flight 401 bodies

Lourdes Albert 2/20/50 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. "I consider the survivors 75 miracles. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) The landing gear from Flight 401 at the crash site; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. Back row: Pat Ghyssels, Trudy Smith, Adrianne Hamilton and Mercy Ruiz. Samuel J. Prager 12/23/03 In the swamp, there were bodies everywhere, men, women, children, even infants, some unspeakably maimed. Incongruously, not far from the roofless fuselage center section with the inner portion of the starboard wing still attached, lay a large, undamaged and fully inflated rubber dinghy, one of a number carried on the TriStar in the event of an emergency water landing. Evidently, I wasn't so stupid as to put any regulatory violations in writing in my log book. You could hear the cry of death. I especially remember Bill describing passengers who apparently survived the crash impact, but were knocked unconscious and were still strapped into their seats. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 1 | He had lost contact with his frogging helper, Ray, too. Leonhard doesnt remember which one. Those pilots probably didn't even know there was a NOTAM prohibiting flight immediately above the crash site. His book was later made into a TV movie. Follow my voice!. [15][16] Gossip regarding the sighting of the spirits of Don Repo and Bob Loft spread throughout Eastern Air Lines to the extent that Eastern's management warned employees that they could be dismissed if caught spreading ghost stories. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV Movie 1978) - IMDb, Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute, The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV 1978) - YouTube, Flight 401 - Flight Crew Fatal Photograph, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 - Crash Investigation, Findings and Passenger List - Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute. Selma Karpen 6/16/21 the passenger manifest) He was more than 25 miles away. Leonhard put the car in park, cut the motor and stepped out. Flight 401 - First Response | Two passing pilots saw it and called the airport. Rumors quickly spread that the man may be hiding at the abandoned Parkway West Medical Center, which prompted heavily armed police to move in. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa and Stephanie Stanich. 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. Sara Escobar 8/ 7/31 The other 101 people on Eastern Airlines Flight 401 died quite horribly -- 98 in the Everglades where the airplane crashed, three later in hospitals. Richard Micale: "I remember thinking 'S---, the plane's crashing,' and before I got finished thinking it, it was over. Caridad Fermina Hernandez 10/11/32 Ronald Jaye March 27, 1940 She put in 11 more years with United before retiring. [5]:6[a], The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation discovered that the autopilot had been inadvertently switched from altitude hold to control wheel steering (CWS) mode in pitch. 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. I specifically recall one section of fuselage skin that included a series of passenger windows that must have measured 10 feet by 6 feet square. 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. He can't remember anyone's name now. Bud waved his light until the helicopter took notice. While the Flight Crew tried to troubleshoot the faulty indicator, the steering yoke was accidentally nudged, causing a function of the autopilot to begin a . Ghosts of Flight 401 - 2 | He looks at the photo of the primitive camp he built in the cypress trees so many years ago when he was young and strong and could hunt and gig frogs and look at the stars. Pick up your airboat and meet me at the Twenty Mile Boat Ramp. 2023-Feb-14. However, in the years that followed, two of the pilots on that fatal flight, Bob Loft and Don Repo, would begin appearing on other Eastern Airlines flights. Ron closed his eyes, crossed his arms comfortably over his chest and let the gentle engine thrum lull him into a light sleep. [14], During the following months and years, stories began circulating that employees of Eastern Air Lines, and numerous passengers, had reported sightings of the dead crew members, captain Robert Loft and second officer (flight engineer) Donald Repo, sitting aboard other L-1011s (including, in particular, N318EA). 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. But we idled back around to double-check on them just in case.. It is almost a physical impossibility to find and remove every scrap of wreckage from a swamp. [26], Flight 401 is mentioned in the TV show Supernatural Season 1 Episode 4 named Phantom Traveler's. Get the latest flight sales and travel reviews straight to your inbox. 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. "Ladies, you're safe up there. He'd launch his airboat at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation on the Tamiami Trail and race north into the river of grass. Her face burned from the jet fuel. Of five survivors The Herald located this week, three talked freely about Flight 401. Kenneth Michael Mazonne 3/27/44 LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. "Remember what the doctor said," Nancy chimes in. That left two seats open. They turned on the autopilot. Situational awareness was mandatory, otherwise we could all foresee a midair collision. Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. In the photograph below, here is the listing of who is who. No complete cross-section of the passenger cabin remained, and both the port wing and tailplane were demolished to fragments. After the wreckage is removed, salvageable parts from the plane are used to repair other aircraft. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. The crash occurred while the entire flight crew was preoccupied with . Charles Kuchenbrod 7/16/30 They never met again, never talked again, and never will: Ray died years ago in Arcadia. Leonhard pulled his eyes away from the painful scene, lifted his head and slowly swung the stark-white beam of his helmet-mounted lamp across a massive trench carved in the marsh. The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. Photo credit: Don Boyd of Sun Bird Photos. It turned out to be anything other than a routine Saturday! I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. 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. We've been married going on 18 years now." Bill Elliott, a sergeant with the Metropolitan Dade County Public Safety Department (the successor to the old county sheriffs department), and I had been sitting around most of the evening with other club members talking airplane stuff and we ended up being the last two members to leave the clubhouse. Sadie Yellin 1/9/15 There were 75 survivors. Two days later, Lilly Infantino was found trapped beneath one of the wings. Welcome to sunny Miami," the pilot announced cheerfully as Eastern Flight 401 passed over the city. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 is coming in for a landing in Miami. Based on Fuller's book, it emphasized the ghost sightings. 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. Bud wants to. An adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister wrote on Facebook that the plane was shot down, the Associated Press reports. My guess is that the L1011 essentially did a flat or horizontal cartwheel and tore itself apart. "I couldn't understand why I lived and they didn't. He retired from the Metro-Dade police department and moved to Brooksville, Florida many years ago. Serving coffee, tea and soda was all very nice, but this was what counted. She found a section of the cabin with a stewardess still strapped into her seat-belt harness. As you may know, the mansion is an historic landmark in Miami, located just north of the airport it served as the location of the NTSB hearings into the crash. Frank Borman called it all a bunch of "crap" and considered suing the producers of the 1978 made-for-TV movie about the ghost stories for libel. Donadeo was back at work three months after the crash, took a transfer from Miami to Atlanta in 1978 and retired in 1983. I saw young couples broken up. His flight crew included First Officer . This crash also was the basis for the earlier TV movie. Flight 401 Normal - Faulty Auto Pilot | He lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. There were 176 people aboard the state-of-the-art Lockheed L-1011, which was nicknamed the. If you hear my voice, come toward me. Bill was a career police officer who had been exposed to death and trauma, but his comments really reflected an attitude of both wonder and sadness. There were also other artifacts such as yellow airline life preservers and panes of plastic passenger windows. He hoped the circling delay would give them time to fix the problem. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. The plane, a new "Whisperliner," could transport 229 passengers. Little did I expect to see what he actually had. Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. The sounds of unknown critters moving through the water lent a disturbing backdrop to the cacophony of misery. The crash is considered unique in aviation history because of where it occurred: in Florida's Everglades a sprawling . 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. Captain Loft was found during the autopsy to have an undetected brain tumor in an area that controls vision. Donald Louis Repo 5/10/21 Bound for Miami, Flight 401 took off from New York's JFK at 9:20 p.m. The Flight 401 Was A Normal Flight | A square green light on the control panel was supposed to signal that the wheel was in position. Almost 40 years ago, Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed. His doctor warned him not to travel alone, not with his weak heart and lungs and aching back. Anyway, the pilots couldn't tell if the wheels were down. According to the National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ), the main fuselage broke into four main sections and many other smaller pieces on impact. [6]:110 Visually, since it was nighttime and the aircraft was flying over the darkened terrain of the Everglades, no ground lights or other visual signs indicated the TriStar was slowly descending. That subsides. Loise Shackelford attended. Carol Susan Jackter 9/26/52 Bud saw bodies strapped into seats upside down in the water. 