The jet climbed slowly, and began to roll to the right and the left. After 14 seconds it should have been 600 feet in the air. Instead, it was only 45 feet up. The pilot had forgotten to lower his wing flaps. At 222 miles per hour, it clipped a light pole in a parking lot and sheared off 18 feet of wing.
Flames burst from the left engine.
The plane struck another light pole. It banked 45 degrees to the left and slammed into the concrete highway embankment. The recent Avianca crash was out of fuel and so did not explode. Northwest Flight 255 had tons of fuel. The resulting explosion scattered debris and bodies for half a mile.