When Lightning Struck Twice: Eastern Air Lines Flight 301 and 304

Two Wild Rides

(Disclaimer: All dialog in the following is embellishment of the author. In the early Jet Age, cockpit voice recorders were not yet required on commercial aircraft. I have done my best to provide accurate portrayals based on standard procedures.)

The year is 1963. You are First Officer on Eastern Air Lines Flight 301, flying a DC-8 from New York City to Mexico City. Forced to land in Houston by unexpected storms and headwinds to refuel, you are now less than two hours from the final destination at Benito Juárez International Airport.

As you climb out from Houston International Airport, the altimeter reads 20,000 feet. Continuing the trend from the first leg of the flight, you are threading a line between two thunderheads, aiming for the blue sky beyond their dark towers. Even in November, the Texas heat means storm cells are commonplace.

(Delta Airlines DC-8 in flight; I couldn’t find a good open-license shot of an Eastern DC-8 in the air. Plus, I’m an absolute sucker for that beautiful early-days Delta livery.)

Your headset crackles. “Eastern 301, reports of heavy turbulence on your expected flight path,” the ground controller relays.

“Eastern 301, acknowledge heavy turbulence reported ahead,” Captain French responds, fingers already in motion. He flicks the Fasten Seatbelt Sign switch to the On position and keys the PA.

He gives the usual warning. “Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts.”

And then all routine and standard operating procedure goes flying out the window.

The aircraft is jolted upward, the altimeter spinning in the opposite direction of the airspeed indicator. The angle of attack is too steep and airspeed is dropping to zero. If this continues, Flight 301 will stall.

Even amid the most severe turbulence you’ve ever experienced, the immediate threat has a well-established solution. You push the yoke forward, activating the flight elevators.

“We’re stalling,” Captain French calls out, voice only showing the slightest strain beyond his normal calm. “Nose down.”

“Nose down,” you confirm, matching his composure.

But the DC-8 continues climbing. Airspeed has now hit zero. The altimeter needle is holding steady, the pendulum at the very edge of its swing.

And then the pendulum reverses.

“Nose down,” Captain French repeats, voice slightly more tense. “We’re dropping here.”

“I’m pushing it down,” you reply, uncertain if the growing pit in your stomach is from the start of the fall or alarm as the flight controls ignore your inputs.

You push the control column all the way forward, certain this will force the nose over so you can regain lost airspeed and lift.

The aircraft finally responds.

All at once, blue sky is replaced by tan and brown in the cockpit windshield. The altimeter is no longer edging down. It’s spinning wildly. Airspeed is now increasing at a fever pitch.

The stall has been replaced by a dive. And the pit in your stomach has expanded to a gaping maw as the aircraft enters freefall.

Unseen by you and, frankly, not your primary concern as you descend rapidly out of 20,000 feet, pandemonium has broken out in the cabin. Passengers who hadn’t reacted to Captain French’s warning are thrown into the ceiling.

In the early Jet Age, seatbelts are only worn when required. Nor are overhead bins secured during flight, sending jackets, luggage, and the contents of handbags flying into the cabin where they are joined by dozens of cigarette butts from the onboard ashtrays. Smoking is also commonplace in the early days of jet aviation.

Naturally, your focus is not on passenger comfort at the moment, but on the fact that, if nothing changes in the next 30 seconds, crew and passengers alike will slam into the west Texas countryside.

“Nose up,” Captain French calls out.

An unnecessary command as you’ve already pulled back on the yoke. But the control column stops halfway to your gut, and no amount of pulling will force it any further. The DC-8’s fly-by-cable controls mean the only thing opposing the G-forces acting on the plummeting aircraft is the pilot.

Your own brute strength has to overcome 300 pounds of force, and that force is increasing with every stuttering breath as you grit your teeth against the fire building in your arms and shoulders.

Meanwhile, the elevators have only returned to a neutral position, allowing the dive to continue unabated.

Only a trio of frantic heartbeats have passed since this wild descent began, but already the altimeter has whipped past 15,000 feet.

“Help me,” you groan, hoping the captain’s added strength along with each of your increasing adrenaline levels will be enough to overcome the inertia.

