He was left wearing nothing but a necktie and belt pushed up under his armpits. The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. One day, late in 1973, I got a phone call from James telling me to come over to his house; he had something for me. 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 is survived by his beloved wife of 53 years, Donna; son, John (Jan) Angelo; daughters, Susan (Bob) Norberg, Patricia (Rick) Shepherd; and nine grandchildren. He is completely burned. I saw people burned in agony. When they began to gather up the 132 bodies from USAir Flight 427 today, officials realized there were so many pieces that the grisly task would take days, perhaps weeks. Robert Albin Loft 3/17/17 Beverly Raposa doesn't mind flying. Bud waved the helicopter toward a nearby levee. His wife Nancy - they married when she was 15 - could always tell when it was on his mind, though. My guess is that the L1011 essentially did a flat or horizontal cartwheel and tore itself apart. If he saw legs kicking, he turned the seat over. The accident and the subsequent ghost story were mentioned by Dan Aykroyd during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on June 6, 1984. Rose Kashman 9/22/15 The captain, along with one of two flight crew members, two of 10 flight attendants, and 97 of 163 passengers, died; 75 . Sadly, she did not survive. [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. The aircraft was completely demolished, with wreckage, bodies, and survivors strewn over a wide area. That left two seats open. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. Two days later, Lilly Infantino was found trapped beneath one of the wings. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | [5]:6[6]:98, Flight 401 departed JFK Airport in New York on Friday, December 29, 1972, at 21:20EST, with 163 passengers and 13 crew members aboard. Picture that in your mind. 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. Based on Fuller's book, it emphasized the ghost sightings. 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. Possible Curse of Seminole Indians | Repo was evacuated to a hospital, but later died from his injuries. There would be plenty of time for body recovery, Leonhard said. Patricia A. Ghyssels 3/31/45 The altimeter showed a decrease in altitude, but none of the crew noticed. 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. ----------------------------------------------. It promised to be an exciting week in Miami, especially for people who had bucks for a meal at Joe's Stone Crabs and a night at the Fontainebleau Hotel, where the sexy dancer Ann-Margret was headlining. Jesus Lorenzo 4/26/37 It's a swamp, a flat swamp. He received a $250,000 settlement in a lawsuit, blew it all, got into drug trouble, went back to work and fell off a truck. This photo taken in September 2009. Photos of the 35th anniversary memorial gathering at the crash site, December 29, 2007. [5]:30[6]:99 The aircraft was fleet number 310, and the 10th TriStar delivered to the carrier. "I guess I was always on the edge without knowing it." The death toll per the final accident report was 99. Flight 401 - Survivors and those who were lost Definition: A listing of those who survived and those who were lost. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 departed New York for Miami on December 29, 1972. "[5]:2324, In response to this and other accidents during the 1970s, many airlines started crew resource management training for their pilots. Ron and Fara Infantino, married for 20 days, were coming home from their honeymoon when Flight 401 crashed. She had been recovering from a heartbreak of her own for a year and a half. There were 75 survivors. That area was off limits to hunters and others for a number of months while federal investigators searched the area for clues to the crash. Leonhard put the car in park, cut the motor and stepped out. Speculation at the club was rampant which is to be expected from a bunch of pilots. A mass of interesting testimony was produced as a result. 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. Combined with numerous anonymous witnesses and countless tales, the rumors spread throughout the aviation community. Funny how people scream for God at a time like that. Eastern 401, pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000, go back to approach control, the tower advised. Beverly Raposa switched seats from her regular position in the galley for a flight from New York to Miami. Then the commuter airline folded. Eddie Albert featured as "Dunn", a fictionalized version of Captain Robert Loft. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. 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. He felt a sense of mission as he looked out into the black swamp, knowing that his job required cunning and stealth. His book was later made into a TV movie. Luis Bancroft 10/10/48 Ghosts of Flight 401 - 3 | On December 3rd 2007, survivors of Eastern Air Lines flight 401 gathered at the Metro-Dade Firefighters' Memorial Building in Miami to honor Robert "Bud" Marquis, and to remember those who lost their lives in the crash nearly 35 years ago. Eduardo Jaramillo 8/2/32 Thomas Ponte 10/24/11 Donald Louis Repo 5/10/21 What caused Flight 401 crash? 