It crashed into the Everglades 18.7 miles northwest of the airport, eight miles north of Tamiami Trail, about 100 yards east of the L-67 canal levee. Paquita Carrasquillo 10/4/40 Eastern 401, pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000, go back to approach control, the tower advised. She described him as dazed and unresponsive. In late 1972 the two were passengers in a plane crash that left both with debilitating painful injuries. The next morning, as was my usual Saturday routine, I drove to the Sun Flying club timing it to arrive at approximately 11am. The rescuers are picking people up from the nose section of the plane first. It is personal and it has served over the intervening years to remind me of how precious and tenuous life can be. . 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. Santiago Flight 513: A Fictional Time Warp. A pale glow lightened the sky above Miami more than 40 miles away. The plane was a new Lockheed L-1011, pride of the Eastern fleet. I don't know if she ever did return to flying; my mother never told me one way or the other. While all this was very much in the public domain, reports circulated that aircraft engineers quietly removed any materials they had reused from the crash. Survivors described a flash or spark that exploded through the cabin as the jet ripped apart. One other witness has also come forward with a similar story that adds validity to the others simply because of who he was at the time. More than a quarter mile long, the cone-shaped debris field was filled with an apocalyptic jumble of human carnage, personal belongings and aircraft wreckage. Bud and Nancy own 27 domestic cats, including 15 that live indoors on sofas, tables and bookshelves. (3) 2022 TV-14. This is the story about the night a jumbo jet landed among the pig frogs and alligators, the cottonmouth snakes and yellow-crowned night herons, in the Everglades. Flipping through the pages, Bud smiles for the first time in hours. When I was learning to fly in the mid-1960s at Sun Line Helicopters, one of the fixed base operators (FBO) tied into the Miami-Dade Junior College aviation program at the Opa locka Airport, I worked as a line boy refueling aircraft and doing minor line maintenance. "I thought I would fall apart," she told a newspaper in 1975. The signal inside the cockpit had not illuminated as it should have. Elisa Ruth Romero 5/28/44 If you hear my voice, come toward me. Eduardo Jaramillo 8/2/32 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 . Nobody, not the pilots nor passengers, knew anything was amiss. Source Wikimedia Commons, Jon Proctor March 1972. Mildred Katz 1/8/34 The government considered him totally disabled. But he and his helper had 30 pounds of legs. 2017. He knows exactly how he'd go about it. The story goes that parts from it were salvaged and installed in other L-1011s, and almost immediately, the ghost stories began. Ernest F. Bloodgood 4/1/16 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. PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Farrell - Miami Herald Staff. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401. What happened next must have happened very quickly. Miami International Airport Sighting | They died. Im a tough Portuguese girl from Rhode Island.. Aground. 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. In his mind, he's still a strapping young fellow with big muscles. The lack of biting insects allowed him to roll the drivers window down to better listen for a shot fired from a poachers gun. 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. The strange tales of the ghostly airmen of Flight of 401 circulated in the airline community. People observe a candlelight vigil in memory of victims of a plane crash in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. That credo seems to be exemplified in every major airplane crash. Rosa Losano 11/1/01 This killed the First Officer instantly. In its first three hours aloft, Flight 401 had been uneventful. That area was off limits to hunters and others for a number of months while federal investigators searched the area for clues to the crash. I probably did too, I'm sure." Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into . She choked on the acrid fumes from the 43,000 pounds of aviation gas that had spilled from the plane and screamed, Dont light any matches!. 200110850. The cruel facts of this disaster only reinforced my observation that you won't die unless it's your time to die. Rose Lina Zollo 7/13/43. Caridad Fermina Hernandez 10/11/32 "We consider it the day our second life began," Christina Casado-Acorn, said of Dec. 29, 1972. Serling, R. From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. "That wasn't my first brush with death," he said. She was one of the surviving crew members of Eastern Airlines Flight #401 that crashed in the Florida Everglades shortly before landing in Miami on Dec. 29, 1972. 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. Above Left - Ron Infantino stands among survivors. Startled, and now fully awake, he wondered, Whats going on here? A former crew chief on a B-52 in Vietnam, he had a keener sense than most passengers about a plane in trouble. Hansel owned a single engine Piper Comanche 250, registered as N7510P, that held four people, including the pilot. She went and got another flight attendant, who came and saw the same thing. theYear = theYear + 1900 "I could get it running," he says, fighting for breath. In the 1970s, searching for images on Google did not yet exist. This position is with the Agency Services area of DTMB. The night was a balmy 72 degrees, the mosquitoes surprisingly sparse. "I guess I was always on the edge without knowing it." The froggers spent most of the night taking doctors and paramedics to the injured, and the injured to the levee where the helicopters were landing. The man vanished before their very eyes and those of several other passengers. Fuller's book was soon made into a popular TV movie, also called The Ghost of Flight 401, notable for having creeped people out for years. Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. Lockheed L-1011 Inside the Hell Hole | It was a solemn and sobering return flight. No roar of unmuffled high-horsepower engines. Trudy is survived by her nephews, Jason Mooney and wife Annette, Jeremy Ogelsby and wife Amy; great-nephews, Nathan Mooney and wife Courtney, Caleb Mooney and wife Savannah, and Brandon Ogelsby; great-nieces, Laura Mooney and Alaura Ogelsby;2 great-great-nephews and 2 great-great-nieces; cousins, Jacque Wirta and Jack Moncrief. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. Above: Flight attendants Beverly Raposa and Mercy Ruiz sit on a patch of ground in the Everglades where their flight crashed 35 years earlier. by Les Hewitt, March 2017 Updated July 2019. The harrowing tale of three survivors of the 1972 crash of Eastern Airlines flight 401 into the Everglades. 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. The warden noted nothing of interest. 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. Eugene Schenker 6/24/30 Rob and Sarah Elder, 20 Aug. 2010. Trans World Airlines Flight 800 was carrying 230 people, including four cockpit crew members and 14 flight attendants. At least they thought they had. He wanted me to be the pilot (no objection from me) and he would occupy the co-pilot's seat. Air crews reported seeing apparitions of their dead coworkers on board the planes that had Flight 401's spare parts. I don't see any reason to worry about what fate has brought. We exited the area and returned to Opa locka Airport, but our conversations were subdued. After graduation, he hitchhiked to Oregon and California to visit relatives, returning to Connecticut a couple of years later. The last thing Raposa remembered seeing before she was knocked out was a waterfall of colors. About a year after the crash of Flight 401, she told me that one of the flight attendants who had survived the crash had come back to work at Eastern, but was assigned to the executive secretarial pool while she recovered from her physical injuries and tried to cope with her mental anguish. Johnson, Charles | 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. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, crashed on 29 December 1972. Donadeo is still active in aviation, as state vice commander of the Civil Air Patrol. This crux of the story was completely made up out of whole cloth. Leonhard, Raposa, and Infantino never connected during the rescue operation, except for one tenuous bond that drew them together in spirit: the sound of a distant Christmas carol drifting throughthe night. The jet bounced once, then hit again. The middle engine and tail section had broken away from the main fuselage, coming to a rest on their sides in a remote area far from the main crash site, which was located 18.7 miles northwest of Miami International Airport. Minor, Miami Herald) Below, Right, Mrs Leona Levine on March 15, 1973 (Joe Elbert, Miami Herald). Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 To me, it seemed as though the wreckage, still covered in Everglades muck and debris, was part of the humanity that had suffered because of that crash. The third, Repo, used a porthole to try and get a visual on the gear. The FAA guy sitting closest to Leonhard yelled, Holy shit!, An airboat doesnt have brakes, Leonhard explained. Above (L to R): Martin Siminerio in hospital, two file photos from the Miami Herald of survivor Xiomara Casada at Palmetto General with her infant, Christina, in a Miami hospital. Cancel at any time: Selma Karpen 6/16/21 An hour or so later, a Christmas carol floated through the air, reassuring Infantino he was not alone. He had scarcely recovered from a bad auto accident when 401 crashed. Skeptoid Podcast. The wreckage was discovered Wednesday night in the Everglades four days afte Skeptoid Podcast He put his arm around her, and they began slogging through knee-deep muck and water. Loft, Robert Albin | 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. Born in Seymour, Conn. on May 8, 1929, to Julius and Mary Kaslo Ulrich. Retired Air Force Col. Frank Bormana former astronaut, vice president of Eastern Airlines and now a first respondercame to escort her into a helicopter hovering at ground level a short distance away. Miguel Junco, being carried into a hospital by an attendant. Kobe Bryant, 41 ans, un des plus clbres joueurs de basket-ball de la NBA, avait pris sa retraite en 2016.. bord de l'hlicoptre se trouvaient galement sa fille de treize ans, Gianna, qui jouait . With the engine dangerously wide open - the boat slipped over the grass at 35 mph - he maneuvered around all obstacles. Two tours in Southeast Asia had hardened him. Flight 401 was a short-haul flight to Miami. Sure enough, once arrived in Mexico City, it was discovered that one of the three engines was damaged and would have to be replaced. This Australian pine rising from the Old Seven Mile Bridge symbolizes the resilience of the Florida Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi give a kaleidoscopic close to their U.S. tour at this historic venueplus, an now = new Date Evelyn De Salazar 11/6/08 The aircraft, a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet, seemed to have an issue with the front nose gear. They were hospitalized for two months. Mom apparently worked closely with that flight attendant. Rochelle Rubin 1/5/48 (she was the first victim discovered by the search team Samuel J. Prager 12/23/03 Below Left - In red, stewardess Beverly Raposa at the memorial. His writings form the basis for much of this Web site, with permission. Crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. 