Captain French seizes the yoke on his side. You feel the column budge as his might is added to the battle.

But only slightly. The nose inches up slightly, but the ground still fills your windscreen. The aircraft is still plummeting toward 10,000 feet.

Nothing is changing fast enough.

You fight the depleting oxygen levels from your leviathan struggle as you scan all your thousands of hours of flight time, every instruction course you took, every manual you read. There must be something more you can do.

But nothing comes to mind, and the altimeter passes 10,000 feet as the yoke shifts another inch.

Sweat is now crowning your forehead, and the captain sounds almost as ragged as he calls out, “Thrust reversers.”

That, you can look to all your past training and flight hours to evaluate. In short, it’s a lunatic solution. Thrust reversers are used to slow the aircraft once it has touched down on the runway. They’re not designed to be used in flight. In normal operations, deploying thrust reversers midair is guaranteed to damage the aircraft, if not destroy it.

Yet, you’re already staring death in the face with each glance at the field growing wider in the windshield. And you have no other ideas.

“Do it,” you grunt, not sure if the captain was waiting for your agreement or not.

Captain French takes his right hand off the yoke and pushes all thrust reverser levers to the On position.

The aircraft shudders as they activate, and for a moment, you wonder if this desperate roll of the dice will end up being the final nail.

But the altimeter’s spin is easing. Airspeed is dropping. The yoke still feels heavy, but now more sluggish than brick wall. It starts to inch back again as you apply renewed force, straining every muscle fiber to its fullest.

“It’s working,” you gasp.

Unbidden, French moves his right hand back to his control column and rejoins the struggle fully. Now, finally, the field is shifting out of view. And then, as the yoke meets both your guts and sweat drips freely onto your starched shirt, the first hint of blue appears at the top of your windscreen.

By well-honed instinct, you ease the control column forward before you enter another climb and stall out anew. Brute strength no longer needed, Captain French lets go of his yoke and shuts down the thrust reversers.

You both watch the instruments closely, scanning for any signs of additional problems or abnormalities as the aircraft levels off at 5,000 feet.

None appear.

Except the output on the Number 3 Engine is showing 0 RPMs.

The head flight attendant enters the cockpit, confirming what the instruments show: the inboard engine on the right wing is gone. A passenger witnessed it tearing free and hurtling backward as they pulled out of the dive.

Still, it’s a small price to pay as the aircraft appears to have held together otherwise.

Later, you’ll learn that wayward engine struck the tail as it flew back. But the DC-8’s tough streak continues, flying for another hour as you coax the injured bird to the long runway at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

Defying belief, the emergency landing, performed while missing an engine and with a dented tail section, is described by witnesses as “silken smooth.”

All 128 passengers and crew survive the saga of Eastern Air Lines Flight 301. You have achieved what had seemed impossible at the most desperate moments of the unplanned maneuver.

A once in a lifetime event for most pilots.

And an event you’ll face a second time a short three months later.

Once again, you find yourself behind the control column of an Eastern Air Lines DC-8, piloting Flight 304 on the return leg of the same NYC-Mexico City route you were flying in November.

Once again, turbulence is reported in the area by preceding flights.

Once again, you find yourself in an unexpected dive.

This time, armed with hard-won experience, you don’t hesitate. Thrust reversers are activated.

But unlike those harrowing moments over west Texas, the dive begins shortly after takeoff from Moisant International Airport in New Orleans. Likely below 10,000 feet.

In the minutes after 2:00 am on February 25, 1964, witnesses around Lake Ponchartrain report a fire-like glow on the lake’s surface, with several reporting the sound of an explosion or “terrible scream.”

All 58 souls onboard Eastern Air Lines Flight 304 are lost.

Including First Officer Grant Newby whose perspective I used to bring this saga to life.

Aftermath and Findings

As you’ve likely surmised by now, this is not a work of historical fiction. Both of these flights happened.

One ended in miracle. The other ended in tragedy. Both had the same First Officer flying the aircraft at the time.

Unfortunately, Cockpit Voice Recorders would not be required aboard commercial aircraft in the US for another two-and-a-half years, and the Flight Data Recorder for Flight 304 was too damaged to provide any useful information.

