However, we had one advantage that members of the general public didn't have - we had access to airplanes. About us | Our programming | Become a supporter | Privacy. Although there is no factual evidence to support the claim, legend has it that after the crash investigation, surviving avionics and galley equipment was salvaged from the crash site, returned to the manufacturers and overhauled to help relieve equipment shortages on Lockheed's growing production line. . Patricia A. Ghyssels 3/31/45 He was in the fetal position, head on his knees, hands covering his face, leaning against the trunk of a willow. He ended up making numerous trips out to the levee where the rescue operation base was located. To all who shivered at night in fear of this creepy story, it seemed that it must have been true as reported. Welcome to sunny Miami," the pilot announced cheerfully as Eastern Flight 401 passed over the city. Dr. Aftabuddin Chowdhury 1/1/43 Please review this photograph closely. Jose Rego 9/5/19 Le dimanche 26 janvier 2020, l'hlicoptre Sikorsky S-76 de Kobe Bryant s'crase prs de Calabasas, en Californie (tats-Unis).Les neuf occupants de l'appareil sont tus sur le coup. "The one accurate quote in the book," Borman comments, "was made by Jim Ashlock when he called the whole story 'a bunch of crap.'". Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to uncover the horrifying truth about the crash of Eastern Flight 401. Each year on December 29th, I spend a little time thinking about that silhouetted L1011 heading west over Opa locka Airport. . This was not the only sighting registered. Viewers who enter The Ghost of Flight 401 looking for shivers and thrills might be disappointed. His book was later made into a TV movie. Newsroom Ready: Canadian officials, families honour Flight PS752 victims on third anniversary Grieving friends and relatives of victims killed during the downing of Flight PS752 called for justice and accountability from the Iranian regime as Canadians from coast to coast marked three years since the country's military shot the plane down. James followed all of the rules and more often than not, brought home venison for the family each deer season. Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. It became his navigation beacon. 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. ATC put the plane into a holding pattern over the Everglades. She went and got another flight attendant, who came and saw the same thing. We consider them significant. I was then almost 26 years old and had recently graduated from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. A trio of newly minted Rolls-Royce turbofan jet engines made a rumble that could barely be heard by the 163 passengers and 13 crew members seated inside the spacious cabin and reconfigured cockpit. Two minutes later, Flight 401 called the air traffic control tower. 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. 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. She found a section of the cabin with a stewardess still strapped into her seat-belt harness. It's like it's a charm," she said. The other house is gone; his still requires repairs. Of course, hearing them from the porch isn't the same as being in the middle of them armed with a gig, taking a long breath of Everglades air, feeling utterly alive. Photos of the 35th anniversary memorial gathering at the crash site, December 29, 2007. Two years after the crash, Anita and Franklin Kent's lives were taken up by endless doctor visits. Helen Marie Chestnut 4/17/39 "Having money ruined my life," he said. In its first three hours aloft, Flight 401 had been uneventful. On the night of Dec. 29, 1972, holiday parties were in full gear. 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. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the, Hospice of Southern Maine 390 US Route One, Scarborough, ME 04074. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. The single-engine Cessna 152 was . Work toward erecting a permanent memorial for Flight 401 at the Curtiss Mansion in Miami continues under the leadership of survivors Ron Infantino and Beverly Raposa. He likes to think about those days. Other than those observations, I don't recall much more from that flight. For survivors, the crash has left physical and mental scars. Trudy Smith - Douglas November 6, 2021, 12:23 pm. Why dont we sing to help warm ourselves up? she suggested. Beverly Raposa stumbled out of the nightmarish apocalypse, hurt, disheveled and covered in clumps of dripping swamp grasses. Edward E. Ulrich died at home on May 25, 2021. In the narrow beam of his head lamp he now saw enormous strips of torn metal. Lockheed L-1011, aircraft 310, flight 401 headed from New York to Miami on Dec. 29, 1972. At the time, not much notice was taken. Dummett hopes that the event will inspire a permanent memorial to Eastern Flight 401, similar to the ValuJet Memorial off the Tamiami Trail in the Everglades. Even though I didn't own an airplane, the club members considered me one of their own, a privilege that I treasure and respect to this day, despite the fact that I haven't had any involvement with the club since the late 1970s. Don Repo survived long enough to reach the hospital, but he also proved to be too badly injured. Mildred Katz 1/8/34 Miami International Airport Sighting | The plane descended out of the sky as pilots were distracted over a landing gear warning light. "I could empathize with what Ron was going through. Of five survivors The Herald located this week, three talked freely about Flight 401. There were 75 at the time, 20 years ago tonight. Below: The Casado family tour the crash site. Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 He usually wrote UFO books, and was best known for The Interrupted Journey about the Betty and Barney Hill case. His foot pressed lightly against the accelerator pedal as he inched down the south levee on the L-28 canal with his headlights off. 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. 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. Raposa did not have any blankets. 