When Eastern Airlines Flight 66 Crashed Moments from Landing at JFK International Airport, Part 2

Send us a text

This is Part 2 of 2.  On a summer day in 1975, Eastern Airlines Flight 66 crashed just yards away from its intended runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport near New York City. Witnesses at the time, said the plane exploded in midair, but this was not the case. The plane had flown through a thunderstorm and had been shoved to the ground by a microburst. In 1975, thunderstorms were not well understood and their potential for severe damage had not been realized. Updrafts, downdrafts and microbursts were terms that had not yet been embraced by meteorologists or aviation safety experts, but this crash would change their minds. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, as well as the AAR (Aircraft Accident Report) from the NTSB, provided many of the clues to what happened, but not all. What happened in the moments before this crash? What did the air traffic controllers tell the crew? What did the pilots and controllers not know, that could've prevented this crash? Why was a tornado expert summoned to investigate this crash, and how did his findings impact aviation safety in the decades to come? Episode 8 of "Radar Contact Lost: The Podcast" answers all these questions and more.