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. It seemed to help. If you hear my voice, come toward me. Possible Curse of Seminole Indians | "The three of us toast to life on that day every year.". [4] It was also the first hull loss and fatal crash of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. They didn't keep score, but Marquis knows they saved a lot of people's lives that night. The area I was about to go in was uncharted territory for me, Leonhard said. The only piece of wreckage I did keep, and which I still have in my possession, is one of the plastic passenger window panes. She found a section of the cabin with a stewardess still strapped into her seat-belt harness. 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. Dead bodies hung, lay and floated everywhere I looked. Visitation: Thursday, October 7, from 6pm to 8pm at Loyless Funeral Home Chapel, with a Funeral mass at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church on Friday at 10am. [12][13] The training is designed to make problem solving in a cockpit much more efficient, thus causing less distraction for the crew. Jorge Gonzalez 1/16/38 "I could get it running," he says, fighting for breath. All three pilots, two of 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers died, while 75 passengers and crew survived. Nobody, not the pilots nor passengers, knew anything was amiss. Above: Flight attendants Beverly Raposa and Mercy Ruiz sit on a patch of ground in the Everglades where their flight crashed 35 years earlier. That was the last transmission before the left wing sliced into the Everglades at 225 mph. 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. 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. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. She was whipped. Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. His wife said his ashes would be spread over the crash site in the Everglades that ''he loved so much,'' at a later date. The four-month-old L-1011 TriStar jet crashed into the Florida Everglades on December 29, 1972 at 11:42 p.m., caused . Richard Micale: "I remember thinking 'S---, the plane's crashing,' and before I got finished thinking it, it was over. At least they thought they had. Silvan Karpen 5/23/28 Entry . "He was naked. If he saw legs kicking, he turned the seat over. His doctor warned him not to travel alone, not with his weak heart and lungs and aching back. Lost - Passengers and Crew (Name and Birthdate), Elise Grace Agate 9/3/42 Photos: AL DIAZ | MIAMI HERALD. Officially, 103 passengers and crew died. He saw tangled metal and smelled aviation fuel. Jana Dedek 6/24/53 After the aircraft had descended 250 feet (76m) from the selected altitude of 2,000 feet (610m), a C-chord sounded from the rear speaker. A lot of the people I saw were naked. There were 176 people aboard the state-of-the-art Lockheed L-1011, which was nicknamed the. Bob called Infantino, who loves to tell the story: "He was a regional coordinator with AFLAC, American Family Life Assurance Co., and that's when I started -- 16 years ago, and I've been with them ever since. 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. 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. She had nothing. The disintegration of the aircraft that followed scattered wreckage over an area 1,600ft (500m) long and 330ft (100m) wide in a southwesterly direction. The two girls in the photograph that are having the bunny ears (Patricia Ghyssels) and the one jokingly being choked (Stephanie Stanich) were the only two flight attendants who did not survive the crash. He was one of those rare south Florida individuals who owned a ton of hunting rifles and lived for the deer hunting season so he could go out on his air boat and hunt scrawny deer in the Everglades. The captain had ordered that the landing gear be lowered in. Inside the planes cockpit, the crew was trying to slide in a replacement bulb, a roughly two-square-inch all-in-one light assembly unit covered by a translucent green plastic lens, valued at $12 altogether. if (theYear < 1900) Of the 163 passengers and 13 crew-members aboard, 94 passengers and 5 crew members received fatal injuries. The single-engine Cessna 152 was . James Yandolino 3/7/52 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. The following conversation was recovered from the flight voice recorder later: Less than 10 seconds after this exchange, the jetliner crashed: The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7mi (30.1km) from the end of runway 9L. Julia Lustig 5/30/25 She worked in the executive offices at Easterns Miami base. I wouldnt be a bit surprised if the speed hed been traveling was well over a hundred miles an hour., Leonhard added, The guy weighed around 160, but it still took eight of us carrying a stretcher filled with his dead weight to carry him out. Bud saw bodies strapped into seats upside down in the water. In 2005, TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed into the Amazonian jungle, leaving a trail of bodies and wreckage scattered across the rainforest. Loise Shackelford attended. The flight is referenced as part of the Bob Welch song "The Ghost of Flight 401" on his 1979 album Three Hearts. They were heading his way. Mama, heat up the frying pan. 