Ever the good Catholic, she crossed herself in the dark and silently prayed, Oh God, please let that be true.. Sometimes, back when there were no cell phones or GPS electronics to help navigate, he'd get lost at night. Anne Ponte 1/7/16 Michael Ann Kaminer 12/28/45 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. 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. One hundred and one lives were lost that late . Theyre not going to find us, an anxious passenger whispered. As I sit writing this 34 years later in December 2006, I can still visualize the events of that night just as if they had occurred yesterday. Huge gouts of mud and aquatic vegetation shot high into the air as 185 tons of screeching metal ripped into the muck and grass. His flight crew included First Officer . Help., Then a big, bold female voice reverberated somewhere out of the gloom, Dont anyone light a match! A few minutes later, If you can hear my voice, come to me! Not long after the accident, weird stories began to circulate amongst the airline community of ghostly encounters with the dead . North Miami Beach, FL (PRWEB) December 7, 2007 On Monday, December 3, 2007 survivors of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, gathered at the Metro-Dade Firefighters Memorial Building, in Doral (Miami), Florida, to remember the 101 passengers and crew, who lost their lives in the fateful crash of a Lockheed L-1011, jumbo-jet in the Florida Everglades, December 29, 1972, while en route from New York to . I probably did too, I'm sure." 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. Of the 163 passengers and 13 crew-members aboard, 94 passengers and 5 crew members received fatal injuries. Jose Carrasquillo 6/28/40 He had promised to show a slight acquaintance, Ray Dickinson, how to gig frogs. 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. [5]:2729, A company employeetechnical officer Angelo Donadeo, 47, returning to Miami from an assignment in New Yorkaccompanied the flight crew for the journey, but was officially an off-duty, "nonrevenue passenger". Still, $50,000 will have to be raised in order to erect the memorial. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. [6]:102,108 Stockstill was killed on impact, while Captain Loft died in the wreckage of the flight deck before he could be transported to a hospital. "CRASH" BOOK AND MADE FOR TV MOVIE (1977/ 1978). Unable to move and weak from severe loss of blood, his body hung suspended in the watery muck, still bent in the sitting position. Marquis, Robert | "He swore that Frank Borman had paid him to come to Miami and perform an exorcism on #318. Loise Shackelford attended. By 1 a.m., the rookie warden had launched his airboat. Something was wrong with the landing gear or the landing-gear light on the control panel. Lilly leaned back in her seat, resting quietly. 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. For survivors, the crash has left physical and mental scars. Thank you, Rob. The Ghost of Flight 401: Mystery Files | Eastern Airlines Flight 401 is coming in for a landing in Miami. Further evidence that the whole ovens-got-salvaged story is untrue comes from claims that the ovens were made by Foster Refregerator company. 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. An account of the paranormal happenings even appeared in a 1974 issue of the US Flight Safety Foundation newsletter. "It needs new points and plugs, maybe a new set of rings. 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. Feel the warmth going down.. Silvia Crespo 11/30/32 I don't recall any large scorched patches of saw grass, but I remember a few small burned areas. 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 saw tangled metal and smelled aviation fuel. Email subscription; Email subscription; . Lets sing Christmas carols, Raposa replied. Lost - Passengers and Crew (Name and Birthdate), Elise Grace Agate 9/3/42 [5]:3, The flight was routine until 23:32, when the airplane began its approach into Miami International Airport. Isell Delgado 1/23/25 He felt a sense of mission as he looked out into the black swamp, knowing that his job required cunning and stealth. 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. [5]:13. 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. It is 12 feet long and 7 feet across. A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 298 passengers crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday while traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. [6]:101 The pilots cycled the landing gear, but still failed to get the confirmation light. His required surgery. The four-month-old L-1011 TriStar jet crashed into the Florida Everglades on December 29, 1972 at 11:42 p.m., caused . There were 176 people aboard the state-of-the-art Lockheed L-1011, which was nicknamed the. They had drowned because their seats landed with their heads tilted down into the swamp water. [5]:5. Muriel J. Ames 11/30/40 [5]:23 In this mode, once the pilot releases pressure on the yoke (control column or wheel), the autopilot maintains the pitch attitude of the aircraft until the yoke is again moved. Below is a list of those on board, according . It's broken, just like him. An interesting side show to the crash of Flight 401 was documented in the 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401, by John G. Fuller. There were four men in the cockpit, all preoccupied with the light and landing gear. Jana Dedek 6/24/53 On December 29, 1972 pilot Robert "Bob" Loft and flight engineer Don Repo were piloting Eastern Airlines Flight 401 from JFK Airport (NY) to Miami, Florida. December 21, 2022, 5:00 AM. Lockheed L-1011 Landing Gear Lever | [4] It was also the first hull loss and fatal crash of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. 