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. [17] Over time, the reporting of ghost sightings stopped. Sure enough, I recall that the initial restricted area was posted in a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) and set out a no-fly zone that had a one mile radius from the crash site up to 2,000 feet above mean sea level. Grand Canyon Disaster + . Those pilots probably didn't even know there was a NOTAM prohibiting flight immediately above the crash site. At least he lives near his precious Everglades. The crash is considered unique in aviation history because of where it occurred: in Florida's Everglades a sprawling . Refresh the page, check Medium 's site. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 AIRBOYD 487K subscribers 284K views 13 years ago #AIRBOYD #AvGeek Video Courtesy: FAA via Lessons Learned From Transport Airplane Accidents. In the hospital, a nine-inch steel rod was inserted into the bone. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Flight 401 departed JFK Airport in New York on Friday, December 29, 1972, at 21:20, with 163 passengers and 13 crew members on board. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 5 | When he stopped the engine to push the boat back into the water, he heard a chorus of terrified human voices, hollering, moaning, shrieking. 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. This crash also was the basis for the earlier TV movie. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. Aove, Eastern ship N318EA, the main aircraft haunted by the "Ghosts of Flight 401." The aircraft was a Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar traveling from New York to Miami. . Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 She returns with a musty volume that smells like a lion's den. 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. "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. That was a godsend because I got to meet and befriend many of the club members, most of whom were successful small business owners enjoying the fruits of their labor by owning and operating private aircraft (something that is almost cost prohibitive in today's aviation, regulatory and business environments). [6]:107109, Robert "Bud" Marquis (19292008),[7] an airboat pilot, was out frog gigging with Ray Dickinsin (19291988) when they witnessed the crash. "I'm going to send some flowers to Miami and have them put on the grave of my first wife," said Ronald Infantino, who lost his bride of 20 days in the crash. Contained Within. Entry . At the time, it was one of the worst civil aviation disasters the country had ever seen. Elizabeth M. Pollack 12/10/17 "Having money ruined my life," he said. The hours passed, and still no rescuers had arrived. Some would rather not remember. Inside was a treasure: Her camera with the unprocessed film of shots of the crew taken that day. Were still at 2,000, right? the first officer asked. Eight minutes earlier, 401 had been descending on its landing approach after an uneventful flight from New York. On December 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing over 100 souls. [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. That simple piece of plastic represents a tie between me and what happened to the passengers and crew on Flight 401 on December 29, 1972. All photos by Southern Airboat, who coordinated the event. In a calm, soothing voice, she said, Now close your eyes and pretend you have a cup of coffee, hot chocolate or tea in your hands. Some survivors recovered and adjusted better than others. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. This was the first fatal crash of a wide-body aircraft. Caridad Fermina Hernandez 10/11/32 itinerary data, aircraft/flight or vessel/ voyage data, and personal identification information, including name, gender, date of birth, citizenship, travel document data, and status onboard the vessel or aircraft. 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. Jerome Becker 6/27/39 His right arm was three-quarters severed and barely attached by tendons, skin and strings of muscle. Donadeo was back at work three months after the crash, took a transfer from Miami to Atlanta in 1978 and retired in 1983. She wore panty hose and looked like shed been scalped with a razor. Ernest F. Bloodgood 4/1/16 employees and their immediate families of the Promoter and its related bodies corporate and registered travel companions of employees of the Promoter and its related bodies corporate. Allen M. Stark 8/11/49 Eastern used the Bowmar/Calrod brand. They failed to notice that the autopilot had been disconnected inadvertently and, subsequently, the aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed. 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 (99 initial crash fatalities, two died shortly afterward). 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. Anyway, the statute of limitations has long since passed. Let them not be forgotten. Chapter II - OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (AVIATION PROCEEDINGS) Subchapter A - ECONOMIC REGULATIONS. Leonhard hit the gas as he toggled on the blue light and siren. Theyll find us eventually., Raposa had the survivors scoot together, sitting back to back so they could stay warm. "I consider the survivors 75 miracles. Three of the four cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived. 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. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 1 | Thank you, Rob. Oddly, he felt no pain. by Gary Leff on December 29, 2022. He immediately drove to Eastern's Miami offices and decided to charter a helicopter to the crash site, as the swampy terrain made rescue difficult, and Eastern Airlines had not heard any news of progress in rescue efforts. On Dec. 3, Southern Airboat and other organizations also plan to honor Bud and the victims and survivors of Eastern Flight 401 with a service and a barbecue in Miami. 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. "He's an airboater.". 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. Ron Infantino woke up in a chill, heart pounding, breath erratic. The pilot Bob Loft and the flight engineer Don Repo were two of the 101 people who perished in the air crash. at 12:30 pm, December 30th) An elevation of only eight feet felt like being on a hilltop in the Everglades. Now 41, he lives alone in Titusville, on a disability pension. He also attacked his other daughter, who luckily survived the attack. Im sure they all ran away. She spit the words out quickly, doing her best to sound convincing. 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. Incredibly, we found a man sitting alone on a small tussock. 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. He can't remember anyone's name now. With no one flying the plane or noticing its steady descent at flight speed, it flew itself into the ground. The plane was dropping from the sky at a rate of 200 feet each minute. Jose Rego 9/5/19 [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. Her face burned from the jet fuel. Riding with him were two Federal Aviation Administration officials. He had a broken arm and some cuts and scrapes, but no other visible wounds, Leonhard said. Selma Karpen 6/16/21 Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was on its way from New York to Miami on December 29th, 1972, with 13 crew and 163 passengers onboard. I guess their clothes got blown off them.". It was a heart-to- heart bond. It would be hard to make up a plausible story like Ronald Infantino's -- too sad, too joyful. The crash was documented in Rob and Sarah Elder's 1977 book Crash. Bill, ironically, as well as being the proud owner of a pristine Cessna 180 was one of the helicopter pilots for the Metro-Dade police department. Warren Terry 2/16/34 "It survived that night, just like me. Carmen Jorge 7/7/46 A lot of the people I saw were naked. She worked in the executive offices at Easterns Miami base. Why dont we sing to help warm ourselves up? she suggested. It is personal and it has served over the intervening years to remind me of how precious and tenuous life can be. Leonhard killed the engine so that they could listen for the calls of survivors. Loretta E. Bloodgood 10/13/15 Based on the book, it dramatized the crash, rescue efforts, and NTSB investigation. It happened 40 years ago today on a cold dark night in the Everglades, a brand new "Whisperliner" jumbo jet. Follow my voice!. The crew of Flight 401, taken aboard Flight 26 while on the ground in Miami earlier the day of the crash. ValuJet 592 went down in May 1996, killing all 110 on board. 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. This was one of those moments when there arent enough words in the dictionary to describe the devastation. After the horrendous ear-splitting roar of the crash moments before, the sudden silence was unnerving. At night, when he sits on his porch, he can hear the wup-wup bellows of the pig frogs and the heh-heh-heh chatter of the leopard frogs beyond the trees. [5]:22[6]:109, 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 NTSB classified the injuries of one nonrevenue passenger and one other passenger as nonfatal, as their deaths occurred more than seven days after the accident. Even at 78, Marquis is an old-fashioned country boy. "He was naked. That credo seems to be exemplified in every major airplane crash. And now, no one was flying the plane. Charles Camichel 9/9/1899 (we assume this is the "C. Carmichael" on My former brother-in-law, James Anderson, was an avid air boat owner and hunting enthusiast. It crashed into the Everglades 18.7 miles northwest of the airport, eight miles north of Tamiami. The flight was routine until 23:32 when the plane began its approach into Miami International Airport. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa and Stephanie Stanich. Less than three hours later the aircraft reached Florida. Good for me! Then wham! Off I went to check with the FAA Flight Service Station. On September 4, 1954, Santiago Airlines Flight 513 departed from Aachen, West Germany, destined for Porto Alegre, Brazil. Bill Elliott had a much more eventful night. Renee Joaquin Albert 8/3/36 2h 48m. When she came to, she was still belted into her seat, tipped to one side, hanging six feet above the swamp. I was coping with someone who was disabled. The Lockheed L-1011 carried 163 passengers and 13 crew members. He found one, selling $500 vacuum cleaners in Tampa. In my mind, that makes him a real hero.". It was a solemn and sobering return flight. The flight had 163 passengers and 13 crew members. I was then almost 26 years old and had recently graduated from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. In December 1972, there was a deadly | by Verity Partington | The Mystery Box | Medium 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. "He's one of us," says John Canti, a firefighter, paramedic and outdoorsman. Flight 401 may refer to: Iberia Airlines Flight 401, crashed on 5 May 1965. Ethel L. Jackson 3/8/08 That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. 