What is known from the wreckage that was recovered from the lakebed is that the flight hit the surface intact, precluding a midair breakup. Recovered engines also indicated that the thrust reversers had been deployed.

Not much else is known about the last moments of First Officer Grant Newby and the others onboard. Including what exactly precipitated the dive toward Lake Ponchartrain.

That does not, however, stop investigators from attempting to identify what may have caused the issue. They found, among mechanical issues with the tail assembly specific to the crashed aircraft, a key finding when it came to all DC-8s.

We all understand what overcorrecting is when it comes to a system we operate via a series of inputs every day: our car. You see something in the road ahead that you want to avoid. You start to move the wheel, but the car isn’t responding fast enough. So you move it harder.

Suddenly, you’re steering too far in the opposite direction, so you slew the wheel back in the other direction. Hard. Now you’re hurtling back toward the obstacle you wanted to avoid. Another hard correction back in the original direction.

I once saw a perfect demonstration of the concept by a car in the lane next to me. They veered right a little, then a little more left, then more right, more left. The oscillations concluded when they veered completely out of the lane, onto the shoulder, and struck the highway divider.

Airplanes and cars are obviously not synonymous, but overcorrecting on the steering wheel is a good way to think about Pilot-Induced Oscillations. PIOs are, in essence, overcorrections on the control column leading to larger and larger deviations. This can occur because often, pilot inputs don’t produce immediate responses. It takes the aircraft longer to react than we would like. In the delay, we assume that the delay indicates we are not sending a strong enough input. We push forward more. We pull back harder.

Then, when the aircraft responds, it responds more than we intended. So we overcorrect in the opposite direction. Oscillations.

This is why I placed such a focus on the yoke prior to the start of the dive in my narrative of Flight 301. It is more than likely that an overcorrection to push the nose down when initial inputs did not appear to be having any effect put the DC-8 into its rapid descent.

As to whether PIOs played a role in Flight 304’s loss, it is certainly possible. As indicated, conditions were similar. We even saw evidence of a similar reaction to arrest the aircraft’s descent. Not to mention, the same pilot was flying the plane.

Not that this narrative is intended to lay the blame at Grant Newby’s feet. Quite the opposite. The findings on PIOs and how the DC-8 posed a particular risk of them only came after the crash. He, along with Captain French, achieved the near impossible and saved 126 lives on top of their own.

When it comes to Flight 304, there was evidence of mechanical failures in the tail section that likely contributed to the tragic end. Unfortunately, these are beyond the scope of my ability to adequately summarize. You can check out this excellent YouTube documentary for a good overview of these and the investigation that followed:

Preserving the Record

On that subject, Flight 304 has a fairly bare bones Wikipedia page devoted to the crash as well as a handful of YouTube videos from aviation enthusiasts like the one above. Flight 301, in contrast, has no web presence at all. It is, suffice it to say, largely forgotten by time. And by consequence, Captain Mel French and First Officer Grant Newby are largely forgotten as well.

As soon as I read about Flight 301 and the insane-under-any-other-circumstance action of deploying the thrust reversers in midair, I knew this tale would live with me forever.

Only to then be even more gobsmacked by the fact that Grant Newby once again found himself at the controls of a plummeting aircraft and tried the same tactic only months later. On the same route, no less. It’s equal parts tragic and ironic.

So I owe a great debt to the book that gave voice to these forgotten sagas of the early Jet Age: Deadly Turbulence. Author Steve Pollock clearly has a passion for aviation and put that passion into chronicling the lessons learned as the first Boeing 707s, Boeing 720s, and Douglas DC-8s took to the skies over the United States.

Without Pollock’s incredible research and dissection of hard-to-find source material from the period, I would not have known about Flight 301 or 304. Much less know deep down in my soul that someday I would shed new light on these little-known incidents and the pilot that linked them together.

Or had the confidence to publish this narrative if I didn't have Pollock's book on hand to check for details and confirm my understanding as I was drafting. Dozens of times, if I'm being honest.

It is with shared amounts of solemnity and pride that I present my own humble contribution here to help ensure these flights are given their due in the historical record.