The captain, along with one of two flight crew members, two of 10 flight attendants, and 97 of 163 passengers, died; 75 . "It's 100 degrees in the house, honey," Nancy says, joining him on the porch. 2h 48m. Christina (center) was two-months-old at the time of the crash, making her the youngest survivor . Moe Lustig 7/16/23 A fireman, panting from the exertion of wearing full bunker gear while breaking a trail through the dense vegetation of the swamp, shined his light on Infantino. Frank Borman, a former NASA astronaut and Eastern's senior vice president of operations, was awoken at home by a telephone call explaining of a probable crash. Let them not be forgotten. The breakup of the fuselage had freed it from its stowage and activated its inflation mechanism. [6]:107108 Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flight-deck occupants, recovered from his injuries. The Ghost of Flight 401: Mystery Files | [25] A television movie of the same name was broadcast in October 1978. Then the commuter airline folded. Mildred Katz 1/8/34 Jose Garcia 6/4/47 If cities had soundtracks, none would sound quite like Nashville. Flight 401 Crash Site Hauntings |. December 29, 2022 / 10:12 AM / CBS Miami. I don't know if she ever did return to flying; my mother never told me one way or the other. The ultimate "yes sir, no sir" man, Bud shuffles reluctantly onto the porch, blinking furiously in the sunlight, wondering what's up. Ann Connell, Barry Connell, Angelo Donadeo, Patricia R Georgia, Adrianne Ann Hamilton, Jennifer Larsen, Thomas Mulcahy, Mercedes V Ruiz, Beverly Jean Raposa, Trudy J Smith, Sue F. Tibbs, Sharon R Transue, Dorothy M Warnock. Loise Shackelford attended. One was Micale, who they found alone on a clump of swamp muck, drenched in swamp water and jet fuel. "That's what really gets me. Dale Ann Mazzone 5/19/51 I was too young for that kind of stuff. Although there is no factual evidence to support the claim, legend has it that after the crash investigation, surviving avionics and galley equipment was salvaged from the crash site, returned to the manufacturers and overhauled to help relieve equipment shortages on Lockheed's growing production line. His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. Rosa Losano 11/1/01 Nery Palma 7/12/34 "It survived that night, just like me. The scene was impressive. February 26, 1989. Eastern management must have taken the stories somewhat seriously, however. Contained Within. In 1985, his years as a manual laborer caught up with him. John G. Fuller, the best-selling author of The Ghost of Flight 401, carried out an investigation into the hauntings with the aid of several cautious airline personnel. Flight 401 was a short-haul flight to Miami. "Your body could be stripped naked if you're thrown out through an opening, or your body could be relatively intact if you were in part of the aircraft that 'fluttered' down to the surface" because. Flashlights are now standard equipment near jumpseats, and all jumpseats are outfitted with shoulder harnesses. The Sun Flying Club wasn't really a "flying" club. Leonhard happened to be looking southeast across the glades. Rosemary Mancuso 10/31/49 Eastern Airlines Flight 401 is coming in for a landing in Miami. Other than those observations, I don't recall much more from that flight. Luis Bancroft 10/10/48 Retired Air Force Col. Frank Bormana former astronaut, vice president of Eastern Airlines and now a first respondercame to escort her into a helicopter hovering at ground level a short distance away. (It was later expanded to a much larger area either later that same day or the next day.). It didn't light. At 820ft (250m) along the wreckage trail, the outer section of the starboard wing tore off, gouging a 59-foot-long (18m) crater in the soft ground as it did so. That was the last transmission before the left wing sliced into the Everglades at 225 mph. I guess their clothes got blown off them.". An hour or so later, a Christmas carol floated through the air, reassuring Infantino he was not alone. [23], According to Robert J. Serling's 1980 book From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines, the claim that wreckage from Flight 401 was installed and later removed from other Eastern aircraft was false, and no Eastern employees had ever claimed to have seen or believed in the alleged ghost sightings. His required surgery. It crashed into the Everglades 18.7 miles northwest of the airport, eight miles north of Tamiami. [4], Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a regularly scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 5 | The crew of Flight 401 taken aboard the jet earlier on the day of the crash: the flight attendants had gathered at the tail of the plane. It crashed into the Everglades 18.7 miles northwest of the airport, eight miles north of Tamiami Trail, about 100 yards east of the L-67 canal levee. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 2 | By about 3:15 a.m., Raposas flock of survivors had all been rescued. When he stopped the engine to push the boat back into the water, he heard a chorus of terrified human voices, hollering, moaning, shrieking. Flight 401 - Autopilot indicator | The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. [8], In all, 75 survived the crash67 of the 163 passengers and eight of the 10 flight attendants. Elizabeth M. Pollack 12/10/17 Elisa Ruth Romero 5/28/44 After lowering the gear, First Officer Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the "down" position, had not illuminated. He was out that night on his airboat, gigging frogs with a new friend, Ray Dickens. She was very scared, having never been in the Everglades before. My guess is that the L1011 essentially did a flat or horizontal cartwheel and tore itself apart. The wheels were down, locked in position for landing, but