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. In another 50 seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude. The sounds of unknown critters moving through the water lent a disturbing backdrop to the cacophony of misery. With determination born of her Portuguese grandparents work ethic and her work on a 160-acre dairy farm as a young girl growing up in Rhode Island, the former Girl Scout troop leader shouted, Im a stewardess. On December 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing over 100 souls. It was the first of the new generation of wide-body "jumbo jets" to crash. He needed a respiratory therapist -- who, it turned out, needed him, too. Flight 401 - Survivors and those who were lost Definition: A listing of those who survived and those who were lost. Unfortunately it did so as a scattered wreck over the marshes of Florida's Everglades. Email subscription; Email subscription; . Kenneth Michael Mazonne 3/27/44 He'd cruise up on the frog, spear the frog with the 3-pronged gig, knock the frog off the gig into a sack, all the while moving forward in the airboat while getting ready to gig another frog. This was only about 12 hours after the L1011 crashed! We could also see a few other aircraft flying into the restricted airspace. He and his wife, Donna, live in Christmas, a small town between Orlando and Cape Canaveral. Donadeo is still active in aviation, as state vice commander of the Civil Air Patrol. What was so strange was that it was there in the first place. Footage of the incident appeared in the movie Days of Fury (1980), directed by Fred Warshofsky and hosted by Vincent Price. The crash occurred while the entire flight crew were preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light. He had logged 280 hours in the L-1011. "I guess I was always on the edge without knowing it." It didn't look as if anyone could have possibly survived the crash, yet 75 people did. document.write(theYear) Flamingo Magazine, 8 Black Floridians Who Are an Absolute Force in Their Industry, Calling All Readers (and Writers): 13 Favorite Florida Indie Bookstores, The Wackiest Florida News Stories of 2022. We dont have a light on our nose gear yet.. Nery Palma 7/12/34 More than a quarter mile long, the cone-shaped debris field was filled with an apocalyptic jumble of human carnage, personal belongings and aircraft wreckage. On December 29, 1972 pilot Robert "Bob" Loft and flight engineer Don Repo were piloting Eastern Airlines Flight 401 from JFK Airport (NY) to Miami, Florida. In short, it was a great place to eat (we used to have outstanding club Bar-B-Q, talk airplanes, perform minor maintenance and fly planes. Grand Canyon Disaster + . The most accurate account of the crash of Flight 401 was authored by a journalist from the Miami Herald, Rob Elder. My guess is that the L1011 essentially did a flat or horizontal cartwheel and tore itself apart. Greta Foye 3/19/45 Of the 163 passengers and 13 crew-members aboard, 94 passengers and 5 crew members received fatal injuries. In 1972 he was a young carpenter who liked living fast. She put in 11 more years with United before retiring. Jerome Becker 6/27/39 "This is way in the past.". Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, crashed on 29 December 1972. Luis Bancroft 10/10/48 He was out there gigging frogs when it happened. [5]:5 The airplane was traveling at 227 miles per hour (197kn; 365km/h) when it hit the ground. Title 14 - Aeronautics and Space. But Infantino couldnt follow the voice. 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. It has a flat bottom and a high seat and a cobweb-draped engine and propeller. It happened 40 years ago today on a cold dark night in the Everglades, a brand new "Whisperliner" jumbo jet. Get Alerts. Around 4:30 a.m., Leonhard waded up to a willow heada thick tangle of weepy trees with brittle limbs draping into the water. Jonathan Adam Kaminer 8/22/70 [5]:3, The flight was routine until 23:32, when the airplane began its approach into Miami International Airport. She found a section of the cabin with a stewardess still strapped into her seat-belt harness. The crash is considered unique in aviation history because of where it occurred: in Florida's Everglades a sprawling . That was an unsurvivable crash, but we made it out," she said. Carpet layers need strong backs. The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV Movie 1978) - IMDb | [6]:101 The pilots cycled the landing gear, but still failed to get the confirmation light. Thats what youre going to get when we get out of here. He wants to show them how to gig frogs. Jerrold Solomon, who had walked away from the crash unscathed, flew home to New York three days later. Colonel. "You didn't have nothing to worry about," he'd tell her, finding a seat on the porch, from where he could hear the barred owls and their singular "who-cooks-for-you" calls, exciting and mournful at once. It looked like someone had poured gasoline on a campfire, and poof, up it went. Curiously, Leonhard never heard the impact. Ronald Jaye March 27, 1940 Below is a list of those on board, according . The final NTSB report cited the cause of the crash as pilot error, specifically: "the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000ft (610m), and then hold west over the Everglades. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami.Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades, causing 101 total fatalities. At 11:32 p.m., Capt. Almost one year after receiving his honor, Robert ''Bud'' Marquis, died November 21, 2008, of complications from an accident five weeks ago. Raposa was struggling for ideas to keep her group occupied. 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. "He was just a guy out there frogging and minding his own business who knew he had to help people in trouble. He had a broken arm and some cuts and scrapes, but no other visible wounds, Leonhard said. Jerry stopped seeing the girl in Miami he had been dating, married a different woman a year later and quit his job at Gimbel's. The Flight 401 Was A Normal Flight | If you would like to contribute to this cause, donations can be made to: National Air Disaster Foundation (write "EAL 401 Memorial" on the check), You may also make donations by credit card on their website: www.PlaneSafe.org. It would be hard to make up a plausible story like Ronald Infantino's -- too sad, too joyful. He had scarcely recovered from a bad auto accident when 401 crashed. All of us realized that many people had lost their lives and that there was a bit of mystery surrounding why a relatively new L1011 crashed into the Everglades on a clear, dark night. His right arm was badly hurt. It wouldn't take much.". Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Adapted from Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases by Bob H. Lee. Charles Kuchenbrod 7/16/30 The petite brunette stood just 5 feet 1.5 inches tall. What caused Flight 401 crash? 2023-Feb-14. (No one had a camera, so I don't have any personal photos.) Some would rather not remember. They also told me that Bill had been called shortly after he got home by the police department helicopter unit to come back to the airport (the police helicopter unit was based at Opa locka) for emergency flight duty. Join FlightAware View more flight history Purchase entire flight history for AAL401. Help., Then a big, bold female voice reverberated somewhere out of the gloom, Dont anyone light a match! A few minutes later, If you can hear my voice, come to me! "The temperature is in the low 70s, and it's beautiful out there tonight." Abbey Lynn Greenwald 9/18/52 They didn't find each other until morning. Raposa popped the release buckle and fell into the marsh, landing on her hands and knees. Renee Joaquin Albert 8/3/36 I probably did too, I'm sure." The death toll per the final accident report was 99. He shut down the engine again to listen. Eight minutes earlier, 401 had been descending on its landing approach after an uneventful flight from New York. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. He did well for a while -- had a big house in the Country Club of Miami and drove a Lincoln. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 2 | The Ghost of Flight 401: Mystery Files | Flight 401 - Flight Log | Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. Not shown, Sharon Transue (she was taking the photo). Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. Her face burned from the jet fuel. Ten feet in front of them were what looked like two mannequins to Leonharda partially clothed woman lying faceup in the mud and a naked man lying facedown. "Remember what the doctor said," Nancy chimes in. "Just his upper body can be seen.". We had a habit of informally gathering at the clubhouse on Friday and Saturday evenings to down a few beers and catch up on all the news that had any impact on us. 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. At the time, it was one of the worst civil aviation disasters the country had ever seen. [5]:3 This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. Bud spent his time arresting grizzled gator poachers and rough-cob deer thieves, cane-polers with too many bream on their stringers and feral teenage boys selling protected Indigo snakes to pet stores. Im sure they all ran away. She spit the words out quickly, doing her best to sound convincing. Infantino also won a large legal settlement and lost everything. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. Eugene Schenker 6/24/30 This killed the First Officer instantly. All three pilots, two of 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers died, while 75 passengers and crew survived. Then a sudden jolt rattled the aircraft. 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. An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 crashed at 2342 eastern standard time, December 29, 1972, 18.7 miles west-northwest of Miami International Airport, Miami Florida. They died. High in the distant black sky, beyond the harsh glare cast by his headlamp, was a circling star: the searchlight of a Coast Guard helicopter hovering over the crash site eight miles away. The majority of this equipment was fitted into Eastern's L-1011 N318EA while it was being assembled in Palmdale. With almost twice the area of Rhode Island, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States has some of the most formidable terrain on Earth. Blackness. [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. '", Age 79, died Saturday, October 2, 2004 in Land O'Lakes, FL. With the aircraft in mid-turn, the left wingtip hit the surface first, then the left engine and the left landing gear,[5]:8 making three trails through the sawgrass, each 5ft (1.5m) wide and more than 100ft (30m) long. "I think I can still do it. The time was 9:20 p.m. The last thing Raposa remembered seeing before she was knocked out was a waterfall of colors. The other 101 people on Eastern Airlines Flight 401 died quite horribly -- 98 in the Everglades where the airplane crashed, three later in hospitals. Good for me! Then zip, the light was out.". He'd see the lights and hear the roar as the jets climbed into the black night over the swamp or descended toward Miami International Airport. Repo, Donald Louis | In 2005, TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed into the Amazonian jungle, leaving a trail of bodies and wreckage scattered across the rainforest. How about we start with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) The middle engine and tail section had broken away from the main fuselage, coming to a rest on their sides in a remote area far from the main crash site, which was located 18.7 miles northwest of Miami International Airport. "I couldn't understand why I lived and they didn't. Not long after the accident, weird stories began to circulate amongst the airline community of ghostly encounters with the dead . [9] All the survivors were injured; 60 received serious injuries and 17 suffered minor injuries that did not require hospitalization. Pine and others want to do something nice for Bud, perhaps honor him with a special day, raise cash for Bud's taxes, groceries and medical bills. In a weak voice, one of them asked, What about the alligators?, Raposa didnt hesitate: We made such a loud noise when we hit. Fara Infantino 12/7/46 at 12:30 pm, December 30th) I wish I had that kind of money today instead of 20 years ago. Back in the day, when he spent so much time in the wilderness, only the airplanes overhead reminded him of civilization. Raposa sensed a different tone in the engines. "I consider the survivors 75 miracles. 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