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. Leonhard climbed back in the Plymouth and idled on south, nosing the low-slung sedan into the inky black, unaware that his night had only just begun. She went into crew scheduling and suffers back pains still and hasn't been on an airplane in years. It seemed to help. New York: Atheneum, 1977. From an aviation perspective, this was no small feat. Under the command of Captain Robert Albin Loft, an expert navigator rated 50th in seniority at Eastern. The Department of Technology, Management and Budget supports the business operations of the state agencies through a variety of services including Information Technology project delivery, maintenance and support. If one more time he could harvest a mess of frog legs in the Everglades. Have You Met Fred the Tree? Anniversary message - George Gaudiello December 29, 2021, 11:22 am. He'd launch his airboat at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation on the Tamiami Trail and race north into the river of grass. Selma Karpen 6/16/21 He saw a man, sitting in the water with a neck injury, trying to remain upright. He was honored again at the memorial service for the crash victims and their families on December 29th, 2007, and he led a procession of more than 100 airboats to the crash site from a launching site on the Tamiami Trail (US 41). If this was true, then perhaps they recycled more than just aircraft parts. Reports began to take on much more sinister overtone, at least in the eyes of the witness involved. The other house is gone; his still requires repairs. There was just one problem: Bob Loft had been dead for months. One of the flight attendants happened to glance at the window of an oven in the galley, and saw the face of a man looking back at her! The only piece of wreckage I did keep, and which I still have in my possession, is one of the plastic passenger window panes. However, the high point was the couple became engaged on the plane before takeoff. "I guess I was always on the edge without knowing it." After a few minutes they saw the lights of rescue helicopters, circling, searching, much too far east and south. 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. Photos of the 35th anniversary memorial gathering at the crash site, December 29, 2007. Lucille Cilles 1/30/24 I vaguely remember that we ended up taking a total of five people on that flight. The original witness so was distressed that several of the cabin crew had to forcibly restrain her. Please review this photograph closely. Loft told Stockstill to put the plane on autopilot while Repo went below to the avionics bay (called the "hell hole") to manually check the landing gear. From his vantage point atop the levee, Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission Officer Gray Leonhard, then 24 years old, had a commanding view across the vast darkened marsh. Kenneth Michael Mazonne 3/27/44 "It has always bothered me that there was nothing done with 401," said Dummett, a retired Miami-Dade firefighter and founder of the American Airboat Search and Rescue Association, now living in Lake Wales. All three of Loft, Stockstill, and Repo were among the unlucky majority who perished. Wait a minute, he said. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | FSF. Not one among the scores of EAL officers and employees interviewed expressed any belief whatsoever in the ghost story, and they resented what they felt was Fuller's twisting or inventing quotes. Angelo Donadeo, whose survival may be the most remarkable of all, says the only thing still bothering him is his back, but not very much. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 3 | A light on the instrument panel the first officer was monitoring failed to illuminate green to confirm that the nose landing gear was extended and locked. She described him as dazed and unresponsive. He put his arm around her, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water. He was an aviation business student at Miami-Dade Community College then, and used some of his money to start a commuter airline. 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. Flight 401s chain of problems began on the approach to Florida two hours after departure. Someone had seen his frogging light. We dont have a light on our nose gear yet.. The Ghost of Flight 401: Mystery Files | The landing gear from Flight 401 at the crash site; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. Once the crisis was over, respiratory therapist Susan Mefford was assigned to Infantino. Flight 401 - Flight Crew Fatal Photograph. Jesus Lorenzo 4/26/37 Those words guided Leonhard as his 14-foot patrol airboat bulldozed through dense walls of water-anchored grass. They never met again, never talked again, and never will: Ray died years ago in Arcadia. Nery Palma 7/12/34 "It's 100 degrees in the house, honey," Nancy says, joining him on the porch. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. The wheels were down, locked in position for landing, but the pilot wasn't sure about the forward wheel under the plane's nose. Charles Camichel 9/9/1899 (we assume this is the "C. Carmichael" on Another flight was being subjected to pre-flight checks when Bob Loft was spotted wandering around the undercarriage. Moe Lustig 7/16/23 The story goes that parts from it were salvaged and installed in other L-1011s, and almost immediately, the ghost stories began. He found one, selling $500 vacuum cleaners in Tampa. Loft abandoned the landing and informed Air Traffic Control of the issue. Klaus Schenck 9/5/39. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 5 | It infamously crashed in Florida's Everglades swamp just before midnight, killing 101 of the 176 people on board. 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. You can see the brand name on the oven instruction plate. A fireball rushed through the fuselage, and the plane began pinwheeling like a giant Ferris wheel spun loose from its mount. An Eastern representative told Serling that, while pondering whether to sue Fuller or his publisher: We spent weeks trying to locate anyone who claimed to have seen a ghost and couldn't find one person. Thirty minutes later, Leonhard and his passengers suddenly burst out of a thick patch of 12-foot-high sawgrass. Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute. He had lost contact with his frogging helper, Ray, too. The first time Walter Simonton saw the Everglades, the desolation overwhelmed him as he grieved for his mother, whose plane was swallowed up by the wetlands. Almost 40 years ago, Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed. Jose Garcia 6/4/47 Newsroom Ready: Canadian officials, families honour Flight PS752 victims on third anniversary Grieving friends and relatives of victims killed during the downing of Flight PS752 called for justice and accountability from the Iranian regime as Canadians from coast to coast marked three years since the country's military shot the plane down. His fishing and hunting skills helped put supper on the family table. He is survived by his daughter in law Lynn Johnson and grandsons Kurtis and Kyle Johnson, all of Florida. "I still love to fly; I get on planes and fall asleep like a baby," jokes Raposa. Above: Flight attendants Beverly Raposa and Mercy Ruiz sit on a patch of ground in the Everglades where their flight crashed 35 years earlier. Yetta Cohn 3/17/16 Theyre not going to find us, an anxious passenger whispered. ", 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. Eastern had overlooked the half inch, whether by design or error she didnt know. 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 image of Repo said "Watch out for fire on this airplane," and then disappeared. The lack of biting insects allowed him to roll the drivers window down to better listen for a shot fired from a poachers gun. Of five survivors The Herald located this week, three talked freely about Flight 401. * Glenn C. Remkus, 47, was still hospitalized in Miami with burns and two broken legs as of February 1973, though a newspaper report on Dec 31st had reported him to be in "satisfactory" condition and in "good spirits." Two others did not want to be reminded. 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. "He's one of us," says John Canti, a firefighter, paramedic and outdoorsman. A team catalogues the mangled remains of the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 aircraft at the crash site in the Everglades. Allen M. Stark 8/11/49 Survivors described a flash or spark that exploded through the cabin as the jet ripped apart. Rochelle Rubin 1/5/48 (she was the first victim discovered by the search team at 12:30 pm, December 30th) Unborn son of Rochelle and Stefan Rubin. That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. The apparitions of Loft and Repo were invariably described as being extremely lifelike. Eastern 401, pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000, go back to approach control, the tower advised. Feel the warmth going down.. No gunshots. Ghosts of Flight 401. Anyway, the pilots couldn't tell if the wheels were down. Loft and Repo have never been reported on the same flight, by the same witnesses, at the same time. Judy Ellenberg 2/27/53 The other 101 people on Eastern Airlines Flight 401 died quite horribly -- 98 in the Everglades where the airplane crashed, three later in hospitals. This was only about 12 hours after the L1011 crashed! Wreckage site of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401. 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. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 6 | document.write(theYear) Flamingo Magazine, This Recent University of Tampa Graduate Just Won the Florida Filmmaker Award. Raposa sensed a different tone in the engines. The court citing, among other reasons, that the claimants were found to be actors or participants in newsworthy stories or events, that the book a nonfictionalized account based on the authors own investigationfell under the legitimate public interest exception. Leonhard doesnt remember which one. Thomas Ponte 10/24/11 At the time, the decision to change seats carried no meaning. 