the pilot wasn't sure about the forward wheel under the plane's nose. Eddie Albert featured as "Dunn", a fictionalized version of Captain Robert Loft. He knows exactly how he'd go about it. Dummett hopes that the event will inspire a permanent memorial to Eastern Flight 401, similar to the ValuJet Memorial off the Tamiami Trail in the Everglades. The landing gear from Flight 401 at the crash site; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. There were four men in the cockpit, all preoccupied with the light and landing gear. Flight 401 - First Response | We went deeper and deeper, until wed gone about 50 yards. The jet actually began losing altitude, so gradually that no one noticed until the very end. Janice Testa 9/12/52 Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. When the Coast Guard helicopter attempted a landing, the prop wash threw hunks of debris dangerously around. The three major sections of the fuselagethe most intact of which was the tail assemblylay in the mud towards the end of the wreckage trail. Anyway, the pilots couldn't tell if the wheels were down. "I thought I would fall apart," she told a newspaper in 1975. After about an hour, he saw the first helicopter. There he was able to land in a swampy patch of grass and coordinate rescue efforts. There were bodies that were naked, which we all figured occurred because they had been flung out of the protected environmental cocoon of the L1011 into 200 mph winds when the fuselage broke up. After dark he moonlighted as a commercial frogger. I probably did too, I'm sure." Although he was a passenger, he rode in the cockpit with pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer. Forty-five years ago, when Officer Gray Leonhard of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission began a solo night patrol in the Everglades, he was on the lookout for poachers, drug smugglers and maybe even a bullet-riddled corpse. Aground. Roberto Palma 6/10/27 The temperature is in the low 70s, and its beautiful out there tonight.. In the photograph below, here is the listing of who is who. After we visually established where the crash site was located, we could see the initial ground contact point and the distribution of the wreckage quite clearly. That was a miracle that is probably attributable to three factors: (1) the crash site was a soft, wet swamp; (2) there was no significant post-crash fire; and (3) the force of disintegration was directed horizontally and not vertically, flinging many survivors out into the swamp instead of subjecting them to fatal blunt force trauma which is characteristic of most airplane crashes. The left wingtip hit first. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 on the tarmac before takeoff on Dec. 29, 1972; Photography by Jon Proctor, I called out to a Coast Guardsman who was working nearby to come and help me out, Leonhard said. That's why Hansel wanted me to fly; it would be my license that got revoked if we got caught, not his! In my mind, that makes him a real hero.". She dug down into the black muck, cupped a double handful to her face and smeared it all over the affected areas. Less than three hours later the aircraft reached Florida. LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. At 11:32 p.m., Capt. Meanwhile, 1,100 miles to the north, an Eastern Airlines jumbo jet lifted off in bitter cold weather from New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport. The oven choices for airlines were either Nordskog or the Bowmar/Calrod brand. We were like five bobbing bubble-head dolls because there were a lot - and I mean a lot - of other aircraft up in the air doing the same thing we set out to do. He needed a respiratory therapist -- who, it turned out, needed him, too. [5]:3, Loft, who was working the radio during this leg of the flight, told the tower that they would discontinue their approach to their airport and requested to enter a holding pattern. It was an easy way to break the monotony of intense study, tour the good old USA and also earn a few bucks and I must emphasize the aspect of the earnings. So, being the thoughtful brother-in-law he was, unbeknownst to me he had collected some of the wreckage of Flight 401. Based on the book, it dramatized the crash, rescue efforts, and NTSB investigation. Possible Curse of Seminole Indians | Now that the crash site was again open to the public, he had gone out into the Everglades to scout the area on his air boat. Some would rather not remember. A friend once warned him: "One day you'll work a plane crash out there." Flight 401 - Possible Explanation | Tennessee's Music City combines country, bluegrass, rock, pop, Americana, gospel, classical, jazz, and bluesall in perfect harmonyto create one of the best places in the world to remember music's greatest performers, see today's top artists, and maybe discover the next big thing. As I recall that December night, it was a relatively cool evening for south Florida with a moonless night sky. The crash was documented in Rob and Sarah Elder's 1977 book Crash. At the time, the decision to change seats carried no meaning. [5]:4 This altitude alert, designed to warn the pilots of an inadvertent deviation from the selected altitude, went unnoticed by the crew. I saw people burned in agony. Eastern Airlines Flight #401 (L1011 N310EA) crashed in the Everglades on December 29, 1972. Above: A piece of wreckage from Flight 401 still visible in the Everglades. Airline employees began spreading stories of apparitions to the point where Eastern management warned employees that they could face dismissal if caught, and any log book entries about such matters would be removed. Those pilots probably didn't even know there was a NOTAM prohibiting flight immediately above the crash site. Jana Dedek 6/24/53 We had him out by 5:30 in the