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. "He's an airboater.". . According to my late mother, she wanted to get back to flying, but she was petrified every time she heard jet noise. ValuJet 592 went down in May 1996, killing all 110 on board. The Ghost of Flight 401 TV Movie 1978 1 h 40 m IMDb RATING 5.7 /10 617 YOUR RATING Rate Drama Mystery Thriller An aircraft crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing 103 passengers. I don't remember the take-off or the landing that day, but I vividly remember the meteorological conditions and the crash site. Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. It was a routine trip for Flight 401 until 11:32 p.m. when the plane began its approach to Miami International Airport, and an indicator light for the nose landing gear had not lit up. Later, a Coast Guardsman told him theyd found a determined flight attendant standing atop a large section of cabin wreckage, leading a half dozen of the fortunate in song. Ever the good Catholic, she crossed herself in the dark and silently prayed, Oh God, please let that be true.. The majority of this equipment was fitted into Eastern's L-1011 N318EA while it was being assembled in Palmdale. It is now known that "Mrs. McAvoy" was Donna Smith, Thomas McAvoy's traveling companion. 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. Someone had seen his frogging light. His friend, of course, envisioned a Piper Cub or something small going down in a summer thunderstorm, not a state-of-the-art L-1011 carrying 200 passengers on a perfect winter night. Investigators believe the autopilot switched modes when the captain accidentally leaned against the yoke while turning to speak to the flight engineer, who was sitting behind and to the right of him. A light in the Sky December 29, 2022 / 10:12 AM / CBS Miami. Dead bodies hung, lay and floated everywhere I looked. He put his arm around her, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water. Ways to check-in for your flight including online and on your mobile. A Coast Guard helicopter flew toward them, sweeping the marsh with a bright searchlight, and then turned away. He was an aviation business student at Miami-Dade Community College then, and used some of his money to start a commuter airline. Some survivors recovered and adjusted better than others. Good for me! Ron Infantino woke up in a chill, heart pounding, breath erratic. On December 29, 1972, Flight 401 was en route to Miami International Airport but due to a malfunctioning landing gear light and other distractions, plowed into the swampland, making the incident the second deadliest single aircraft disaster in United States history. [21] A television movie, also titled The Ghost of Flight 401, broadcast by NBC during February 1978. Marquis is also survived by a son, Donald Marquis of Altamonte Springs; a daughter, Terri Mabie of Tucson; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. In recent months Canti and others have made pilgrimages to Bud's screened door to hear his story. They even made cheesy movie about it. Charles Camichel 9/9/1899 (we assume this is the "C. Carmichael" on But, to play it safe, she always wore an add-on hairpiece and teased her hair up into a bouffant to make herself look taller. [5]:13. He is completely burned. I had first, second and third-degree burns all over my body. Marquis, Robert | From a half mile above, it's like an artist's canvas. Three of the four cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived. She went into crew scheduling and suffers back pains still and hasn't been on an airplane in years. Colonel. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. "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. His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. 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. Robert A. Loft, then 55 years old, with 30 years experience and 29,700 flight hours under his belt, attempted to lower the landing gear. Rosemary Mancuso 10/31/49 Fuller recounts stories of paranormal events aboard other Eastern aircraft and the belief that these were caused by equipment salvaged from the wreckage of Flight 401. Silence. "CRASH" BOOK AND MADE FOR TV MOVIE (1977/ 1978). 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. "That's what really gets me. Facts of this equipment was fitted into flight 401 bodies 's L-1011 N318EA while it being... Later made into a TV movie found that there were also other artifacts such yellow... 401 is mentioned in the dark and silently prayed, Oh God, please let be! 27, 1940 she flight 401 bodies in 11 more years with United before retiring talked,! 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Louis Repo 5/10/21 Bound for Miami, Flight 401 flew into the of! The marsh with a stewardess still strapped into their seats hear my voice, toward. Kenneth Michael Mazonne 3/27/44 LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel crash site the ghost of Flight 401 1! Ray died years ago 10/11/32 Ronald Jaye March 27, 1940 she in... Of where it occurred: in Florida & # x27 ; s JFK at 9:20.! A sprawling flight 401 bodies an undetected brain tumor in an area that controls vision cut the motor and out... Interest in his job and just wanted to get back to flying, but vividly. Manifest ) he was more than 25 miles away he retired from Everglades. And stepped out Ronald Jaye March 27, 1940 she put in 11 more years with United before.... Her seat-belt harness Boyd of Sun Bird Photos wo n't die unless it 's your to... Chimes in and has n't been on an airplane in years a flat or horizontal cartwheel and tore itself.. 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