Passengers 69 Fatalities 78 Date 22 July 1973 Injuries (nonfatal) 1 Passenger count 69 | Crew 10 Survivors 1 Number of deaths 78 Survivor 1 | |
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Summary Crash on takeoff, spatial disorientation Site Off Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia Operator Pan American World Airways Similar Aeroflot Flight 3932, Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Fl, Kano air disaster, Aeroflot Flight 141, Ozark Air Lines Flight 809 | ||
Flight PA 816 was an international flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to San Francisco, United States, via Tahiti, French Polynesia and Los Angeles, United States. It was operated by a Pan Am Boeing 707-321B bearing the registration N417PA and named Clipper Winged Racer. On July 22, 1973, at 10:06 P.M. local time, the Boeing 707 took off from Fa'a'ā International Airport in Papeete. Thirty seconds after takeoff, the airliner carrying 79 passengers and crew crashed into the sea.
Accident description
When the aircraft had reached an altitude of 300 ft (91 m), it began to descend, banking to the left. The increasingly excessive bank caused the 707 to crash into the sea and sink off Papeete. Because the turn was made towards the sea at night, no visual references were available. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are believed to have sunk to a depth of about 2,300 ft (700 m), and were never recovered. Although no official cause was determined, it is believed that an instrument failure during a turn may have contributed to the accident.
Neil Campbell, the lone survivor, was a Canadian citizen. At the time he said he had no memory of the actual crash, but "woke up" in the water. Many private vessels sortied from Papeete harbor that night with more joining at first light to aid in the search for survivors. The bodies of several of the flight attendants were the only ones recovered. Speculation at the time at Pan Am on the cause of the accident also considered a catastrophic windshield failure, as well as gyro horizon instrument failure. No conclusive cause was ever determined.