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. 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. The Nordskog were installed mostly on the L1011-500 series. After retiring he volunteered with the Civil Air Patrol, his last rank was Lt. With the $250,000 legal settlement, Micale thought he had it made. The 52-year-old flight engineer was one of 101 people who'd died Dec. 29, 1972 when Eastern Flight 401, packed with holiday travelers, slammed into the Everglades 19 miles northwest of Miami. The plane, a new "Whisperliner," could transport 229 passengers. It is now known that "Mrs. McAvoy" was Donna Smith, Thomas McAvoy's traveling companion. Let them not be forgotten. Nicholas Minguzzi 8/5/68 This was one of those moments when there arent enough words in the dictionary to describe the devastation. The other house is gone; his still requires repairs. Rons eyes blinked open upon hearing the engines roar to full power. Then, on Saturday, December 29, a fleet of over 100 airboats carried survivors, their families and others to the crash site for a special memorial. 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. theYear = now.getYear() 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. 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. After a few minutes they saw the lights of rescue helicopters, circling, searching, much too far east and south. Charles Camichel 9/9/1899 (we assume this is the "C. Carmichael" on Two others did not want to be reminded. Refresh the page, check Medium 's site. Ground crew with Eastern Airlines Flight 401 before its fateful flight; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. Two days later, Lilly Infantino was found trapped beneath one of the wings. Soon after, ghosts from Flight 401 began to haunt the land and other. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 2 | Tower, this is Eastern 401, it looks like were going to have to circle. Because of the magnitude of the rescue operation and of the medical emergency caused the study resulted in a . A Coast Guard helicopter flew toward them, sweeping the marsh with a bright searchlight, and then turned away. Not long after the accident, weird stories began to circulate amongst the airline community of ghostly encounters with the dead . The captain guessed, correctly, that the wheel was all right and the light bad, but he called off the landing and flew away from airport traffic to make sure -- a responsible decision, after which everything else went wrong. ", This pilot added, however, that he "flew 318 several times in the late 80s and never saw any unnatural apparitions - some weird looking people, but no ghosts. "Having money ruined my life," he said. 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. No gunshots. 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. Funny how people scream for God at a time like that. We were standing outside the clubhouse on the ramp, getting ready to lock up the building before leaving, when we both noticed something unusual overhead. On the day of the crash, Flight 401 was operated using a Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar (registration N310EA), which had been delivered to the airline on August 18, 1972. Riding with him were two Federal Aviation Administration officials. An adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister wrote on Facebook that the plane was shot down, the Associated Press reports. Judy Ellenberg 2/27/53 The wheels were down, locked in position for landing, but the pilot wasn't sure about the forward wheel under the plane's nose. 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. Ernest F. Bloodgood 4/1/16 [21] A television movie, also titled The Ghost of Flight 401, broadcast by NBC during February 1978. 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. That section of the Everglades is a tangle of sawgrass, tree islands, canals and levees. Flipping through the pages, Bud smiles for the first time in hours. It didnt sound like they were in midair anymore. Renee Joaquin Albert 8/3/36 On the clear, moonless night of Dec. 29, 1972, a young rookie game warden sat behind the steering wheel of a light-green 1969 Plymouth four-door sedan with a blue gumball emergency light mounted on the rooftop. And before I had time to even let off the throttle or do anything else, I ran over those two people, who I knew were both dead. its related bodies corporate and their respective officers, employees, contractors and agents (Promotion Parties) will not . Mr. Elder later became an Editor at the San Jose Mercury News. Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. It seemed to be miles off course. Lloyd Irving Bearman 1/16/23 Muriel J. Ames 11/30/40 His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. In his mind, he's still a strapping young fellow with big muscles. Bud wants to. by Gary Leff on December 29, 2022. . They even made cheesy movie about it. The FAA guy sitting closest to Leonhard yelled, Holy shit!, An airboat doesnt have brakes, Leonhard explained. 