December 29, 2022, 8:23 PM. Flight 401 left John F. Kennedy at 9:20 p.m. Bill and I left for our respective homes after securing the clubhouse. My former brother-in-law, James Anderson, was an avid air boat owner and hunting enthusiast. I was a kid, 21 years old. Below is a list of those on board, according to family, friends or officials . Flight 401 Crash Site Hauntings |. No roar of unmuffled high-horsepower engines. Judy Ellenberg 2/27/53 Nery Palma 7/12/34 Serving coffee, tea and soda was all very nice, but this was what counted. The plane was a new Lockheed L-1011, pride of the Eastern fleet. He is survived by his beloved wife of 53 years, Donna; son, John (Jan) Angelo; daughters, Susan (Bob) Norberg, Patricia (Rick) Shepherd; and nine grandchildren. All three of Loft, Stockstill, and Repo were among the unlucky majority who perished. Allen M. Stark 8/11/49 May Albury, Verena Bieri, Carl Bolufe, Rigoberto Bolufe, Sandra Burt, Gustavo Cassado, Mrs Xeimara Casado, Miss Christina Casado, Ann Connell, Barry Connell, Mariel Diegeriez, Gerald W Eskow, Sylvia Fisher, Ms. F. Frankin, Herbert Fresko, Molly Fresko, Alicia Garcia, Julia Garcia, Kathryn F.Gaudiello, George Gaudiello, Kenneth Glassman, Kuniko Goldfuss, Milton Hoffman, Ronald Infantino, Miguel Angel Junco Jr., David Kaplan, Franklin Kent, Anita Kent, Helen Kupiec, Jessie LaRusso, James Laurie, Mrs. Leone Levine, Cornelia Leya, Thomas McAvoy, Joseph Mazur, Rose Mazur, Luis Mejia, Richard N. Micale, Albert J Morris, Janice Minguzzi, Christina Ochoa, Allen Okanawsky, Oneida Pares, Aristides Pares, Martha Pares, Carlos Polanco, Lucino Polanco, Joseph Popson, Richard Pragluski, Goldez Quinico, Evelyn Ragalia, Marie Rego, Glen Remkus*, Francoise Riette, Thomas Rothenberg, Martin Siminerio, Bonnie Silverman, Donna Smith, Millie Soberon, Jerald Solomon, Larry Sumpkins, Marilyn Taylor, Edward Ulrich, Jesse C. Walker, Allen Weiss, Lorenzo Zetlin. Donadeo, an Eastern Airlines technical specialist on L-1011 aircraft, was returning to Miami that night from a trouble- shooting assignment in New York. 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. 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. In addition to commemorating Flight 401, the creative talent behind the exhibit is seeking to help survivors raise the funding needed to create a permanent large-scale memorial to Flight 401's victims and survivors in the City of Miami Springs, once home to a thriving Eastern Air Lines community. Serling, R. From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. All content is Skeptoid Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. It infamously crashed in Florida's Everglades swamp just before midnight, killing 101 of the 176 people on board. Barbara Ann Saal. His 1977 book, Crash, tells the story of many of the passengers, the investigation and aftermath of Flight 401. She was the first victim, along with her unborn son, discovered by the search team at 12:30 pm, December 30th), Patricia Renee Shackelford 12/9/52 (Pictured below). 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. Were still at 2,000, right? the first officer asked. , Elder, R. "Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts." Jesus Lorenzo 4/26/37 Leonhard doesnt remember which one. An aerial view of the crash site; a swath of the Everglades; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. It marked the 50th anniversary of the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 disaster. Crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. Please review this photograph closely. Please dont leave me! Infantino yelled. ", Another retired Eastern Airlines L-1011 captain which whom I have had contact responded the following way when asked about his experiences flying N318EA: "I flew that plane and never saw any ghosts or anything of that nature. That's where the helicopters, one after another, landed that night, and where ambulances arrived to load the dead and injured. "Hey, what's happening here?" He wanted me to be the pilot (no objection from me) and he would occupy the co-pilot's seat. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. Repo, Donald Louis | "When I tried to prop him up it felt like every bone in his body was broken.". For those who haven't seen the images: In her initial report from the crash site a large Ukrainian wheat field "dotted with purple flowers and Queen Anne's lace" the New York Times . Flight 401 flew into the ground on Friday night, Dec. 29, 1972, at 13 seconds past 11:42 p.m. Many of the accounts share similar characteristics. To those who survived, the scene must have had an eerie end-of-the-earth feel, with wisps of gray mist swirling, a baby wailing, the groans from the injured and the dying. Following the crash, Raposa was praised for her valor. Though Leonhard was only a rookie, the sight of death was not unfamiliar to him. Officially, Eastern Air Lines denied anything was wrong with their aircraft or personnel. His fishing and hunting skills helped put supper on the family table. An Eastern representative told Serling that, while pondering whether to sue Fuller or his publisher: We spent weeks trying to locate anyone who claimed to have seen a ghost and couldn't find one person. Ghosts of Flight 401 - 6 | The flight attendant, Mercy Ruiz, was badly injured, with a broken pelvis and a severe laceration on her forehead. Ground crew with Eastern Airlines Flight 401 before its fateful flight; Photography courtesy Ron Infantino. In a weak voice, one of them asked, What about the alligators?, Raposa didnt hesitate: We made such a loud noise when we hit. Below: The Casado family tour the crash site. Starring. The night was a balmy 72 degrees, the mosquitoes surprisingly sparse. Carmen Jorge 7/7/46 And now, no one was flying the plane. No gunshots. Interment will follow at 2pm at Florida National Cemetery. That section of the Everglades is a tangle of sawgrass, tree islands, canals and levees. She looked into the distance, saw the dim lights of Miami framed against a coal-black horizon and noticed how far away it was. Charles Kuchenbrod 7/16/30 Michael Ann Kaminer 12/28/45 My log book shows that our flight lasted 1.2 hours. Season 1. 