Julia Lustig 5/30/25 This photo taken in September 2009. I saw a husband who couldn't find his wife or his children." In the end, it appears that the source of the stories was an article in an issue of the Flight Safety Foundation. Anyway, the statute of limitations has long since passed. [4] It was also the first hull loss and fatal crash of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. It seemed to help. [6], The flight was commanded by Captain Robert Albin (Bob) Loft, age 55, a veteran pilot ranked 50th in seniority at Eastern Air Lines. If he saw legs kicking, he turned the seat over. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. "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. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. Aground. Bud revved up the engine and headed northwest. Bob called Infantino, who loves to tell the story: "He was a regional coordinator with AFLAC, American Family Life Assurance Co., and that's when I started -- 16 years ago, and I've been with them ever since. Fara Infantino 12/7/46 Good for me! Instead of landing in . '", Age 79, died Saturday, October 2, 2004 in Land O'Lakes, FL. At 11:42 p.m., the first officer said, We did something to the altitude.. 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. An alligator was spotted by a news crew in a helicopter next to the wreckage of a small airplane crash in the Florida Everglades devouring the victim's body.. Boom. (The largest L1011 operators then at MIA were Eastern Airlines and Delta Airlines, but I don't recall seeing any airline markings when the L1011 was overhead.) The next morning, as was my usual Saturday routine, I drove to the Sun Flying club timing it to arrive at approximately 11am. She wore panty hose and looked like shed been scalped with a razor. His book was later made into a TV movie. He was an aviation business student at Miami-Dade Community College then, and used some of his money to start a commuter airline. He was left wearing nothing but a necktie and belt pushed up under his armpits. Two survivors died later as a result of . 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. 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. Instead, it took 35 years. 2023-Feb-14. 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. Infantino also won a large legal settlement and lost everything. [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. All of us realized that many people had lost their lives and that there was a bit of mystery surrounding why a relatively new L1011 crashed into the Everglades on a clear, dark night. Allen M. Stark 8/11/49 My mother never told me the flight attendant's name, but she did say that she had suffered a broken back in the crash. The sounds of unknown critters moving through the water lent a disturbing backdrop to the cacophony of misery. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Flipping through the pages, Bud smiles for the first time in hours. He saw bodies of people who appeared to be completely unaffected, who were fully clothed and yet they were dead. I dont know this for sure, but I seem to remember he was the last survivor rescued.. 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. Picture that in your mind. Tower, this is Eastern 401, it looks like were going to have to circle. 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. Bud no longer worked as a game warden - his day job was laying carpet. 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. "It survived that night, just like me. (ABN 16 009 661 901) of 401 King Street, London, W6 9NJ, United Kingdom. Beverly Raposa doesn't mind flying. [6]:108 The most common injuries were fractures of ribs, spines, pelvises, and lower extremities. Walker's body is still fairly intact. Salvatore Carfizzi 7/15/15 Eric Olson holding a piece of wreckage from Flight 401. With his left, he held onto the boat and walked beside it to the levee. "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. Evidently, I wasn't so stupid as to put any regulatory violations in writing in my log book. She was very scared, having never been in the Everglades before. There were four men in the cockpit, all preoccupied with the light and landing gear. 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. 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. 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. Jose Rego 9/5/19 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. It looked like a piece of the wreckage, or something, had been propelled on a near horizontal trajectory, traveling just a foot or two above the waters surface, and rocketed into the willows with tremendous force., Bent at the waist, the two men waded into the hole, following a ragged debris trail of damaged vegetation. 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. This guy had been hurled from the plane like a human cannonball. The cloak of black was made all the more intense by the surreal stillness. Flight 401 may refer to: Iberia Airlines Flight 401, crashed on 5 May 1965. Sharon Norene Gatti 3/2/48 He also attacked his other daughter, who luckily survived the attack. Copyright 2017 by the author and reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) 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. He probed it with his flashlight beam. Murray Yellin 6/9/11 His last prospect, Teresa Trapnell, listened to his pitch, didn't buy, but told her insurance executive husband, Bob, what a swell salesman she had met that day. 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. [5]:6[a], The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation discovered that the autopilot had been inadvertently switched from altitude hold to control wheel steering (CWS) mode in pitch. What happened next must have happened very quickly. Official Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - History, Photos, Survivors and Tribute | The plane was crossing over the Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972 . 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." The mud of the Everglades may have blocked wounds sustained by survivors, preventing them from bleeding to death. Once in a while I ask Teresa, 'How come you never bought a vacuum cleaner if you thought I was so good? You can see the brand name on the oven instruction plate. Two passing pilots saw it and called the airport. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | An original floor board from Flight 401 remains in the archives at History Miami in South Florida. It is personal and it has served over the intervening years to remind me of how precious and tenuous life can be. Above Left - Ron Infantino stands among survivors. THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 401 20 YEARS LATER SURVIVORS LIVE WITH PAIN, MEMORY, Author: ARNOLD MARKOWITZ Herald Staff Writer Copyright (c) 1992 The Miami Herald. Three of the four cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived. Robert Albin Loft 3/17/17 On the crews instrument panel, one of the three green lights confirming the planes landing gear is down and locked . In 1985, his years as a manual laborer caught up with him. Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into the Everglades, in his own airboat, if he wants. 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. I don't remember the take-off or the landing that day, but I vividly remember the meteorological conditions and the crash site. Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. It looked like someone had poured gasoline on a campfire, and poof, up it went. Curiously, Leonhard never heard the impact. AlanNachmias 5/16/50 Raposa, Beverly | He cranked up the engine and moved toward the sound. "I was engaged and my fiance was killed in a drunk-driving accident two months before the wedding," she said. [8], In all, 75 survived the crash67 of the 163 passengers and eight of the 10 flight attendants. [5]:4 Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Captain Loft instructed First Officer Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot. "[5]:2324, In response to this and other accidents during the 1970s, many airlines started crew resource management training for their pilots. Jonathan Adam Kaminer 8/22/70 Frank Borman, a former NASA astronaut and Eastern's senior vice president of operations, was awoken at home by a telephone call explaining of a probable crash. Fortunately, Bud was an expert. Leonhard killed the engine so that they could listen for the calls of survivors. On the day of the crash, Flight 401 was operated using a Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar (registration N310EA), which had been delivered to the airline on August 18, 1972. (No one had a camera, so I don't have any personal photos.) Then the commuter airline folded. The powers-that-be want them to . We exited the area and returned to Opa locka Airport, but our conversations were subdued. . 2h 48m. "He was just a guy out there frogging and minding his own business who knew he had to help people in trouble. 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. "The three of us toast to life on that day every year.". Carol Susan Jackter 9/26/52 But it kept jamming. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 6 | It's like it's a charm," she said. 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. Marquis received burns to his face, arms, and legsa result of spilled jet fuel from the crashed TriStarbut continued shuttling people in and out of the crash site that night and the next day. Flight 401 - Possible Explanation | 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. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 is coming in for a landing in Miami. 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 story of the crash and its aftermath were documented in John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401. Lost - Passengers and Crew (Name and Birthdate), Elise Grace Agate 9/3/42 By that time, I had also earned a commercial pilot license with airplane single and multi-engine and instrument ratings. It was during one of those sessions on December 29, 1972, that Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crossed paths with me and some of the other club members. On Dec. 29, 1972, it carried 178, including crew. Im sure they all ran away. She spit the words out quickly, doing her best to sound convincing. Some of those he saved were there, including flight attendants Mercy Ruiz and Sue Tebbs, as well as Beverly Raposa, the flight attendant who rallied passengers to safety after the crash. At least they thought they had. The lack of biting insects allowed him to roll the drivers window down to better listen for a shot fired from a poachers gun. When he stopped the engine to push the boat back into the water, he heard a chorus of terrified human voices, hollering, moaning, shrieking. We were in Dade County, and my patrol zone was Broward County to the north., During his airboat training, senior wardens of the Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission had told Leonhard, Never stop or slow an airboat down in rank grass because you may not be able to power out of it. Flight 401 Crash Site Hauntings |. He wanted me to be the pilot (no objection from me) and he would occupy the co-pilot's seat. It didnt sound like they were in midair anymore. He put his arm around her, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water. "It needs new points and plugs, maybe a new set of rings. 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. He had lost contact with his frogging helper, Ray, too. Silence. Something was wrong with the landing gear or the landing-gear light on the control panel. [5]:9 The landing gear could have been manually lowered, nonetheless. A Coast Guard helicopter flew toward them, sweeping the marsh with a bright searchlight, and then turned away. This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Flight 401. I don't recall any large scorched patches of saw grass, but I remember a few small burned areas. An orange glow suddenly lit up out in the marsh toward Miami, he recalled. Leonhard discovered a hole in the bushes, roughly circular in shape and a little larger than the mouth of a culvert pipe. But we idled back around to double-check on them just in case.. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 departed New York for Miami on December 29, 1972. "I still love to fly; I get on planes and fall asleep like a baby," jokes Raposa. A Web forum, Southern Airboat, which attracts thousands of worldwide participants, plans to take care of the repairs. He felt a sense of mission as he looked out into the black swamp, knowing that his job required cunning and stealth. This killed the First Officer instantly. From a half mile above, it's like an artist's canvas. Eastern 401, pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000, go back to approach control, the tower advised. In 2005, TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed into the Amazonian jungle, leaving a trail of bodies and wreckage scattered across the rainforest. '," she says now. He was out there gigging frogs when it happened. 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