Someone had seen his frogging light. It's broken, just like him. This quote, which was obviously a joke, was presented in the Ghost of Flight 401 as fact. Gas gangrene attacked his lungs. The aircraft impacted the Everglades at 227 mph at 25.51'53"N, 80.35'43"W, almost 7 miles due north of Tamiami Trail (US 41), slightly over 7 miles . 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. I probably did too, I'm sure." Join FlightAware View more flight history Purchase entire flight history for AAL401. Flight 401 may refer to: Iberia Airlines Flight 401, crashed on 5 May 1965. Give or take a word, the announcement is remembered verbatim by virtually every survivor. Bud Marquis had experienced better nights of frogging. Grand Canyon Disaster + . Shortly after I arrived, one of my friends, Hansel Meighen, practically dragged me to his airplane and loudly announced that we were going to go fly out to the Everglades crash site. She worked in the executive offices at Easterns Miami base. He survived, barely, with his right arm nearly severed, his left knee broken and his chest crushed. Seventy-five miraculously survived. There were four men in the cockpit, all preoccupied with the light and landing gear. It was the first of the new generation of wide-body "jumbo jets" to crash. During a rare moment of calm after the rescue helicopter had departed for Miami, he heard the faint tune of a Christmas carol. James Hall, Flight Operations and Safety, Miami office, had the task of notifying all the families of the crash victims. "Remember what the doctor said," Nancy chimes in. Patricia George was on top of the coat closet. 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. 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. Abbey Lynn Greenwald 9/18/52 "I consider the survivors 75 miracles. Each year on December 29th, I spend a little time thinking about that silhouetted L1011 heading west over Opa locka Airport. Greta Foye 3/19/45 The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV Movie 1978) - IMDb | This was one of those moments when there arent enough words in the dictionary to describe the devastation. Contained Within. Two minutes later, Flight 401 called the air traffic control tower. After lowering the gear, First Officer Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the "down" position, had not illuminated. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | He was an aviation business student at Miami-Dade Community College then, and used some of his money to start a commuter airline. "I thought I would fall apart," she told a newspaper in 1975. The flight had 163 passengers and 13 crew members. 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. The landing gear from Flight 401 at the crash site; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. Rosario Messina 2/29/26 After dark he moonlighted as a commercial frogger. Feel the warmth going down.. Even though I didn't own an airplane, the club members considered me one of their own, a privilege that I treasure and respect to this day, despite the fact that I haven't had any involvement with the club since the late 1970s. Adapted from Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases by Bob H. Lee. [8], In all, 75 survived the crash67 of the 163 passengers and eight of the 10 flight attendants. Henry Nunez 8/18/23 It was more accurately a "tie-down"club; the members owned their aircraft and joined the club to be able to tie-down their aircraft at reasonable costs and have access to a ramp area where they could perform routine maintenance on their planes. A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 298 passengers crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday while traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Caridad Fermina Hernandez 10/11/32 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. There he was able to land in a swampy patch of grass and coordinate rescue efforts. I saw people burned in agony. Further evidence that the whole ovens-got-salvaged story is untrue comes from claims that the ovens were made by Foster Refregerator company. He sold 13 in a month. 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. With an injured back and a cut foot, she slogged through sucking muck, shredded saw grass and plane wreckage. A fireball rushed through the fuselage, and the plane began pinwheeling like a giant Ferris wheel spun loose from its mount. Bud saw bodies strapped into seats upside down in the water. That doesn't haunt me either . Julia Lustig 5/30/25 As the plane descended on its final landing approach to Miami International Airport, a cheerful voice boomed over the cabins loudspeaker address system: Welcome to sunny Miami, the captain announced. The oven choices for airlines were either Nordskog or the Bowmar/Calrod brand. Ex-FBI agent: I saw angels at Flight 93 site. Colonel. It would be hard to make up a plausible story like Ronald Infantino's -- too sad, too joyful. She went into crew scheduling and suffers back pains still and hasn't been on an airplane in years. Eastern 401, pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000, go back to approach control, the tower advised. An Eastern flight attendant posted this scan (below) from his L-1011 FA manual. I had first, second and third-degree burns all over my body. Hey!" LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. One retired Eastern L-1011 pilot I spoke to said that he had a second officer flying with him on a B-727 for several months in the Spring of '73 who was a self-ordained preacher. That was a miracle that is probably attributable to three factors: (1) the crash site was a soft, wet swamp; (2) there was no significant post-crash fire; and (3) the force of disintegration was directed horizontally and not vertically, flinging many survivors out into the swamp instead of subjecting them to fatal blunt force trauma which is characteristic of most airplane crashes. Last picture of Paul Walker alive, before getting into the porsche that crashed. At home, waiting sometimes fearfully, was Nancy, a pretty barefoot country girl in a cotton dress. ", Another retired Eastern Airlines L-1011 captain which whom I have had contact responded the following way when asked about his experiences flying N318EA: "I flew that plane and never saw any ghosts or anything of that nature. Interment will follow at 2pm at Florida National Cemetery. 