NTSB case NTSB19681226P023278 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19681226P023278: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19681226P023278
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19681226P023278: 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 NTSB19681226P023278: operated under Part 135: Air taxi & commuter (mil contract-cargo-intl)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19681226P023278: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19681226P023278: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Pan Am Flight 799" and NTSB case NTSB19681226P023278, 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.