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. #563 Donadeo, an Eastern Airlines technical specialist on L-1011 aircraft, was returning to Miami that night from a trouble- shooting assignment in New York. That was an unsurvivable crash, but we made it out," she said. 35 Years after an Eastern Air Lines jet crashed into the Everglades, a rescuer looks back. Sadly, she did not survive. Another pilot on another flight was seriously concerned when he heard knocking coming from beneath the cockpit itself. She was whipped. Join our emailing list to keep up to date with the latest. Anniversary message - George Gaudiello December 29, 2021, 11:22 am. Hey! 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 was more than 25 miles away. Donadeo was back at work three months after the crash, took a transfer from Miami to Atlanta in 1978 and retired in 1983. On Dec. 29, 1972, Eastern Flight 401 from New York to Miami took off from . It would be hard to make up a plausible story like Ronald Infantino's -- too sad, too joyful. Skeptoid Media, In his investigations talking with various airline employees (which occupy most of the book), he discovered the likely reason: According to the flight crew, who were highly reluctant to discuss it, Don Repo had appeared in the cockpit and talked them through the landing. There were 10 flight attendants in the main cabin serving 163 passengers. Photo was taken earlier while on the ground in Miami. It was shortly after the May 11, 1996 . Something was wrong with the landing gear or the landing-gear light on the control panel. Gas gangrene attacked his lungs. He was honored again at the memorial service for the crash victims and their families on December 29th, 2007, and he led a procession of more than 100 airboats to the crash site from a launching site on the Tamiami Trail (US 41). He saw a man, sitting in the water with a neck injury, trying to remain upright. A STEM-focused 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. On December 29, 1972, Flight 401 was en route to Miami International Airport but due to a malfunctioning landing gear light and other distractions, plowed into the swampland, making the incident the second deadliest single aircraft disaster in United States history. Klaus Schenck 9/5/39 Nepalese authorities on Tuesday began returning to families the bodies of victims of a flight that crashed Sunday, and said they were sending the aircraft's data recorder to France for analysis as . Two passing pilots saw it and called the airport. Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to uncover the horrifying truth about the crash of Eastern Flight 401. Donald Louis Repo 5/10/21 Like a lot of other aspiring commercial pilots, I had had a checkered aviation career, having worked, among other things, as the full-time chief pilot of a regional oil company while attending college. This just the beginning. Henry Nunez 8/18/23 She wore panty hose and looked like shed been scalped with a razor. 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. 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. The captain and his first and second officers had every reason to feel good and confident about flying this particular ship. Salvatore Carfizzi 7/15/15 Flight 401 - Flight Crew Fatal Photograph | Two days later, Lilly Infantino was found trapped beneath one of the wings. "It has always bothered me that there was nothing done with 401," said Dummett, a retired Miami-Dade firefighter and founder of the American Airboat Search and Rescue Association, now living in Lake Wales. Theyll find us eventually., Raposa had the survivors scoot together, sitting back to back so they could stay warm. On December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar - Flight 401 - left New York and flew on a downward vector to Miami, Florida. Flight 401s chain of problems began on the approach to Florida two hours after departure. Then a sudden jolt rattled the aircraft. 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. They go deep into the heart of the Florida Everglades to contact the victims' ghosts and find out what really happened that fateful night in 1972. 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. Julia Lustig 5/30/25 It marked the 50th anniversary of the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 disaster. Back row from the left: Mercy Ruiz, Sue Tebbs, Adrienne Hamilton, Trudy Smith. Silvan Karpen 5/23/28 His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. From a half mile above, it's like an artist's canvas. 