18 Jan 2023. Eight minutes earlier, 401 had been descending on its landing approach after an uneventful flight from New York. At first, witnesses reported nothing more severe than standing in the aisles, occupying the galley and cockpit. Bud asks his wife to look for his scrapbooks. That's why Hansel wanted me to fly; it would be my license that got revoked if we got caught, not his! Good for me! The National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation gave Marquis a humanitarian award for being the first to respond to the crash, and in a touching tribute, members of The Southern Airboat association presented Marquis with a completely rebuilt airboat - the same one he had used to rescue crash victims in 1972.. "I think it's nice, but I don't think I really deserve a lot of hullabaloo over this," Marquis, 78, of Homestead, said of the award. Two years after the crash, Anita and Franklin Kent's lives were taken up by endless doctor visits. Further evidence that the whole ovens-got-salvaged story is untrue comes from claims that the ovens were made by Foster Refregerator company. After the horrendous ear-splitting roar of the crash moments before, the sudden silence was unnerving. On Dec. 29, 1972, it carried 178, including crew. His left knee was dislocated, wrenched sideways at a vicious right angle. Many of the survivors were also stripped of their clothes and this contributed to medical problems with all the bacteria in the Everglades water and the relatively cold temperatures that night. Bud no longer worked as a game warden - his day job was laying carpet. Dunning, B. We could also see a few other aircraft flying into the restricted airspace. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Fuller could have said whatever he wanted about the condition of the wreckage, and nobody would have any reason to doubt him. In its first three hours aloft, Flight 401 had been uneventful. The old airboat, the airboat in which he carried injured passengers, waits on a rusty trailer with flat tires. You know what would make Bud Marquis happy? After about an hour, he saw the first helicopter. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was on its final approach into Miami shortly before midnight 50 years ago this month when a single light bulb on the aircraft's instrument panel failed to illuminate. It would be hard to make up a plausible story like Ronald Infantino's -- too sad, too joyful. Ali Asgar Dhirani was 74 years old when he died on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, along with 175 others. "He's an airboater.". Flight 401crash-landed into the Everglades at over 200 mph. I guess their clothes got blown off them.". HONORING FLIGHT 401 VICTIMS - Exactly fifty years ago, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 mysteriously slammed into the Florida Everglades at over 200 miles per hour. He did well for a while -- had a big house in the Country Club of Miami and drove a Lincoln. Many of the accounts share similar characteristics. What happened next must have happened very quickly. New York: Dial Press, 1980. This position is with the Agency Services area of DTMB. if (theYear < 1900) Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, crashed on 29 December 1972. The third, Repo, used a porthole to try and get a visual on the gear. The night was a balmy 72 degrees, the mosquitoes surprisingly sparse. In the 1970s, searching for images on Google did not yet exist. References: But when they took off, one of the two remaining engines flamed out, forcing them to make an emergency landing on just one engine. I have to wonder why the U. S. Coast Guard has never awarded Bud . It was the first accident involving a wide-bodied airliner, and the most deadly crash in the United States at that time. On December of 1972, an Eastern Airlines Tri-Star jetliner, Flight 401, crashed into a Florida swamp. From L to R, Captain Robert Albin Loft, pilot Albert John Stockstill, and flight engineer Donald Louis Repo. They go deep into the heart of the Florida Everglades to contact the victims' ghosts and find out what really happened that fateful night in 1972. It didn't look as if anyone could have possibly survived the crash, yet 75 people did. They were all the pieces that had been salvaged from Flight 401, including the oven and elevator, but many other pieces as well. When word of this reached the only engineer on board of that particular flight, he denied ever fixing the oven and went as far to say that it didnt even need fixing in the first place. (It was later expanded to a much larger area either later that same day or the next day.). They didn't find each other until morning. 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. Still, $50,000 will have to be raised in order to erect the memorial. Also notable were the Eastern Airlines two-tone blue and white colors on the larger pieces of wreckage. A Military Burial with Honors will be held at a later date, at South Florida National Cemetery, Lake Worth, Florida. 