The crash killed 101 people, destroyed a state-of-the-art airliner . Crash In unison, we looked up to see the silhouette of a Lockheed L1011 flying westbound at an altitude of about 2,000 feet. "Hey, what's happening here?" A lot of the people I saw were naked. An original floor board from Flight 401 remains in the archives at History Miami in South Florida. The memories don't. According to my late mother, she wanted to get back to flying, but she was petrified every time she heard jet noise. There was, however, a complication. After a few minutes they saw the lights of rescue helicopters, circling, searching, much too far east and south. Then he tells the story the best he can. In first-class, a blond young woman rose from her seat and introduced herself to the passengers. Ruiz, 63, of West Miami-Dade, still has aches and pains but returned to flying until Eastern folded in 1991. "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. He began to doze as the seat belt sign was lighted and a voice came from the cockpit. ParaPedia | Flight 401 - Survivors and those who were lost ... There were 75 at the time, 20 years ago tonight. "This book sets forth in detail eighty-nine of the world's most serious (in terms of human lives lost) airplane disasters starting in 1927. Eastern Airlines Crash, 1972 | Flashback Miami "Welcome to Miami," the pilot announced during the descent at 11:30. 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. The story of the crash and its aftermath were documented in John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. By that time, I had also earned a commercial pilot license with airplane single and multi-engine and instrument ratings. Lights in the Darkness: The crash of Eastern Air Lines ... I'll forever believe that it was Eastern Flight 401, just minutes before it and its passengers and crew became part of aviation history and legend. The underside of the L1011 was reflecting the ground lighting from the airport and the surrounding city which made it easy to identify the aircraft type although we couldn't identify the airline. A yellow flash. It wouldn't take much.". Jerry didn't want to be away from New York for too long, so he said that Joan, his wife, should go out ahead. 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. Phone Call from a Ghost: Strange Tales from Modern America Captain Loft was found during the autopsy to have an undetected brain tumor, in an area that controls vision. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet that crashed into the Florida Everglades at 11:42pm December 29, 1972, causing 101 fatalities (99 initial crash fatalities, two died shortly afterward). The senior flight attendant on flight 401 wore blue shorts with the brown boots. That was the last transmission before the left wing sliced into the Everglades at 225 mph. There was an enormous flash of flame as two fuel tanks burst open. Of five survivors The Herald located this week, three talked freely about Flight 401. The Lockheed TriStar L 1011 aircraft was well ahead of its time. However, we had one advantage that members of the general public didn't have - we had access to airplanes. Both of whom were off duty airline employees who were "dead-heading" - airline slang for employees hitching a free ride to return from a duty assignment. He likes to think about those days. Also in attendance was Ron Infantino, David Kaplan and the Casado family. It was at the time, the single worst air disaster in US history and its cause launched new pilot training and safety programs. r-3-I. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed in 1972. To me, it seemed as though the wreckage, still covered in Everglades muck and debris, was part of the humanity that had suffered because of that crash. Flight 26 arrived into JFK late and Adrianne and her crew had only twenty-three minutes to get from one plane to the other. From a half mile above, it's like an artist's canvas. They both lived in Seymour, Connecticut, where he was a salesman for a copper company and she was a secretary in a bank. They laughed and drank a champagne cocktail. At 820 ft (250 m) along the wreckage trail, the outer section of the starboard wing tore off, gouging a 59-foot-long (18 m) crater in the soft ground as it did so. Jerry wore a gold Star of David his mother had bought him a few weeks earlier while in Israel. On his 1979 album Three Hearts, musician Bob Welch also recorded a song titled "The Ghost of Flight 401". [12][13] The training is designed to make problem solving in a cockpit much more efficient, thus causing less distraction for the crew. [5]: 4 This altitude alert, designed to warn the pilots of an inadvertent deviation from the selected altitude, went unnoticed by the crew. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. [6]: 107–108 Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flight-deck occupants, recovered from his injuries. She knew I didn't want to wear anything around my neck. The Cali, Colombia Crash Resulted in Three Aviation Safety Improvements That Keep You Safer in the Air Today. Eastern's L-1011's came equipped with six Bowmar ovens (Lockheed Part Number 671878-115). The Everglades is flat, covered with tall saw grass and immersed in water that ranges from a few inches deep to three to four feet deep in some areas. Eastern Flight 401: A survivor's story. That days trip was known as a "stuffer," a quick turnaround, Miami to New York and back to Miami. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. Discretion was the better part of valor. He saw a man, sitting in the water with a neck injury, trying to remain upright. CVR transcript of the December 29, 1972 accident of Eastern Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar in the Everglades near Miami, FL, USA. Flipping through the pages, Bud smiles for the first time in hours. "The temperature is in the low 70s, and it's beautiful out there tonight." Patricia Georgia lay atop one of the L-1011's coat closets, and the others stood in a row just below. On Dec. 29, 1972, it carried 178, including crew. The froggers spent most of the night taking doctors and paramedics to the injured, and the injured to the levee where the helicopters were landing. All three pilots, two flight attendants and many passengers died that day. Mr. Elder later became an Editor at the San Jose Mercury News. [15][16][17], These stories speculated that parts of the crashed aircraft were salvaged after the investigation and refitted into other L-1011s. 103 passengers and crew members died in the crash or shortly thereafter and 75 passengers/crew survived. The breakup of the fuselage had freed it from its stowage and activated its inflation mechanism. He can't remember anyone's name now. She had been replaced by another Eastern flight attendant, Sharon Transue. Bud Marquis had experienced better nights of frogging. "It was funny. RockyFlying.com - AIR CRASH INVESTIGATION: Fatal ... On December 29th, 1972 there were 163 passengers abroad along with 10 flight . The left wingtip hit first. This book tells the story of the crash, discusses the many controversial issues surrounding it, and considers why it has come to have such importance for many Japanese. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 traveled from New York to Miami. However, it also complicated the survivors' recuperation, as organisms in the swamp caused infection, with the potential for gas gangrene. About: Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - DBpediaEastern Air Lines Flight 401 - Wikiwand Two-month-old Christina slept in her mother's arms wearing a pink dress. The strange tales of the ghostly airmen of Flight of 401 circulated in the airline community. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. 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. The trip to Florida, by official accounts, was pleasantly routine. Interment will follow at 2pm at Florida National Cemetery. It is said that the manufacturers, Lockheed built two automatic pilots first and then built an aircraft around them. TIL after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed in the Florida Everglades that the mud of the Everglades blocked wounds sustained by survivors, preventing them from bleeding to death. American Hauntings: The Rise of the Spirit World and Birth ... Of the cockpit crew, only flight engineer Repo survived the initial crash, along with technical officer Donadeo, who was down in the nose electronics bay with Repo at the moment of impact. The wreckage of Eastern Air Lines flight 401 lies in the Florida Everglades after the crash. There were 75 survivors. "Hey! A computer-stored flight plan would bring the great white Whisperliner inland over West Palm Beach, and then south to Miami - a long, dense galaxy of lights glittering on a north-south axis between two black voids, the Atlantic ocean and the Everglades. Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute. "They gave us six months off and then we were expected to be 'over it. I should add that Dorothy R. Loft and her two children, Kimberly and Robert, Jr sued Fuller for invasion of privacy over the book . [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. This was the worst flight disasters in the United States at the time. Beverly Raposa doesn't mind flying. Blackness. Ea401.png 1,620 × 1,220; 887 KB. Hansel Meighen died on April 15, 1999, and is buried in Ft. Pierce, Florida. [5]: 6, 16 [9] However, the NTSB concluded that the captain's tumor did not contribute to the accident. And now, just shortly before 9 p.m., the first officer, Albert John Stockstill, slid into the co-pilot seat on the right side of the flight deck. In a small box tucked under her seat was her constant companion, her white poodle, Tina. A square green light on the control panel was supposed to signal that the wheel was in position. It's broken, just like him. One of the flight engineer's duties is to get on board early, before the captain and first officer, and run through a series of checks. Jan 6, 2014 - Explore Our Haunted Travels - PANICd's board "Eastern Flight 401", followed by 1,236 people on Pinterest. [4] Despite their own injuries, the surviving flight attendants were credited with helping other survivors and several quick-thinking actions such as warning survivors of the danger of striking matches due to jet fuel in the swamp water[9] and singing Christmas carols to keep up hope and draw the rescue teams' attention, as flashlights were not part of the standard equipment on commercial airliners at the time. [5]: 3 This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. Eastern used the Bowmar/Calrod brand. In fact, it's release was just a little later than the equally nascent Boeing 747. For years, author and pilot Martin Caidin collected these strange but true stories of aerial hauntings from experienced pilots and astronauts. His startling conclusion: Something is out there! The control tower at Opa locka shut down at 11pm each evening back then so the L1011 had to be in contact with Miami Approach Control, since we assumed it was ultimately being vectored for an approach to MIA. The four-month-old L-1011 TriStar jet crashed into the Florida . Captain Loft had been with the airline for 32 years and had accumulated a total of 29,700 flight hours throughout his flying career. Eastern Air Lines CEO (and former Apollo astronaut) Frank Borman called the ghost stories surrounding the crash "garbage". At least he lives near his precious Everglades. Crash: Directed by Barry Shear. When the flight-crew lowered the landing gear, they did not receive confirmation that the nose wheel was down and locked. [19] Pieces of Flight 401's wreckage can also be found in Ed and Lorraine Warren's Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut.[20]. Other than its base in New York, the airline flies to two other destinations — Guayaquil, Ecuador and Georgetown, Guyana. But after speaking to her family in Miami and hearing the account of the planned New Year's Eve festivities, they decided to catch flight 401 to Miami. I think all the survivors had been rescued by that time and taken to hospitals, but there were a lot of bodies still at the crash site. My direct and indirect contact with Eastern Flight 401 didn't end on December 30, 1972. On the back of an envelope he wrote the following letter to Samuel L. Higginbottom, who was then the president and COO of Eastern Airlines. The flying club tie-down area and ramp were immediately adjacent to the Sun Line operation and I often was called upon to fuel aircraft on the Sun Flying Club property. He had scarcely recovered from a bad auto accident when 401 crashed. The pilots and the flight engineer, two of 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers died; 75 passengers and crew survived. He'd get that look. Bud wants to. 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