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 . NTSB Crash Report (Flight 401) | 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. More than a single person has often been present at the time, whether by accident or design. Jerome Becker 6/27/39 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 lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. Rights and reuse information. Royal Aviation Museum . 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. 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. 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. She worked in the executive offices at Easterns Miami base. Klaus Schenck 9/5/39. He isn't a talker to begin with, unless it's about boats or engines or the 'glades. In the hospital, a nine-inch steel rod was inserted into the bone. Frightened, they called the flight deck, and the flight engineer came down to have a look for himself. Raposa, Beverly | 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. Frequent Business Traveler. Onboard the aircraft, all members of the Flight Crew worked solely on their problem. I wish I had that kind of money today instead of 20 years ago. If one more time he could harvest a mess of frog legs in the Everglades. It's time to change that, say survivors and families of the victims, who hope to raise $15,000 for a granite block containing the names of those who died. Ali Asgar Dhirani was 74 years old when he died on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, along with 175 others. The captain, along with one of two flight crew members, two of 10 flight attendants, and 97 of 163 passengers, died; 75 . . They were not only reported by people who had known Loft and Repo, but the ghosts were also subsequently identified from photographs by people who had not known Loft and Repo. Then a sudden jolt rattled the aircraft. By 1 a.m., the rookie warden had launched his airboat. The wreckage was discovered Wednesday night in the Everglades four days afte Source: Pope Lick Monster the Killer Goatman of Kentucky, Joyce Vincents Unsettling Death That Went Undiscovered for 3 Years, These Real Creepy Audio Recordings Will Give You Nightmares, The Case of Teresita BasaHow a Ghost Solved a Murder. She was born on August 24, 1947, to Jefferson Truett Smith and S. Margeria Jeffus in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Repo, Donald Louis | Flight 401. Unborn son of Rochelle and Stefan Rubin Yetta Cohn 3/17/16 An elevation of only eight feet felt like being on a hilltop in the Everglades. Samuel J. Prager 12/23/03 It was a heart-to- heart bond. the pilot asked at the last second. One gave him money. My mother never told me the flight attendant's name, but she did say that she had suffered a broken back in the crash. Not long after, "ghosts" of Loft and Repo were seen on more than twenty occasions by crew members on other Eastern Tri-Stars, especially those planes which had been fitted with parts salvaged from the Flight 401 wreckage. The pair conversed briefly before Loft faded from sight. With the autopilot engaged, the malfunctioning light was dismantled by two members of the crew. Above: Flight attendants Beverly Raposa and Mercy Ruiz sit on a patch of ground in the Everglades where their flight crashed 35 years earlier. I was tired and hit the sack as soon as I got home. We had a habit of informally gathering at the clubhouse on Friday and Saturday evenings to down a few beers and catch up on all the news that had any impact on us. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. 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. The strange tales of the ghostly airmen of Flight of 401 circulated in the airline community. Flight Nurse jobs Ron Infantino and his late wife, Lilly, on their wedding day; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. 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. Web. They were both 26 years old. | We had him out by 5:30 in the morning. The movie is fairly innacurate and over-dramitized. Eric Olson holding a piece of wreckage from Flight 401. "It survived that night, just like me. Reports began to take on much more sinister overtone, at least in the eyes of the witness involved. Skeptoid Media, The aircraft, a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet, seemed to have an issue with the front nose gear. Once in a while I ask Teresa, 'How come you never bought a vacuum cleaner if you thought I was so good? He sold 13 in a month. Edward graduated from Seymour High in 1947. 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. He hoped the circling delay would give them time to fix the problem. Flight 401 was a short-haul flight to Miami. The ultimate "yes sir, no sir" man, Bud shuffles reluctantly onto the porch, blinking furiously in the sunlight, wondering what's up. Around 4:30 a.m., Leonhard waded up to a willow heada thick tangle of weepy trees with brittle limbs draping into the water. Robert Albin Loft 3/17/17 A jumbo jet crashed in the Everglades north of the Tamiami Trial, his sergeant said. Wreckage from Eastern Airlines Flight 401 in the Everglades; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino, Buried up to his neck in freezing water and muck, completely naked except for the elastic rims of his socks, severely injured, shivering and in shock, Infantino feebly called into the night: Lilly, where are you? Meanwhile, 1,100 miles to the north, an Eastern Airlines jumbo jet lifted off in bitter cold weather from New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport. He saw openings in the sawgrass created by sliding chunks of broken airplane. I was amazed at the size of some of the pieces of wreckage he brought home on the air boat. I was too young for that kind of stuff. The breakdown and subsequent emergency landing did in fact happen, and was covered in a tongue-in-cheek brief in the journal of the Flight Safety Foundation. 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. The largest recognizable pieces of wreckage were the cockpit section and the center engine intake and attached fuselage section. Below Left - In red, stewardess Beverly Raposa at the memorial.
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