Video: 'Pan Am Flight 759 (1982 disaster)' (9 videos)

(Friday, July 9, 1982, 4:09:05 p.m. CDT; during Pan Am Flight 759) — A Pan American World Airways jet crashed in a residential area just after being forced down by a microburst shortly after takeoff from New Orleans this afternoon, killing all 145 on board and eight people on the ground.

The crash of the Boeing 727 devastated an area of several blocks in Kenner, a suburb less than a mile east of the takeoff runway at New Orleans International Airport. Numerous houses were set ablaze.

Video: '39th anniversary of crash of Pan Am flight 759 in Kenner, Louisiana'

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the accident was the aircraft’s encounter with 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 stopped before its impact with trees.

Contributing to the accident was the limited capability of the current wind shear detection technology. The investigation noted the failure of the U.S. government to “put out proper weather information that day and to maintain wind shear detection devices at the airport.”

Flight 759, along with Delta Air Lines Flight 191, which crashed due to similar circumstances three years later, led to the development of the Airborne wind shear detection and alert system and the Federal Aviation Administration mandate to install wind-shear detection systems at airports and onboard aircraft in the U.S. by 1993.