On the night of February 8, 1965, the aircraft serving the flight, a Douglas DC-7, crashed near Jones Beach State Park, New York, just after taking off from JFK Airport.

The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) investigation determined that evasive maneuvers undertaken by Flight 663 to avoid an oncoming Pan Am Boeing 707 caused the pilot to suffer spatial disorientation and lose control of the aircraft.

[1] It was piloted by Captain Frederick R. Carson, 41, who had been employed by Eastern Air Lines for 19 years and who had accumulated 12,607 hours of flight time.

The New York ARTCC responded with the information that Pan American World Airways (PA) Flight 212, a Boeing 707, was descending to 4,000 feet (1,200 m) in the same airspace.

[2] Flight 663 could not recover from its unusually steep bank and plunged into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where it exploded with bright orange flames.

[5] Fifteen ships, accompanied by eleven helicopters and numerous rescue divers, converged on the scene of the crash in hopes of rendering aid to survivors.

[2] Nevertheless, the CAB determined that the evasive maneuvers taken by the pilot of Flight 663 to avoid the oncoming Pan Am jet caused spatial disorientation.

The disorientation, coupled with the extreme maneuver, made it impossible for the pilot to recover from the roll in the few seconds before the DC-7 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

The CAB also determined that Captain Carson had neither the time nor adequate information to assess Flight 663's position relative to Pan Am 212 and, given the illusion of a collision course, he had acted appropriately in initiating evasive maneuvers.