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. It is now known that "Mrs. McAvoy" was Donna Smith, Thomas McAvoy's traveling companion. Little did I expect to see what he actually had. The third, Repo, used a porthole to try and get a visual on the gear. It was rare for commercial airliners to fly westbound directly overhead Opa locka Airport at such a relatively low altitude. It wouldn't take much.". The aircraft, a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet, seemed to have an issue with the front nose gear. Follow my voice!. Discretion was the better part of valor. One time, a working flight attendant insisted that she saw an engineer working to repair an oven. Why You Needn't Worry About the Missing 411, How to Extract Adrenochrome from Children. Now for the big decisions - who gets to ride with us? If you hear my voice, come toward me. One was Micale, who they found alone on a clump of swamp muck, drenched in swamp water and jet fuel. It was shortly after the May 11, 1996 . 2017. Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into . Hansel Meighen died on April 15, 1999, and is buried in Ft. Pierce, Florida. (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.) 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. I lost my boot., Well, Raposa said, Ill help you find it., Thats okay, Raposa said. He not only saw the face too, but recognized it as none other than Don Repo, the engineer who died on Flight 401. He isn't a talker to begin with, unless it's about boats or engines or the 'glades. Below Left - In red, stewardess Beverly Raposa at the memorial. Born in Arkansas, he grew up in South Florida when everybody seemed to be poor. Photography courtesy Ron Infantino, A few minutes later Leonhards radio crackled. The Ghost of Flight 401 was a book of nearly pure fiction, as was the TV movie that followed it. A light on the instrument panel the first officer was monitoring failed to illuminate green to confirm that the nose landing gear was extended and locked. He saw a man standing, shocked, in knee-deep water. Author Fuller noted that, mysteriously, the cockpit voice recorder was also replaced when the repair work was finally done, which struck him as odd. Below Right - Gatherers take a moment to honor Robert 'Bud' Marquis. theYear = theYear + 1900 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. Moe Lustig 7/16/23 The original witness so was distressed that several of the cabin crew had to forcibly restrain her. Dr. Aftabuddin Chowdhury 1/1/43 It's truly amazing how the mind works for, at the time, I had no idea of the significance of what I saw that night nor did I intend to store it away in my memory banks. Reigler, P. "Lessons Learnt from the Crash of Eastern 401." 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. "That's what really gets me. Im sure they all ran away. She spit the words out quickly, doing her best to sound convincing. That alone adds credibility to their accounts. . 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. Ron Infantino woke up in a chill, heart pounding, breath erratic. The Senior Architecture Analyst provides architecture . Ethel L. Jackson 3/8/08 There were 10 flight attendants in the main cabin serving 163 passengers. The temperature is in the low 70s, and its beautiful out there tonight.. Julia Lustig 5/30/25 Bud waved the helicopter toward a nearby levee. md-87 r4 . Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into the Everglades, in his own airboat, if he wants. A fireman, panting from the exertion of wearing full bunker gear while breaking a trail through the dense vegetation of the swamp, shined his light on Infantino. Introducing the Keys Quirkiest Resident. Hey!" According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the main fuselage broke into four main sections and many other smaller pieces on impact. 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. Above Left - Ron Infantino stands among survivors. There were bodies that were naked, which we all figured occurred because they had been flung out of the protected environmental cocoon of the L1011 into 200 mph winds when the fuselage broke up. Whenever someone told Fuller such a story, they frequently asked him not to use their real name, out of fear of reprisal from the company; thus, the book is full of untraceable sources and unverifiable claims. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar jet that crashed into the Florida Everglades at 11:42 pm December 29, 1972, causing 101 fatalities (99 initial crash fatalities, two died shortly afterward). Donald Stanley Casadona 7/16/38 Stewardess Beverly Raposa, then 25, noticed nothing unusual as the flight passed high over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Miami International Airport. This is a story about how a burnt out light bulb led to a major aviation disaster. Exactly fifty years ago, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 mysteriously . 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. The single-engine Cessna 152 was . This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. Silvan Karpen 5/23/28 The story goes that parts from it were salvaged and installed in other L-1011s, and almost immediately, the ghost stories began. Serling also tracked down the Mexico City emergency landing, and found, predictably, that there was no truth whatsoever to the story of a face appearing in an oven window. "Accident Description." About Flight 401 | AlanNachmias 5/16/50 I don't see any reason to worry about what fate has brought. 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. It seemed to be miles off course. Dennis Gordon 12/9/32 Lost - Passengers and Crew (Name and Birthdate), Elise Grace Agate 9/3/42 Inside the planes cockpit, the crew was trying to slide in a replacement bulb, a roughly two-square-inch all-in-one light assembly unit covered by a translucent green plastic lens, valued at $12 altogether. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. On December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar - Flight 401 - left New York and flew on a downward vector to Miami, Florida. 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. Stockstill began a turn to follow the airport's approach pattern, and immediately noticed their altitude but it was too late. Klaus Schenck 9/5/39 He wants to show them how to gig frogs. When word of this reached the only engineer on board of that particular flight, he denied ever fixing the oven and went as far to say that it didnt even need fixing in the first place. Anyway, the pilots couldn't tell if the wheels were down. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. If you would like to contribute to this cause, donations can be made to: National Air Disaster Foundation (write "EAL 401 Memorial" on the check), You may also make donations by credit card on their website: www.PlaneSafe.org. This position is with the Agency Services area of DTMB.

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