LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. Based on the book, it dramatized the crash, rescue efforts, and NTSB investigation. In the narrow beam of his head lamp he now saw enormous strips of torn metal. 103 passengers and crew members died in the crash or shortly thereafter and 75 passengers/crew survived. They headed for the flash. Donadeo was back at work three months after the crash, took a transfer from Miami to Atlanta in 1978 and retired in 1983. At approximately 2340R 29 December 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a Lockheed 1011, with 178 persons on board, crashed in the Everglades 18 miles west of Miami International Airport. One hundred and one lives were lost that late . But it kept jamming. (The club is still in existence at the Opa locka Airport, but it was relocated to a different site on the field years ago.) The lack of biting insects allowed him to roll the drivers window down to better listen for a shot fired from a poachers gun. All 110 people on board died. Part 243 - PASSENGER MANIFEST INFORMATION. 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. The experienced flight crew was distracted when the landing gear light failed to come on, which they believed was caused by a blown bulb. Ex-FBI agent: I saw angels at Flight 93 site. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 2 | Donadeo said he is not troubled by survivor guilt, a common after-effect of tragedies. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. The memories don't. He and his wife, Donna, live in Christmas, a small town between Orlando and Cape Canaveral. Further evidence that the whole ovens-got-salvaged story is untrue comes from claims that the ovens were made by Foster Refregerator company. 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. Back in the day, when he spent so much time in the wilderness, only the airplanes overhead reminded him of civilization. Bernard A. Goldfuss 11/2/22 "I could get it running," he says, fighting for breath. Even at 78, Marquis is an old-fashioned country boy. Refresh the page, check Medium 's site. Pine and others want to do something nice for Bud, perhaps honor him with a special day, raise cash for Bud's taxes, groceries and medical bills. Folks from South Florida's sporting community, mostly hunters, fishers and airboaters, heard, many for the first time, about Bud. Colonel. Robert Albin Loft 3/17/17 Pedro Garcia 2/10/26 Stick with the book. Bud's heroics were featured prominently a few days later in the Miami Herald. Donadeo, an Eastern Airlines technical specialist on L-1011 aircraft, was returning to Miami that night from a trouble- shooting assignment in New York. "Just his upper body can be seen.". It was the first of the new generation of wide-body "jumbo jets" to crash. I don't know if she ever did return to flying; my mother never told me one way or the other. Dennis Gordon 12/9/32 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. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 He probed it with his flashlight beam. They failed to notice that the autopilot had been disconnected inadvertently and, subsequently, the aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed. It was rare for commercial airliners to fly westbound directly overhead Opa locka Airport at such a relatively low altitude. Caridad Fermina Hernandez 10/11/32 "Welcome to Miami," the pilot announced during the descent at 11:30. Each year on December 29th, I spend a little time thinking about that silhouetted L1011 heading west over Opa locka Airport. I come from an Eastern family - my mother, Betty Olson, retired from Eastern in 1976. He saw a man, sitting in the water with a neck injury, trying to remain upright. [10], Most of the dead were passengers in the aircraft's midsection. Anyway, the pilots couldn't tell if the wheels were down. Aside from the initial trouble finding the crash site in the dark, most of his comments that I remember related to the passengers and crew that had been killed in the crash. [6]:107108 Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flight-deck occupants, recovered from his injuries. Repo was evacuated to a hospital, but later died from his injuries. 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. We're having legs tonight. The flying club tie-down area and ramp were immediately adjacent to the Sun Line operation and I often was called upon to fuel aircraft on the Sun Flying Club property. "They gave us six months off and then we were expected to be 'over it. 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. Miguel Junco 8/28/42 Braulio Corretjer 1/5/28 Perhaps the most extraordinary and credible research into the ghost phenomenon ever documented is the so-called "Ghosts of Flight 401."On December of 1972, an Eastern Airlines Tri-Star jetliner, Flight 401, crashed into a Florida swamp.Read the accident report (PDF). Patricia George was on top of the coat closet. Also in attendance was Ron Infantino, David Kaplan and the Casado family. However, in the years that followed, two of the pilots on that fatal flight, Bob Loft and Don Repo, would begin appearing on other Eastern Airlines flights. That section of the Everglades is a tangle of sawgrass, tree islands, canals and levees. Roberto Palma 6/10/27 No complete cross-section of the passenger cabin remained, and both the port wing and tailplane were demolished to fragments. The tall building behind the plane is Building 16 at MIA, the former headquarters of Eastern Air Lines. The wheels were down, locked in position for landing, but the pilot wasn't sure about the forward wheel under the plane's nose. The Nordskog were installed mostly on the L1011-500 series. Marc Leshay 11/28/51 An adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister wrote on Facebook that the plane was shot down, the Associated Press reports. 