On March 30, I967, a Delta Air Lines DC-8, registration number N802E, operating as Flight 9877, crashed while landing at New Orleans International Airport (MSY) in Kenner, Louisiana. The flight was to provide crew training for a captain-trainee and a flight engineer. In addition to the two trainees, a flight engineer-instructor was onboard for a routine proficiency check.
At 23:14, the instructor pilot was given a weather briefing and told that the only significant weather was fog at 600 feet and that visibility would be reduced to two miles. The plane departed from the ramp at 00:40 with the captain-trainee in the left seat and the captain instructor in the right. Three minutes later, the crew advised the tower that they were ready for takeoff and would like to circle the airport and land on runway 1.
The plane hit power lines and crashed
The tower then cleared them for takeoff and landing. The eight-year-old DC-8 appeared to perform a standard takeoff and circled the airport in preparation for landing. The tower cleared the plane to land as it watched the aircraft turn for its final approach. As the plane was turning, the degree of the turn became more acute, clipping some power lines 2,300 feet short of the runway’s threshold.
Now out of control, the plane slammed into the ground in a residential area destroying several homes and a motel complex. All five crew members and an observer from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were killed, along with 13 people on the ground.
The plane was performing a simulated two-engine landing
When investigating what had gone wrong and why the plane had crashed, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that pilot error was to blame for the crash. The cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crash revealed that the captain-trainee was performing a simulated two-engine approach.
In its report into the incident, the NTSB said that…