Flight 401 - First Response | Richard J. Schulleri 1/3/43 It is personal and it has served over the intervening years to remind me of how precious and tenuous life can be. 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. Bud revved up the engine and headed northwest. Ethel L. Jackson 3/8/08 [26], Flight 401 is mentioned in the TV show Supernatural Season 1 Episode 4 named Phantom Traveler's. 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. I tried to keep hold of myself by showing up at work, but I couldn't concentrate.". 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. As I recall that December night, it was a relatively cool evening for south Florida with a moonless night sky. On a moonless night, in the beam of his head lamp, the frog eyes would glow like rubies. Stick with the book. There were also other artifacts such as yellow airline life preservers and panes of plastic passenger windows. 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 seemed to help. That left two seats open. Beverly Raposa switched seats from her regular position in the galley for a flight from New York to Miami. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. On Dec. 29, 1972, Eastern Flight 401 from New York to Miami took off from JFK Airport at 9:20 pm. Lockheed L-1011 Cockpit | Solomon Fisher 7/18/11 Leonhard discovered a hole in the bushes, roughly circular in shape and a little larger than the mouth of a culvert pipe. Whether youre looking for a new reading nook or a rare find, here are all the local shops were booking it to. Makeshift tailgate strip clubs, dog poop versus machete matches and a whole lot alligators in unwanted now = new Date The Ghost of Flight 401. He has fallen backwards and his arms are spread apart. The crash occurred while the entire flight crew were preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light. 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. "Ladies, you're safe up there. 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. It was an easy way to break the monotony of intense study, tour the good old USA and also earn a few bucks and I must emphasize the aspect of the earnings. I wish I had that kind of money today instead of 20 years ago. Give or take a word, the announcement is remembered verbatim by virtually every survivor. I was then almost 26 years old and had recently graduated from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. During a rare moment of calm after the rescue helicopter had departed for Miami, he heard the faint tune of a Christmas carol. Rosemary Mancuso 10/31/49 There was an enormous flash of flame as two fuel tanks burst open. 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. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa, Stephanie Stanich. After we visually established where the crash site was located, we could see the initial ground contact point and the distribution of the wreckage quite clearly. Check-in; . Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 This killed the First Officer instantly. Pick up your airboat and meet me at the Twenty Mile Boat Ramp. Adapted from Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases by Bob H. Lee. 12:38PM EST John F Kennedy Intl - JFK. December 21, 2022, 5:00 AM. 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. The mud of the Everglades may have blocked wounds sustained by survivors, preventing them from bleeding to death. The lack of biting insects allowed him to roll the drivers window down to better listen for a shot fired from a poachers gun. "Then I saw this great big fireball and the whole 'glades lit up. [5]:3, The flight was routine until 23:32, when the airplane began its approach into Miami International Airport. It's broken, just like him. "He was naked. 35 Years after an Eastern Air Lines jet crashed into the Everglades, a rescuer looks back. I probably did too, I'm sure." He saw tangled metal and smelled aviation fuel. Susana Luna 8/29/29 Following the crash, Raposa was praised for her valor. Song - The Ghost of Flight 401 - Lyrics | 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. Bud no longer worked as a game warden - his day job was laying carpet. [4], Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a regularly scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. Sadie Yellin 1/9/15 These and other requirements are imposed for the purpose of meeting the collective objectives of the Aviation and Flight 401 Crash Site Hauntings |. I saw young couples broken up. Incongruously, not far from the roofless fuselage center section with the inner portion of the starboard wing still attached, lay a large, undamaged and fully inflated rubber dinghy, one of a number carried on the TriStar in the event of an emergency water landing. It looked like someone had poured gasoline on a campfire, and poof, up it went. Curiously, Leonhard never heard the impact. Then an alarm chimed, signaling a 250-foot drop. Flight 401 may refer to: Iberia Airlines Flight 401, crashed on 5 May 1965. 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. Bud wants to. That was the first time I had heard of the crash. I saw a husband who couldn't find his wife or his children." NOTE - There is no official death certificates for "Mrs. McAvoy," which appeared in passenger lists released to the press at the time. Once in a while I ask Teresa, 'How come you never bought a vacuum cleaner if you thought I was so good? Now that the crash site was again open to the public, he had gone out into the Everglades to scout the area on his air boat. How about we start with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?. I vaguely remember that we ended up taking a total of five people on that flight. The trip to Florida, by official accounts, was pleasantly routine. It was closing in on midnight on Dec. 29, 1972. Eddie Albert featured as "Dunn", a fictionalized version of Captain Robert Loft. Bud helped the man into the airboat and poured him coffee from the thermos. 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. Nobody, not the pilots nor passengers, knew anything was amiss. AlanNachmias 5/16/50 By 1 a.m., the rookie warden had launched his airboat. The flight was under the command of Captain Robert Loft, 55, a veteran Eastern Airline plot. Telephone number:0208 846 0502 . 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. Chapter II - OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (AVIATION PROCEEDINGS) Subchapter A - ECONOMIC REGULATIONS. Tuesday. His foot pressed lightly against the accelerator pedal as he inched down the south levee on the L-28 canal with his headlights off. "I was wounded in World War II when the ship I was on was hit by a kamikaze. Effectively, we turned the clubhouse into the European equivalent of a weekend pub. "Just his upper body can be seen.". Eastern used the Bowmar/Calrod brand. 2023-Feb-14. 