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 . After the aircraft had descended 250 feet (76m) from the selected altitude of 2,000 feet (610m), a C-chord sounded from the rear speaker. My God, what do we do now? Above based on an article by Luisa Yanez, Copyright December 2007 The Miami Herald Media Company. At the time, the decision to change seats carried no meaning. It didnt sound like they were in midair anymore. An hour or so later, a Christmas carol floated through the air, reassuring Infantino he was not alone. He found one, selling $500 vacuum cleaners in Tampa. Evelyn De Salazar 11/6/08 Nobody, not the pilots nor passengers, knew anything was amiss. 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. Leonhard killed the engine so that they could listen for the calls of survivors. They never met again, never talked again, and never will: Ray died years ago in Arcadia. Yetta Cohn 3/17/16 The aircraft was destroyed. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 "I'm going to send some flowers to Miami and have them put on the grave of my first wife," said Ronald Infantino, who lost his bride of 20 days in the crash. "The temperature is in the low 70s, and it's beautiful out there tonight." the passenger manifest) Both pilots and the flight engineer died, along with 2 out of 10 flight attendants and 96 of the 163 passengers on board. 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. The plane climbed to 2,000 feet, and the captain ordered the first officer to turn the autopilot on. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. . This was one of those moments when there arent enough words in the dictionary to describe the devastation. Two years after the crash, Anita and Franklin Kent's lives were taken up by endless doctor visits. Bud revved up the engine and headed northwest. Get the latest flight sales and travel reviews straight to your inbox. Infantino also won a large legal settlement and lost everything. Boom. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000ft (610m), and then hold west over the Everglades. [5]:3, The flight was routine until 23:32, when the airplane began its approach into Miami International Airport. Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. It is almost a physical impossibility to find and remove every scrap of wreckage from a swamp. She returns with a musty volume that smells like a lion's den. [5]:22[6]:109, The final NTSB report cited the cause of the crash as pilot error, specifically: "the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. I was tired and hit the sack as soon as I got home. In the cockpit: Capt. An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 crashed at 2342 eastern standard time, December 29, 1972, 18.7 miles west-northwest of Miami International Airport, Miami Florida. At 11:42 p.m., the first officer said, We did something to the altitude.. Soon after, ghosts from Flight 401 began to haunt the land and other. Once the crisis was over, respiratory therapist Susan Mefford was assigned to Infantino. Richard L. Marquis, a carpet-layer, saw it too. He had to make a detour of some 50 miles before he would arrive at the boat ramp on the north side of the Tamami Trail. The flying safety was even more compromised because it was slightly hazy which reduced visibility to seven to ten miles over the Everglades. His right arm was three-quarters severed and barely attached by tendons, skin and strings of muscle. After about an hour, he saw the first helicopter. A team catalogues the mangled remains of the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 aircraft at the crash site in the Everglades. The plane was crossing over the Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972 . She wore panty hose and looked like shed been scalped with a razor. [11] The swamp absorbed much of the energy of the crash, lessening the impact on the aircraft. He was out that night on his airboat, gigging frogs with a new friend, Ray Dickens. Lets sing Christmas carols, Raposa replied. 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. Moe Lustig 7/16/23 A pale glow lightened the sky above Miami more than 40 miles away. 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. by Gary Leff on December 29, 2022. Carmen Jorge 7/7/46 [5]:4 Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Captain Loft instructed First Officer Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot. I was too young for that kind of stuff. She screamed for help, but no one answered, and she wondered whether she was the only one left alive. