Eastern Air Lines Flight 980

Eastern Air Lines Flight 980

An Eastern Boeing 727-200 similar to the one involved in the accident
Accident summary
Date	1 January 1985
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain
Site	Mount Illimani, Bolivia
Passengers	19
Crew	10
Fatalities	29 (all)
Survivors	0
Aircraft type	Boeing 727-225 Advanced
Operator	Eastern Air Lines
Registration	N819EA
Flight origin	Silvio Pettirossi International Airport, Asunción, Paraguay
1st stopover	El Alto International Airport, La Paz, Bolivia
2nd stopover	José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport, Guayaquil, Ecuador
Destination	Miami International Airport, Florida, USA

Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 was a scheduled international flight from Asunción, Paraguay, to Miami, Florida, United States. On January 1, 1985, while descending towards La Paz, Bolivia, for a scheduled stopover, the Boeing 727 jetliner operating the flight struck Mount Illimani at an altitude of 19,600 feet (6,000 m), killing all 29 people on board.

The wreckage was scattered over a large area of a glacier covered with snow. Over the decades, several search expeditions were only able to recover a small amount of debris, and to date both flight recorders are still missing. The accident remains the highest-altitude controlled flight into terrain in commercial aviation history.

Flight 980 had departed Asunción at 17:57 on January 1, 1985. On board were 19 passengers and a crew of 10.

The Houston-based cockpit crew consisted of Captain Larry Campbell, First Officer Kenneth Rhodes, and Flight Engineer Mark Bird. The cabin crew comprised five Chilean flight attendants based in Santiago: Paul Adler, Pablo Letelier, Marilyn MacQueen, Robert O'Brien, and Paula Valenzuela.

The 19 passengers were from Paraguay, South Korea, and the United States. Among the passengers was the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, Marian Davis, and two Eastern pilots flying as passengers.

At 19:37 the pilot told controllers in La Paz he estimated landing at 19:47. The crew was cleared to descend from 25,000 feet to 18,000 feet. At some point after this exchange, the aircraft veered significantly off course for unknown reasons, possibly to avoid weather. The accident occurred 25 miles from runway 9R at El Alto Airport.

In October 1985, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) selected Greg Feith, an air safety investigator, to lead a team of U.S. investigators and Bolivian mountain guides to conduct an on-site examination of the wreckage of Flight 980, which had come to rest around 6,126 metres (20,098 ft). Feith conducted the on-site investigation with the goal of finding the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), as well as retrieving other critical information; however, because the wreckage was spread over a vast area and covered by 6 to 9 m (20 to 30 ft) of snow, his fellow team members and he were unable to locate either of the "black boxes". He did retrieve various small parts of the aircraft cockpit, official flight-related paperwork, and some items from the passenger cabin.