morning. Eight passengers became infected; doctors used hyperbaric chambers to treat the infections. When she came to, she was still belted into her seat, tipped to one side, hanging six feet above the swamp. He butchered their bodies to pieces after his wife threatened him with divorce. Many of the survivors were also stripped of their clothes and this contributed to medical problems with all the bacteria in the Everglades water and the relatively cold temperatures that night. He also attacked his other daughter, who luckily survived the attack. He retired from the Metro-Dade police department and moved to Brooksville, Florida many years ago. For survivors, the crash has left physical and mental scars. One retired Eastern L-1011 pilot I spoke to said that he had a second officer flying with him on a B-727 for several months in the Spring of '73 who was a self-ordained preacher. It didn't look as if anyone could have possibly survived the crash, yet 75 people did. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Most of what we talked about on the return to the airport was speculation on our part as to how the plane crashed, not why it crashed. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. You could hear the cry of death. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 4 | I don't recall whether the police unit was flying Bell 47Gs (three passenger, piston engine powered choppers with a bug-eyed canopy and two large rubber floats) or Bell Jet Rangers at that time, although I think the unit was flying Bell 47Gs--but he was essentially tasked with transporting officials from various sites in Miami to and from the Everglades crash scene throughout the night. They claimed that the deceaseds name was being used for the commercial purpose of selling books about the fatal crash (and a movie based on the book) by referring to the decedent as a reappearing ghost. The family lost the suit, and subsequent appeals. at 12:30 pm, December 30th) Lucille Cilles 1/30/24 Dennis Gordon 12/9/32 of 401 King Street, London, W6 9NJ, United Kingdom (+612 9691 0176). They were both 26 years old. At home, waiting sometimes fearfully, was Nancy, a pretty barefoot country girl in a cotton dress. It turns out that the area I was flying over is the well-known stomping grounds for the crew of Eastern Airlines Flight 401: A plane that crashed in 1972 over the Everglades. The TriStar's port outer wing structure struck the ground first, followed by the number1 engine and the port main undercarriage. "You have to keep your eye on the frogs real good when that airboat is moving - I mean not take your eyes away - and be quick with the gig," he says, in what amounts to the Gettysburg Address for him. Susana Luna 8/29/29 "[5]:2324, In response to this and other accidents during the 1970s, many airlines started crew resource management training for their pilots. From this point on, the breakup of the fuselage became more extensive, scattering metal fragments, cabin fittings, and passenger seats widely. Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into the Everglades, in his own airboat, if he wants. Unborn son of Rochelle and Stefan Rubin Now it was her turn. Bill Elliott had a much more eventful night. Not long after, "ghosts" of Loft and Repo were seen on more than twenty occasions by crew members on other Eastern Tri-Stars, especially those planes which had been fitted with parts salvaged from the Flight 401 wreckage. According to the National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ), the main fuselage broke into four main sections and many other smaller pieces on impact. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet that crashed into the Florida Everglades at 11:42 pm December 29, 1972, causing 101 fatalities. That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. He likes to think about those days. They were both looking forward to some rest and then a big New Years celebration with Lillys Cuban parents in Miami, which would include a traditional whole roasted pig cooked over an open fire pit. At 11:42 p.m., the first officer said, We did something to the altitude.. His writings form the basis for much of this Web site, with permission. "He's one of us," says John Canti, a firefighter, paramedic and outdoorsman. I mean, I was a single person with no family. The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV 1978) - YouTube | Of five survivors The Herald located this week, three talked freely about Flight 401. He sold 13 in a month. One hundred and one lives were lost that late . Picture that in your mind. His wife said his ashes would be spread over the crash site in the Everglades that ''he loved so much,'' at a later date. Robert Albin Loft 3/17/17 He has never taken pleasure in talking about what he saw after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 went down and how he felt about it. They even made cheesy movie about it. Three of the four cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived. I vaguely remember that we ended up taking a total of five people on that flight. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | On December 29, 1972, Eastern Air Lines flight 401 left New York's JFK airport and crashed on its approach to Miami, killing 101 of the 176 people on board. He rescued some terrified folks - he doesn't know how many - before the regular cavalry of official rescuers arrived in helicopters, directed to the carnage by his head lamp. It was only then that it had hit him. Get the latest flight sales and travel reviews straight to your inbox. My former brother-in-law, James Anderson, was an avid air boat owner and hunting enthusiast. I'm pretty sure that Tom Roche and Bob Crews were two of the "lucky" ones that got aboard, but I couldn't swear to it now. 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