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. Wait a minute, he said. The time was 9:20 p.m. Eastern used the Bowmar/Calrod brand. Lilly leaned back in her seat, resting quietly. He saw openings in the sawgrass created by sliding chunks of broken airplane. Why dont we sing to help warm ourselves up? she suggested. It was somewhere between 11:30 pm and 11:35 pm, a fact that I specifically remember because I took the time to look at my wristwatch and comment to Bill. Darrylle Becker 3/16/43 Robert Loft, 55; First Officer Albert Stockstill, 39, and Second Officer Donald Repo, 51, all of Miami-Dade. She left Eastern and worked in the travel agency industry. 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. Now it was her turn. Hansel owned a single engine Piper Comanche 250, registered as N7510P, that held four people, including the pilot. [22] Eastern considered suing for libel, based on assertions of a cover-up by Eastern executives, but Borman opted not to, feeling a lawsuit would merely provide more publicity for the book. These and other requirements are imposed for the purpose of meeting the collective objectives of the Aviation and That left two seats open. [15][16][17], These stories speculated that parts of the crashed aircraft were salvaged after the investigation and refitted into other L-1011s. '", Age 79, died Saturday, October 2, 2004 in Land O'Lakes, FL. In the cockpit: Capt. "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. He'd get that look. Get Alerts. Some would rather not remember. [5]:4 The engineer (Repo) had gone below, and no indication was heard of the pilots' voices recorded on the CVR that they heard the chime. The largest recognizable pieces of wreckage were the cockpit section and the center engine intake and attached fuselage section. His name showed up recently on a Web site (eastern401.googlepages.com) about the 35th anniversary of a tragedy that killed more than 100 passengers and traumatized dozens more. In fact we all were troubled because, by the luck of the draw or fate, some passengers survived while others in similar situations who looked as though they should have survived, were killed. The bronze plaques are being donated as well as the granite base. 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. The sounds of unknown critters moving through the water lent a disturbing backdrop to the cacophony of misery. Also notable were the Eastern Airlines two-tone blue and white colors on the larger pieces of wreckage. Jesus Lorenzo 4/26/37 Now take a sip. Thus, the switching to CWS in channel A possibly did not occur in channel B, thus depriving the first officer of any indication the mode had changed (channel A provides the captain's instruments with data, while channel B provides the first officer's). An original floor board from Flight 401 remains in the archives at History Miami in South Florida. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) The Ghosts of Flight 401, part of the Discovery+ series Shock Docs, emphasizes the supernatural legacy of the crash. Discretion was the better part of valor. 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. Leonhard discovered a hole in the bushes, roughly circular in shape and a little larger than the mouth of a culvert pipe. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000ft (610m), and then hold west over the Everglades. "When I tried to prop him up it felt like every bone in his body was broken.". He also attacked his other daughter, who luckily survived the attack. The fact that the tail assemblyrear fuselage, number2 tail-mounted engine, and remains of the empennagefinally came to rest substantially further forward than other major sections, was probably the result of the number 2 engine continuing to deliver thrust during the actual breakup of the aircraft. Bud waved his light until the helicopter took notice. It seemed to help. Although he was a passenger, he rode in the cockpit with pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer. Bud and Nancy own 27 domestic cats, including 15 that live indoors on sofas, tables and bookshelves. 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. Ann Connell, Barry Connell, Angelo Donadeo, Patricia R Georgia, Adrianne Ann Hamilton, Jennifer Larsen, Thomas Mulcahy, Mercedes V Ruiz, Beverly Jean Raposa, Trudy J Smith, Sue F. Tibbs, Sharon R Transue, Dorothy M Warnock. 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. Song - The Ghost of Flight 401 - Lyrics | 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. 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. [5]:3 This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. Anne Ponte 1/7/16 MIAMI - Thursday marks 50 years since Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades. [5]:4 In the next 70 seconds, the airplane lost only 250ft (76m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under the engineer's workstation. [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. Thomas Ponte 10/24/11 Photos: AL DIAZ | MIAMI HERALD. "We consider it the day our second life began," Christina Casado-Acorn, said of Dec. 29, 1972. Had the task of notifying all the families of the Discovery+ series Docs! 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