Eastern Air Lines Flight 304

Eastern Air Lines Flight 304, a Douglas DC-8 flying from New Orleans International Airport to Washington Dulles International Airport, 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, a women's and human rights activist and member of the French delegation to the United Nations.

Aircraft and crew
The aircraft involved was a Douglas DC-8-21, registration N8607. It was delivered to Eastern Air Lines on May 22, 1960, and had accumulated a total of 11,340 flight hours at the time of the accident. It was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT4A-9 engines.

The crew consisted of Captain William B. Zeng (age 47), First Officer Grant R. Newby (39), Flight Engineer Harry Idol (39) and four flight attendants. Captain Zeng was a highly experienced pilot, having accumulated 19,160 flight hours, of which 916 were in the DC-8. First Officer Newby had accumulated 10,734 flight hours, of which 2,404 were in the DC-8. Flight Engineer Idol had accumulated 8,300 flight hours, of which 1,069 were in the DC-8.

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 to New York City, with intermediate stops at New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. 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, about 20 mi 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, because of abnormal longitudinal trim component positions."

"At least 32 of the passengers were making the through trip. Fourteen got on in New Orleans, while 14 were pass-riding Eastern employees. The four-engined plane, capable of carrying 126 passengers, was due in Atlanta at 3:59 a.m., at Dulles Airport in Washington at 5:53 a.m. and at Kennedy Airport in New York at 7:10 a.m.

The victims included Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, a member of the French delegation to the United Nations, who was active in women's and human rights activities of the world body. The pilot...with Eastern 21 years, had flown over five million miles. The co-pilot...had almost two million miles on his flight log.

Coast Guard recovered parts of the wreckage, clothing, luggage and what was described as bits of bodies from a wide spread area centered 6 mi south of the north shore of the lake and about 4 mi east of the 23 mi-long Lake Pontchartrain causeway. A [United States] Coast Guard pilot said there were indications that the plane had exploded either in the air or on impact. Eastern said that the crew had made the routine checks after take-off and that no alarm had been given. An experienced Eastern pilot said the jet had probably reached a height of 16,000 feet shortly after it had got over the lake."

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.