Pan Am Flight 816


Pan Am Flight 816 was an international flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to San Francisco, California, via Tahiti, French Polynesia and Los Angeles. 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.

Crew

The pilot was Robert M. Evarts of Grass Valley, California, 60, who had 25,275 flight hours. Evarts's copilot was Lyle C. Havens from Medford, Oregon, 60, who had 21,575 flight hours. The flight engineer was Isaac N. Lambert, 38, of Danville, California. The navigator was Frederick W. Fischer, 33, of Rochester, New York. He was 33, and had 3,961 flight hours.

Accident description

When the aircraft had reached an altitude of, it began to descend, banking 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 sole survivor of the accident 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.
Although no official cause was determined, it is believed that an instrument failure during the climb out turn may have contributed to the accident. Speculation at the time also focused on a catastrophic windshield failure, as well as a gyro horizon malfunction. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are believed to have sunk in of water, and were never recovered.