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. The powers-that-be want them to . He was 79. A lot of the people I saw were naked. No more clothes on his body .". He put his arm around her, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water. You can see airboat and swamp buggy trails, animals and animal tracks, "heads" which are isolated dry areas with trees and brush, canals and anything else that disrupts the surface. The Everglades is flat, covered with tall saw grass and immersed in water that ranges from a few inches deep to three to four feet deep in some areas. "I consider the survivors 75 miracles. Flight 401 left John F. Kennedy at 9:20 p.m. His hunting escapades on his air boat meant that he was very familiar with the area where Flight 401 crashed in the Everglades. Carol Susan Jackter 9/26/52 With the engine dangerously wide open - the boat slipped over the grass at 35 mph - he maneuvered around all obstacles. Fourteen survivors had various degrees of burns. Rochelle Rubin 1/5/48 (she was the first victim discovered by the search team Theyre not going to find us, an anxious passenger whispered. I lost my boot., Well, Raposa said, Ill help you find it., Thats okay, Raposa said. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000ft (610m), and then hold west over the Everglades. 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. 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! She had no first-aid kit. He had promised to show a slight acquaintance, Ray Dickinson, how to gig frogs. Raposa did not have any blankets. Raposa, Beverly | 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. "Your body could be stripped naked if you're thrown out through an opening, or your body could be relatively intact if you were in part of the aircraft that 'fluttered' down to the surface" because. Lucille Cilles 1/30/24 Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 left New York's JFK airport, bound for Miami International Airport, on December 29, 1972. Back row: Pat Ghyssels, Trudy Smith, Adrianne Hamilton, Mercy Ruiz. Flight 401 crash-landed into the Everglades at over 200 mph. Seventy-five miraculously survived. [4] Despite their own injuries, the surviving flight attendants were credited with helping other survivors and several quick-thinking actions such as warning survivors of the danger of striking matches due to jet fuel in the swamp water[9] and singing Christmas carols to keep up hope and draw the rescue teams' attention, as flashlights were not part of the standard equipment on commercial airliners at the time. Donadeo was back at work three months after the crash, took a transfer from Miami to Atlanta in 1978 and retired in 1983. Richard L. Marquis, a carpet-layer, saw it too. 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. Marquis waved his headlamp in circles, guiding the pilots to the crash. Johnson, Charles | For his efforts, he received the Humanitarian Award from the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation and the "Alumitech Airboat Hero Award", from the American Airboat Search and Rescue Association. A jumbo jet crashed in the Everglades north of the Tamiami Trial, his sergeant said. Jonathan Adam Kaminer 8/22/70 My direct and indirect contact with Eastern Flight 401 didn't end on December 30, 1972. Tennessee's Music City combines country, bluegrass, rock, pop, Americana, gospel, classical, jazz, and bluesall in perfect harmonyto create one of the best places in the world to remember music's greatest performers, see today's top artists, and maybe discover the next big thing. After the crash, a . theYear = theYear + 1900 Follow my voice!. I'd be able to do the right thing today.". 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. He saw openings in the sawgrass created by sliding chunks of broken airplane. 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. The experienced flight crew was distracted when the landing gear light failed to come on, which they believed was caused by a blown bulb. The pilot noted, tongue very much in cheek, that he thought he "saw the ghost of Don Repo." The aircraft was a Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar traveling from New York to Miami. The story of the crash and its aftermath were documented in John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. One was Micale, who they found alone on a clump of swamp muck, drenched in swamp water and jet fuel. She had nothing. 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. Game warden Gray Leonhard in the 70s; Photography courtesy of Gray Leonhard. Thank you, Rob. You know what would make Bud Marquis happy? His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. Pedro Garcia 2/10/26 Ghosts of Flight 401 - YouTube 0:00 / 42:56 Ghosts of Flight 401 MrBallen 7.21M subscribers Subscribe 272K 5.1M views 4 months ago #mrballen #ghost #paranormal For 16 free meals with. Off I went to check with the FAA Flight Service Station. I checked my log book entry for Dec. 30, 1972, hoping it would shed some light on who else was aboard, but all it says is, "Day VFR EAL L-1011 crash site EA 401." 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 . 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. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa and Stephanie Stanich. If you hear my voice, come toward me. Blackness. 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. Patricia Renee Shackelford 12/9/52 Title 14 - Aeronautics and Space. 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. As you may know, the mansion is an historic landmark in Miami, located just north of the airport it served as the location of the NTSB hearings into the crash. On May 11, 1996, the ValuJet Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating the route crashed into the Everglades about 10 minutes after taking off from Miami as a result of a fire in the cargo compartment caused by mislabeled and improperly stored hazardous cargo. In the hospital, a nine-inch steel rod was inserted into the bone. That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. After dark he moonlighted as a commercial frogger. He was out there gigging frogs when it happened. Diane Carol Greenblatt 5/5/52 They also told me that Bill had been called shortly after he got home by the police department helicopter unit to come back to the airport (the police helicopter unit was based at Opa locka) for emergency flight duty. 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. MIAMI - Thursday marks 50 years since Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades. Eastern Airlines Flight #401 (L1011 N310EA) crashed in the Everglades on December 29, 1972. It turned out to be anything other than a routine Saturday! 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. During its flight from New York to Miami, an aircraft operating Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed into the Everglades after the cockpit became so distracted by a burnt-out landing gear indicator light, they neglected to notice the autopilot had disengaged, and that the plane was slowly losing altitude. 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. She worked only briefly as a flight attendant after the crash. The Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar was the latest generation of wide-body commercial aircraft and had been put into service only four months before. When the main part of the fuselage hit the ground, it continued to move through the grass and water, breaking up as it went. The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. A pale glow lightened the sky above Miami more than 40 miles away. The TriStar's port outer wing structure struck the ground first, followed by the number1 engine and the port main undercarriage. 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. 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. 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flight 401 bodies