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. There was a lot of activity on the ground, but we couldn't see much detail from 3,000 feet. A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 298 passengers crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday while traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. He wants to show them how to gig frogs. Bud Marquis had experienced better nights of frogging. Two tours in Southeast Asia had hardened him. I told Hansel that we needed to check, before we got into the air, whether there were any flight restrictions over the crash site which seemed pretty logical to me. Theyre not going to find us, an anxious passenger whispered. No roar of unmuffled high-horsepower engines. Patricia George was on top of the coat closet. It's truly amazing how the mind works for, at the time, I had no idea of the significance of what I saw that night nor did I intend to store it away in my memory banks. Everything else was in small pieces spread in a general southwest or south-by-southwest direction for 1,500 to 2,000 feet. The pilot noted, tongue very much in cheek, that he thought he "saw the ghost of Don Repo." I don't recall any large scorched patches of saw grass, but I remember a few small burned areas. The Ghost of Flight 401: Mystery Files | He was trapped beneath the water. He was mentioned in a book, The Crash of Flight 401, later made into a B-movie, and helped a Hollywood writer with the awful Ghosts of Flight 401, about commercial jets haunted by the dead pilots. Tuesday. It was broken in the crash and he avoids putting any strain on it -- good advice for anyone his age, 67. Charles Kuchenbrod 7/16/30 The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. He lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. A Web forum, Southern Airboat, which attracts thousands of worldwide participants, plans to take care of the repairs. Sharon Transue was a replacement crew member out of reserve, didn't feel as much a . The only thing she was looking forward to on arrival in Miami was going to bed. Back to the clubhouse and armed with the airspace restrictions, I was ready to fly. Ways to check-in for your flight including online and on your mobile. I come from an Eastern family - my mother, Betty Olson, retired from Eastern in 1976. "I've tried to throw [the suitcase] away many times, but something always holds me back. [22] Loft's widow and children did sue Fuller, for infringement of Loft's right of publicity, for invasion of privacy, and for intentional infliction of emotional distress, but the lawsuit was dismissed and the dismissal upheld by the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal. Johnson, Charles | After the crash, a . Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 traveled from New York to Miami. A yellow flash. Follow my voice. Within minutes, six to eight passengers crawled out of the dark and were seated on the scrap of flooring, shivering, afraid and in shock. Speeding across the 'glades in his airboat, Bud was the first rescuer on the scene. At some point the captain inadvertently bumped the control wheel, knocking the autopilot partially off. Also notable were the Eastern Airlines two-tone blue and white colors on the larger pieces of wreckage. Carol Susan Jackter 9/26/52 Almost one year after receiving his honor, Robert ''Bud'' Marquis, died November 21, 2008, of complications from an accident five weeks ago. 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. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 6 | Stefan Jay Rubin 3/21/49 "He's an airboater.". [6]:110, Investigation into the aircraft's autopilot showed that the force required to switch to CWS mode was different between the A and B channels (15 and 20lbf or 65 and 90N, respectively). 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. Eduardo Jaramillo 8/2/32 "Just his upper body can be seen.". [5]:23 Investigators believe this was due to the crew being distracted by the nose gear light, and because the flight engineer was not in his seat when it sounded, so would not have been able to hear it. When he stopped the engine to push the boat back into the water, he heard a chorus of terrified human voices, hollering, moaning, shrieking. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. He ended up making numerous trips out to the levee where the rescue operation base was located. Bound for Miami, Flight 401 took off from New York's JFK at 9:20 p.m. However, it also complicated the survivors' recuperation, as organisms in the swamp caused infection, with the potential for gas gangrene. Picture that in your mind. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, crashed on 29 December 1972. Startled, and now fully awake, he wondered, Whats going on here? 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