A 1952 Pan Am plane crash transformed passenger safety procedures – a former airline pilot explains how

On Good Friday, April 11 1952, a Pan American Douglas DC-4 named Clipper Endeavor took off from San Juan in Puerto Rico, bound for New York. On board were 64 passengers including six infants, plus five crew. The flight lasted less than nine minutes before two engines lost power. Unable to make it back to the airport, the captain ditched the plane in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 11 miles northwest of San Juan’s Isla Grande Airport. Remarkably, all 69 people on board survived the impact. What…