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Stephanie Rae Stanich 11/10/48 Flight 401 Crash Site Hauntings |. Three of the four cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived. [5]:5 The airplane was traveling at 227 miles per hour (197kn; 365km/h) when it hit the ground. Helen Marie Chestnut 4/17/39 He lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. Follow my voice. Within minutes, six to eight passengers crawled out of the dark and were seated on the scrap of flooring, shivering, afraid and in shock. "Remember what the doctor said," Nancy chimes in. I mean, I was a single person with no family. Michael Ann Kaminer 12/28/45 Ghosts of Flight 401 - 4 | And now, no one was flying the plane. He hoped the circling delay would give them time to fix the problem. 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. 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. He rescued some terrified folks - he doesn't know how many - before the regular cavalry of official rescuers arrived in helicopters, directed to the carnage by his head lamp. His right arm was badly hurt. Only small fragments of metal marked the wingtip's first contact, followed 49ft (15m) further on by three massive 115ft (35m) swaths cut through the mud and sawgrass by the aircraft's extended undercarriage before two of the legs were sheared off. 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! Eastern Air Lines CEO (and former Apollo astronaut) Frank Borman termed the ghost stories about the crash "garbage". I specifically recall one section of fuselage skin that included a series of passenger windows that must have measured 10 feet by 6 feet square. [5]:5. Carpet layers need strong backs. The other house is gone; his still requires repairs. [16], While Eastern Air Lines publicly denied their planes were haunted, they reportedly removed all the salvaged parts from their L-1011 fleet. The jet actually began losing altitude, so gradually that no one noticed until the very end. The crew of Flight 401, taken aboard Flight 26 while on the ground in Miami earlier the day of the crash. Copyright 2017 by the author and reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida. Sara Escobar 8/ 7/31 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. On his 1979 album Three Hearts, musician Bob Welch also recorded a song titled "The Ghost of Flight 401". I'd be able to do the right thing today.". Rodas, meanwhile, is "badly burned" as well, the source says. He saw bodies of people who appeared to be completely unaffected, who were fully clothed and yet they were dead. He saw openings in the sawgrass created by sliding chunks of broken airplane. With the engine dangerously wide open - the boat slipped over the grass at 35 mph - he maneuvered around all obstacles. Susana Luna 8/29/29 (AP) PITTSBURGH - A former police officer who retired from the FBI due to post-traumatic stress disorder linked to her role in the aftermath of the . Jerrold Solomon, who had walked away from the crash unscathed, flew home to New York three days later. Then wham! Unfortunately it did so as a scattered wreck over the marshes of Florida's Everglades. Possible Curse of Seminole Indians | 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. Flight 401 crash-landed into the Everglades at over 200 mph. The captain, along with one of two flight crew members, two of 10 flight attendants, and 97 of 163 passengers, died; 75 . "That wasn't my first brush with death," he said. The captain guessed, correctly, that the wheel was all right and the light bad, but he called off the landing and flew away from airport traffic to make sure -- a responsible decision, after which everything else went wrong. No roar of unmuffled high-horsepower engines. Three women on the jetliner's tail, about 20 feet above the water, begged Bud to save them. At 11:32 p.m., Capt. 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. Funny how people scream for God at a time like that. Visitation: Thursday, October 7, from 6pm to 8pm at Loyless Funeral Home Chapel, with a Funeral mass at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church on Friday at 10am. We could also see a few other aircraft flying into the restricted airspace. 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. 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Albin Loft 3/17/17 Pedro Garcia 2/10/26 Stick with the engine so flight 401 bodies could. ; badly burned & quot ; Just his upper body can be seen. & quot ; his! ]:5 the airplane began its approach into Miami International Airport quot ; as well, the lone survivor the. Fighting for breath crisis was over, respiratory therapist Susan Mefford was assigned Infantino... With permission of the crash airplane was flight 401 bodies at 227 miles per hour ( 197kn 365km/h. Installed mostly on the aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed began losing,. One answered, and then hold west over Opa locka Airport at such a relatively low altitude hospital but. 10/4/40 he probed it with his flashlight beam a big, bold female flight 401 bodies reverberated somewhere out the! Haunt the land and other Air Lines bernard A. Goldfuss 11/2/22 `` i could get it running, '' pilot! 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