When The Pilots Aren't In Control Anymore | The Crash Of Eastern Air Lines Flight 304

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This is the story of eastern airlines flight 304, It was 1964 the 25th of february to be exact and an eastern airlines DC-8 had a busy day ahead of it. The flight was to start in mexico city it would then make its way to new orleans, atlanta washington and then finally its destination new york city. The plane arrived at mexico city at 10:12 pm the previous day, the crew that flew the plane in noted that the plane's pitch trim compensator was inoperative. The pitch trim compensator or the PTC applied nose up controls through the elevator system. The whole system consisted of electrical actuators spring loaded linkages and a computer. The DC 8 needed the PTC to improve the handling of the DC-8 at low altitude high speed regimes of flight. The PTC is used to prevent the plane from nosing down at high mach numbers. The PTC at least on the DC-8 was directly connected to the control columns and so at low at takeoff and landing the PTC system is not used. The inoperative PTC system was to be fixed at kennedy international airport.

With all this in mind an IFR was filed and theyd be cruising at a lower speed than usual. The plane made it to new orleans at 12:51 am on the 25th of february. With customs and everything taken care of, the plane departed New Orleans at 1:59 am. As the plane climbed into the rainy cloudy night the controller handed the plane off to departure control. The departure controller asked the crew to fly 030 degrees, the controller at this time was in contact with new orleans air route traffic control center or ARTCC, new orleans artcc had flight 304 on its scopes and the plane was successfully handed off 2:02 am A transmission went out to flight 304 “Contact new orleans center radar, frequency 123.6, now” “ok” came the reply. Minutes passed, the plane should have checked in with new orleans center by now, but no it hadn't. The center controller contacted the departure controller to see if the departure controller gave the crew the correct frequencies, as they talked they both looked at their radar scopes neither of them could find flight 304 on it. The radar contact of eastern airlines flight 304 was no where to be seen. Emergency protocols were initiated and they began a search from the last known point of the plane, A helicopter combing the search area saw an oil slick in Lake Pontchartrain, floating debris confirmed it they found the wreck of flight 304 8 miles from the new orleans VORTAC, none of the 58 people on the plane made it.

The plane had impacted the lake and a massive operation to raise the wreckage was started immediately. A lot of the bits and pieces of the airplane was separated out from the sand and silt of the lake bed, washed and then sent to a hangar for storage, they also recovered major parts of the airplane like the engines. The engines were damaged, they showed signs of a high speed impact with the water but no pre impact damage, the fuel system was also in working order.

But the investigators were facing an uphil task, a lot of the plane was still in the lake and they didnt have the CVR, which was a big blow to the investigators, so for this investigation theyd have to extrapolate what happened to the plane from data that they had for other DC8s. They got into a dc8 simulator and then performed a number of take offs under the conditions of the 25th of february and they cross checked this data with the data from actual dc8 take offs, without the data from the flight recorders this was their best hope of filling in the blanks when it came to the last few moments of flight 304.

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