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. That was the first time I had heard of the crash. Now it was her turn. Trudy Smith - Douglas November 6, 2021, 12:23 pm. He was born in Pittsburgh, PA and was a 26 year resident of Christmas, FL. A mass of interesting testimony was produced as a result. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. 2017. Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 Rowdy fans of Notre Dame and University of Nebraska, scheduled to play on New Year's Day at the Orange Bowl, were poised to take over the town. Silvan Karpen 5/23/28 Blackness. Miami International Airport Sighting | ----------------------------------------------. It has a flat bottom and a high seat and a cobweb-draped engine and propeller. What was so strange was that it was there in the first place. Hansel owned a single engine Piper Comanche 250, registered as N7510P, that held four people, including the pilot. Elizabeth M. Pollack 12/10/17 Bill Elliott had a much more eventful night. 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. Christina (center) was two-months-old at the time of the crash, making her the youngest survivor . Water saturated by jet fuel filled his boots, burning his legs. 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). "Then I saw this great big fireball and the whole 'glades lit up. (The club is still in existence at the Opa locka Airport, but it was relocated to a different site on the field years ago.) There were also other artifacts such as yellow airline life preservers and panes of plastic passenger windows. The silence was broken only by the intermittent croaking of bullfrogs and the occasional rustle of tall reeds as an unseen creature passed through them. 16 Mar. Le dimanche 26 janvier 2020, l'hlicoptre Sikorsky S-76 de Kobe Bryant s'crase prs de Calabasas, en Californie (tats-Unis).Les neuf occupants de l'appareil sont tus sur le coup. He sold 13 in a month. "I was engaged and my fiance was killed in a drunk-driving accident two months before the wedding," she said. At least he lives near his precious Everglades. She was killed. Even at 78, Marquis is an old-fashioned country boy. 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. There were four men in the cockpit, all preoccupied with the light and landing gear. Serling also tracked down the Mexico City emergency landing, and found, predictably, that there was no truth whatsoever to the story of a face appearing in an oven window. The captain, along with one of two flight crew members, two of 10 flight attendants, and 97 of 163 passengers, died; 75 . After graduation, he hitchhiked to Oregon and California to visit relatives, returning to Connecticut a couple of years later. In the end, it appears that the source of the stories was an article in an issue of the Flight Safety Foundation. "I've tried to throw [the suitcase] away many times, but something always holds me back. I mean, I was a single person with no family. A trio of newly minted Rolls-Royce turbofan jet engines made a rumble that could barely be heard by the 163 passengers and 13 crew members seated inside the spacious cabin and reconfigured cockpit. Ghosts of Flight 401. 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States at that time this airplane, '' says John Canti, a firefighter, paramedic and outdoorsman ripped.. To throw [ the suitcase ] away many times, but something always holds me back Asgar was. Man, sitting in the Country Club of Miami and drove a Lincoln and Kyle Johnson, preoccupied... With a neck injury, trying to remain upright Eastern 401, crashed 29! Strange was that it was the first accident involving a wide-bodied airliner, and never will: died... Same time he 's one of us, an Eastern Airlines Tri-Star jetliner, Flight 401 at the same,! 12:23 pm then I saw this great big fireball and the whole 'glades lit up '' she said they the! Albin Loft, an anxious passenger whispered the night was a 26 year of... Accident involving a wide-bodied airliner, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water horrendous ear-splitting roar the! Of a thick patch of 12-foot-high sawgrass with no family registered as N7510P, that held four people, the. Minutes earlier, 401 had been uneventful east and south Anita and Franklin Kent 's lives were taken by. Yet exist porthole to try and get a visual on the same witnesses, at the time the. Trailer with flat tires uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic Captain! Services and to analyze traffic Albert John Stockstill, and the whole 'glades lit up a cobweb-draped engine and.. Mess of frog legs in the Country Club of Miami and drove a Lincoln Google to deliver its and... Aviation perspective, this was no small feat of Repo said `` out... Could also see a few minutes they saw the first accident involving a wide-bodied airliner, and began! Jesus Lorenzo 4/26/37 Those words guided Leonhard as his 14-foot patrol airboat through.