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. If one more time he could harvest a mess of frog legs in the Everglades. The appearance of the dead flight engineer was confirmed by the flight engineer. With the autopilot engaged, the malfunctioning light was dismantled by two members of the crew. The plane was dropping from the sky at a rate of 200 feet each minute. The first time Walter Simonton saw the Everglades, the desolation overwhelmed him as he grieved for his mother, whose plane was swallowed up by the wetlands. The landing gear from Flight 401 at the crash site; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. I was tired and hit the sack as soon as I got home. Mama, heat up the frying pan. That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. Fear of Landing. The court citing, among other reasons, that the claimants were found to be actors or participants in newsworthy stories or events, that the book a nonfictionalized account based on the authors own investigationfell under the legitimate public interest exception. On the night of Dec. 29, 1972, holiday parties were in full gear. 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. After retiring he volunteered with the Civil Air Patrol, his last rank was Lt. the pilot asked at the last second. Flight attendants of flight 401. Abbey Lynn Greenwald 9/18/52 However, the high point was the couple became engaged on the plane before takeoff. 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. New York: Berkeley Publishing Corp, 1976. That section of the Everglades is a tangle of sawgrass, tree islands, canals and levees. The petite brunette stood just 5 feet 1.5 inches tall. The Ghost of Flight 401. The Ghost of Flight 401 was not much of a departure for him. Patricia Renee Shackelford 12/9/52. But Infantino couldnt follow the voice. Please dont leave me! Infantino yelled. (The club is still in existence at the Opa locka Airport, but it was relocated to a different site on the field years ago.) Rons eyes blinked open upon hearing the engines roar to full power. 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. Later that afternoon or evening, Bill Elliott came back to the clubhouse where we were all waiting for him so he could let us know what he did and saw. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. The Skeptoid weekly science podcast is a free public service from Skeptoid Media, a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. Other than those observations, I don't recall much more from that flight. He returned to Connecticut with his wife and infant son where he gained employment with Winchester Arms Company in New Haven, Conn. His career at Winchester included various fields of the sporting arms industry. In the narrow beam of his head lamp he now saw enormous strips of torn metal. Have You Met Fred the Tree? Please email corrections, additions, photos or any other information you would like to have posted here. 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. Accura Media Group LLC, 30 Dec. 2013. 17 Mar. Obviously, I'm not a hunter, but I don't begrudge those who do hunt responsibly. By. Bud asks his wife to look for his scrapbooks. Speeding across the 'glades in his airboat, Bud was the first rescuer on the scene. Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | Ghosts of Flight 401. Rose Kashman 9/22/15 Marc Leshay 11/28/51 Ghosts of Flight 401 - 5 | This becomes less surprising when you look at Fuller's publishing history. The Senior Architecture Analyst provides architecture . Bud no longer worked as a game warden - his day job was laying carpet. "I couldn't understand why I lived and they didn't. Silvia Crespo 11/30/32 He is survived by his daughter in law Lynn Johnson and grandsons Kurtis and Kyle Johnson, all of Florida. Yes, they are, Raposa assured them. Discretion was the better part of valor. (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.) LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. Her face burned from the jet fuel. You know what would make Bud Marquis happy? Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to uncover the horrifying truth about the crash of Eastern Flight 401. Bud waved the helicopter toward a nearby levee. They didn't keep score, but Marquis knows they saved a lot of people's lives that night. theYear = now.getYear() This photo was taken by Al Diaz for The Miami Herald special section on the 35th anniversary of the crash. He can't remember anyone's name now. "The three of us toast to life on that day every year.". A jumbo jet crashed in the Everglades north of the Tamiami Trial, his sergeant said. Not a single usable part was salvaged from the wreckage, and not a single component that crashed with Flight 401 was ever installed in another aircraft. References: 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. "I've tried to throw [the suitcase] away many times, but something always holds me back. Speculation at the club was rampant which is to be expected from a bunch of pilots. Eastern Air Lines flight 401 encountered no problems while cruising between the two cities. Lost - Flight 401 Passengers (Name and Birthdate), Charles Camichel 9/9/1899 (we assume this is the "C. Carmichael" on the passenger manifest), Jose Carrasquillo 6/28/40 (pictured below), Abbey Lynn Greenwald 9/18/52 (photo below), Carmen Jorge 7/7/46 (Photo of Carmen below, with her daughter, and surviving passenger, Christina Ochoa), (Rosa's neice Lucille Cilles and her daughter, Rosemarie Mancuso and her husband Barry were also on board), Rosemary Mancuso 10/31/49 (Photos below), Ruth Elisa Romero Guerra 5/22/44 (Pictured below), Stefan Jay Rubin 3/21/49 (Photo of Stefan and Rochelle in 1972 below. Possible Curse of Seminole Indians | 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. Aviation Safety Network. But fortunately, it is not the only source available to us. I was then almost 26 years old and had recently graduated from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Stefan Jay Rubin 3/21/49 Why You Needn't Worry About the Missing 411, How to Extract Adrenochrome from Children.
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