The Crash of Pan Am Flight 759 - Kenner, Louisiana - Disaster Memorials on Waymarking.com

In a garden, under three bells, of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, sits a simple monument to remember the victims killed on July 9, 1982 when the Boeing 727 crashed into a Kenner, LA neighborhood.
A row of tiles with hand written names of each of the passengers, crew members and the eight residents on the ground are placed in a semi-circle around a statue of Jesus Christ.


From Wikipedia:

Pan Am Flight 759, operated by a Boeing 727-235, N4737 Clipper Defiance, was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Miami to Las Vegas, with an en route stop at New Orleans. On July 9, 1982 at 4:07:57 PM central daylight time, Flight 759, with seven crew members, one non-revenue passenger in the cockpit jumpseat, and 137 passengers (a total of 145 people on board), began its takeoff from runway 10 at the New Orleans International Airport (now Louis Armstrong International), in Kenner, Louisiana.

At the time of Flight 759's takeoff, there were thunderstorms over the east end of the airport. The winds were gusty and swirling. Flight 759 lifted off the runway, climbed to an altitude of between 95 and 150 feet (29 and 46 m), and then began to descend. About 2,376 feet (724 m) from the end of runway, the aircraft struck a line of trees at an altitude of about 50 feet (15 m). The aircraft continued descending for another 2,234 feet (681 m), hitting trees and houses before crashing in a residential area about 4,610 feet (1405 m) from the end of the runway.

The aircraft was destroyed during the impact, explosion, and subsequent ground fire. A total of 153 people were killed (145 passengers and crew on board and 8 on the ground). There was one survivor, a baby discovered in a crib covered with debris that protected her from the flames. Six houses were destroyed; five houses were damaged substantially.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was the aircraft's encounter with a microburst-induced wind shear during the liftoff, which imposed a downdraft and a decreasing headwind, the effects of which the pilot would have had difficulty recognizing and reacting to in time for the aircraft's descent to be arrested before its impact with trees. Contributing to the accident was the limited capability of then-current wind shear detection technology; this, along with the similar crash of Delta Air Lines Flight 191 three years later led to the development of the airborne wind shear detection and alert system and the mandate by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration have on-board windshear detection systems installed by 1993

Disaster Date: 07/09/1982 Date of dedication: 04/16/1983 Memorial Sponsors: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church Disaster Type: Technological Relevant Website: [Web Link] Parking Coordinates: Not Listed

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