Air New Zealand DC-8-52 (TEAL) & Its' Tragic Fate

So, you will already have heard of TE901 (I've covered it already), but what you might not know is that Air New Zealand has had other crashes in its 80+ year history. This is the story of ZK-NZB, a short-lived Douglas DC-8 that met its sad fate less than a year later.

This exact Douglas DC-8, ZK-NZB, entered service with Air New Zealand in 1965, with its first revenue service taking place on 3 October 1965 from Christchurch-Sydney. NZBs life, however, was tragically very short lived.

On 4 July 1966, it took off from Auckland just before the clock struck 4:00pm on a testing flight. Onboard were 5 crew members and zero passengers as this was not a regularly scheduled passenger flight. Shortly after takeoff, the airplane pitched up higher and faster than normal, then the right wing dropped, causing the plane to roll to the right. Shortly after that, as the plane failed to gain speed and altitude, the right wingtip scrapped the ground, subsequently disintegrating while the plane cartwheeled along the ground. ZK-NZB came to a stop to the right of runway 23 at Auckland Airport. The plane was completely destroyed.

Sadly, 2 of the 5 occupants onboard were killed in the crash, with the other 3 suffering severe injuries.

The cause of the crash was due to reverse thrust applied to the no. 4 engine during a simulated engine failure of that same engine. To simulate this engine failure, the captain had put the no. 4 engine on idle, however the speed at which the throttle was moved, the reverse thrust kicked into the active position. However, this engine was still yet to spool down to idle, and so was still developing take-off power. This caused the aircraft to yaw sharply to the right. And the rest is explained up above.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the only Air New Zealand plane to crash in a test flight, as on 27 November 2008, XL Airways Germany flight 888T would crash into the Mediterranean. However I will cover that crash another time.

May those who died in the crash rest in peace.

ZK-NZB: 1965 Douglas DC-8-52 | Air New Zealand | Currently: Crashed at Auckland Airport on 4 July 1966 during a test flight, killing 2 of 5 onboard, and is subsequently written off.

Interestingly enough, the registration ZK-NZB has not been reused on an Air New Zealand plane except for an Ansett NZ BAe 146 which operated with the airline for just around a year. the same is true for ZK-NZP, except that one has simply never been reused full stop.