Clipper 806: The anatomy of an air disaster

A rainy night in the South Pacific in January 1974: Pan American Flight 806, a Boeing 707 on routine flight from Sydney to San Francisco, makes a belly landing into the Polynesian jungle near Pago Page. It is a gentle landing and, to all appearances, a safe; not one passenger suffers a disabling injury. Yet only ten people get out of the plan alive, and only four survive today. Ninety-one persons die on board the plane - and they die after the landing. Why? From the four survivors, other eyewitnesses, official records, and hardnosed research, John Godson, veteran investigator of air disasters, has painstakingly reconstructed the events leading up to and following the tragedy. The investigation that followed the crash, Godson found, was steeped in bureaucratic bungling. Puzzled by the discrepancies and the confusion of the official reports, Godson set himself the task of answering the questions that the official investigators had failed to answer - or had chosen not to ask. And of all the questions the most persistent was - how could such a horrible death toll result from an accident in which not one passenger was seriously injured? why didn't the passengers get out of the plane? Godson's answers may shock you, but if history is not to repeat itself, the story of Clipper 806: The Anatomy of an Air Disaster must be told. John Godson is also the author of several studies of airline safety, including "Unsafe at Any Height" and "The Rise and Fall of the DC-10".