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. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Raposa, Beverly | 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. He was trapped beneath the water. Below Left - In red, stewardess Beverly Raposa at the memorial. Because of the magnitude of the rescue operation and of the medical emergency caused the study resulted in a . Raposa was struggling for ideas to keep her group occupied. Clutching his walking stick, Bud shuffles past a mango tree into the backyard. 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. Above: A piece of wreckage from Flight 401 still visible in the Everglades. 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. Suddenly, he stopped. 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. On a moonless night, in the beam of his head lamp, the frog eyes would glow like rubies. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed. They rushed to rescue survivors. "Then I saw this great big fireball and the whole 'glades lit up. It is featured in season1, episode3, of the TV show Why Planes Crash, in an episode called "Human Error" (2010). Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. It was approximately 15 to 20 miles west-southwest of the Opa locka Airport and it was pretty difficult to find at first. HONOLULU, FEB. 25 -- As investigators questioned the pilots and ground crew today, Coast Guard and Navy rescue workers recovered from the Pacific two seats and a 4-by-6-foot . The last thing Raposa remembered seeing before she was knocked out was a waterfall of colors. Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute | Sharon Norene Gatti 3/2/48 I saw a husband who couldn't find his wife or his children." Sometime in midflight, passenger Ron Infantino switched seats with his wife, Lilly, after she returned from the bathroom. 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. Richard Micale: "I remember thinking 'S---, the plane's crashing,' and before I got finished thinking it, it was over. Marc Leshay 11/28/51 Ruiz, 63, of West Miami-Dade, still has aches and pains but returned to flying until Eastern folded in 1991. Fourteen survivors had various degrees of burns. He had to make a detour of some 50 miles before he would arrive at the boat ramp on the north side of the Tamami Trail. . Pin. 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 bent, white-haired man in the mirror has a bad heart and breathes from an oxygen machine, hasn't been frogging in a coon's age, and hasn't been in his airboat since, well, he can't remember. He survived, barely, with his right arm nearly severed, his left knee broken and his chest crushed. Born in Arkansas, he grew up in South Florida when everybody seemed to be poor. Below: The Casado family tour the crash site. 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. According to my late mother, she wanted to get back to flying, but she was petrified every time she heard jet noise. Folks from South Florida's sporting community, mostly hunters, fishers and airboaters, heard, many for the first time, about Bud. When I was learning to fly in the mid-1960s at Sun Line Helicopters, one of the fixed base operators (FBO) tied into the Miami-Dade Junior College aviation program at the Opa locka Airport, I worked as a line boy refueling aircraft and doing minor line maintenance. "They gave us six months off and then we were expected to be 'over it. Flight 401 crash-landed into the Everglades at over 200 mph. Lucille Cilles 1/30/24 Well launch from there.. Like a lot of other aspiring commercial pilots, I had had a checkered aviation career, having worked, among other things, as the full-time chief pilot of a regional oil company while attending college. Julia Lustig 5/30/25 Serving coffee, tea and soda was all very nice, but this was what counted. The TriStar's port outer wing structure struck the ground first, followed by the number1 engine and the port main undercarriage. Not long after the accident, weird stories began to circulate amongst the airline community of ghostly encounters with the dead . It was broken in the crash and he avoids putting any strain on it -- good advice for anyone his age, 67. Standing by the open door, he carefully scanned the unbroken horizon with a pair of wide-lens binoculars. Tuesday. In 2005, TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed into the Amazonian jungle, leaving a trail of bodies and wreckage scattered across the rainforest. "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. When the Coast Guard helicopter attempted a landing, the prop wash threw hunks of debris dangerously around. 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. [5]:4 This altitude alert, designed to warn the pilots of an inadvertent deviation from the selected altitude, went unnoticed by the crew. The experienced flight crew was distracted when the landing gear light failed to come on, which they believed was caused by a blown bulb. 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. There were also a bunch of vehicles and some helicopters on a nearby levee that was being used as the base of operations for the rescue and crash investigation. It didn't light. The trip to Florida, by official accounts, was pleasantly routine. 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.

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