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 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. Ruiz, 63, of West Miami-Dade, still has aches and pains but returned to flying until Eastern folded in 1991. . She left Eastern and worked in the travel agency industry. Someone had seen his frogging light. It didn't light. 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. 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. 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. He lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. Bud asks his wife to look for his scrapbooks. Anyway, the statute of limitations has long since passed. Ways to check-in for your flight including online and on your mobile. Stephanie Rae Stanich 11/10/48 We had him out by 5:30 in the morning. 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. Raposa was struggling for ideas to keep her group occupied. Donadeo said he is not troubled by survivor guilt, a common after-effect of tragedies. After the crash, a . Dennis Gordon 12/9/32 She put in 11 more years with United before retiring. The temperature is in the low 70s, and its beautiful out there tonight.. I really do think I can gig some frogs if I had to. Ethel L. Jackson 3/8/08 It's a swamp, a flat swamp. Bud Marquis had experienced better nights of frogging. 35 Years after an Eastern Air Lines jet crashed into the Everglades, a rescuer looks back. theYear = now.getYear() That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. He likes to think about those days. With an injured back and a cut foot, she slogged through sucking muck, shredded saw grass and plane wreckage. 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. Then came scattered parts from the number 1 (port) engine, and fragments from the port wing itself and the port tailplane. Leonhard hit the gas as he toggled on the blue light and siren. 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. He has never taken pleasure in talking about what he saw after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 went down and how he felt about it. Captain Loft was found during the autopsy to have an undetected brain tumor in an area that controls vision. Join FlightAware View more flight history Purchase entire flight history for AAL401. "The three of us toast to life on that day every year.". Ghosts of Flight 401 - 3 | The article covered the story of an Eastern L-1011 ferry flight where the jet lost one of the two operating engines and the pilot had a challenging landing. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa and Stephanie Stanich. The crash occurred while the entire flight crew was preoccupied with . His foot pressed lightly against the accelerator pedal as he inched down the south levee on the L-28 canal with his headlights off. A Web forum, Southern Airboat, which attracts thousands of worldwide participants, plans to take care of the repairs. Mama, heat up the frying pan. The Ghost of Flight 401 was based on the tragic Eastern Air Lines airplane crash in December 1972, and the alleged supernatural events which followed; it was eventually turned into a popular 1978 made-for-television movie. Back in the day, when he spent so much time in the wilderness, only the airplanes overhead reminded him of civilization. The flight was under the command of Captain Robert Loft, 55, a veteran Eastern Airline plot. The state of decomposition of these bodies was very advanced, to the point where they were practically skeletons. 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. According to the National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ), the main fuselage broke into four main sections and many other smaller pieces on impact. 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. Raposa sensed a different tone in the engines. The slight forward pressure on the stick would have caused the aircraft to enter a slow descent, maintained by the CWS system. [5]:3 This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. May Albury, Verena Bieri, Carl Bolufe, Rigoberto Bolufe, Sandra Burt, Gustavo Cassado, Mrs Xeimara Casado, Miss Christina Casado, Mariel Diegeriez, Gerald W Eskow, Sylvia Fisher, Ms. F. Frankin, Herbert Fresko, Molly Fresko, Alicia Garcia, Julia Garcia, Kathryn F.Gaudiello, George Gaudiello, Kenneth Glassman, Kuniko Goldfuss, Milton Hoffman, Ronald Infantino, Miguel Angel Junco Jr., David Kaplan, Franklin Kent, Anita Kent, Helen Kupiec, Jessie LaRusso, James Laurie, Mrs. Leone Levine, Cornelia Leya, Thomas McAvoy, Joseph Mazur, Rose Mazur, Luis Mejia, Richard N. Micale, Albert J Morris, Janice Minguzzi, Christina Ochoa, Allen Okanawsky, Oneida Pares, Aristides Pares, Martha Pares, Carlos Polanco, Lucino Polanco, Joseph Popson, Richard Pragluski, Goldez Quinico, Evelyn Ragalia, Marie Rego, Glen Remkus*, Francoise Riette, Thomas Rothenberg, Martin Siminerio, Bonnie Silverman, Donna Smith, Millie Soberon, Jerald Solomon, Larry Sumpkins, Marilyn Taylor, Edward Ulrich, Jesse C. Walker, Alan Weiss, Lorenzo Zetlin. Set of rings female voice reverberated somewhere out of the 163 passengers and 5 crew members received injuries! 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