re: 40 years ago today, July 9, 1982, Pan Am flight 759 crashed

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As a result of this crash and others, a lot of research went into wind shear/downburst weather science and pilots are better equipped to avoid it which is why it is a much rarer occurrence now. Here’s a good write-up from 2014 about it.

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We get a lot of training in wind shear avoidance and recovery and the aircraft can detect it and give flight guidance.

One of my first simulator sessions in the aircraft I’m currently flying, I was taking off at night from JFK and after rotation I was climbing out and at about 200 ft, the wind shear warning and guidance popped up on my primary flight display and the aural warning, “Wind shear! Wind shear! Wind shear!” I pushed the throttles to max power and kept the pitch in the “yellow box” that gives you pitch guidance and kept the wings level as best I could, but the plane would not climb and started descending slowly despite full power and pitch at 10-15 degrees up. The slow descent continued until we crashed into the ground. It’s very realistic in a full motion simulator.

My sim partner says, “I ain’t gonna lie, I was legit scared.”

So after we crashed, the sim instructor is laughing and says that he wanted to try out the “severe wind shear” setting on the sim since he had never done it before. They normally use the “moderate wind shear” setting, so we were his guinea pigs. He said that I did everything right but at that low altitude and severe wind shear, the odds are against you.

Moral of this story is, don’t take off or land into a thunderstorm or severe rain shower.