Memorial unveiled paying homage to 101 victims who perished on Eastern Flight 401. Her face burned from the jet fuel. The jet bounced once, then hit again. Patricia A. Ghyssels 3/31/45 Barry L. Mancuso 10/19/44 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. March 21, 2017 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. Serling, R. From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. Jonathan Adam Kaminer 8/22/70 The wreckage was discovered Wednesday night in the Everglades four days afte Ten feet in front of them were what looked like two mannequins to Leonharda partially clothed woman lying faceup in the mud and a naked man lying facedown. Greta Foye 3/19/45 Another link between the sightings and the aircraft involved could be the corporate decision to use undamaged parts of Flight 401 on other jets in the fleet. Flight 401 - Possible Explanation | Two days later, Lilly Infantino was found trapped beneath one of the wings. No roar of unmuffled high-horsepower engines. 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. 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. LOYLESS FUNERAL HOME, Land O'Lakes/Lutz Chapel. Born in Arkansas, he grew up in South Florida when everybody seemed to be poor. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It was only then that it had hit him. The left wingtip hit first. HONORING FLIGHT 401 VICTIMS - Exactly fifty years ago, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 mysteriously slammed into the Florida Everglades at over 200 miles per hour. The flying safety was even more compromised because it was slightly hazy which reduced visibility to seven to ten miles over the Everglades. It didn't light. Yes, they are, Raposa assured them. She had no first-aid kit. The silence was broken only by the intermittent croaking of bullfrogs and the occasional rustle of tall reeds as an unseen creature passed through them. It's broken, just like him. The L-1011 was new, parts were scarce, and any non-structural components that passed scrutiny said Fuller went into Eastern's spare parts pool. The Ghost of Flight 401 was a book of nearly pure fiction, as was the TV movie that followed it. The pilot of this flight was so unnerved by all of this that he canceled the flight. Helen Marie Chestnut 4/17/39 His right arm was three-quarters severed and barely attached by tendons, skin and strings of muscle. Two years after the crash, Anita and Franklin Kent's lives were taken up by endless doctor visits. This position is with the Agency Services area of DTMB. Unable to move and weak from severe loss of blood, his body hung suspended in the watery muck, still bent in the sitting position. ValuJet 592 went down in May 1996, killing all 110 on board. The crew did finally notice the situation taking place, but nowhere near in time to prevent the inevitable. As other reviewers note, this is the nonfiction story of Eastern Flight 401, which crashed in the Everglades back in 1972. Seventy-five miraculously survived. Flight 401 soared above a primordial swampland filled with poisonous snakes and alligators crawling through razor-sharp sawgrass and open-water sloughs. 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. A jet airliner is not something that immediately comes to mind: except to those who know aboutEastern Air Lines flight 401. Charles H. Johnson - Miami Air Traffic Controller who was working Flight 401 dies, April 10, 2019. His book was later made into a TV movie. Stick with the book. Surely, pilots and air crew would never make up such stories, would they? In it, at a party a few weeks after the emergency landing, someone asked one of the pilots how it had been to land an L-1011 on only one engine. 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." 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. Eventually, the investigations were concluded and most, but not all, of the wreckage was removed or salvaged from the Everglades. Flight 401s chain of problems began on the approach to Florida two hours after departure. The flight attendant, Mercy Ruiz, was badly injured, with a broken pelvis and a severe laceration on her forehead. The flight engineer on duty during this flight was a personal friend to Repo and instantly recognized the face as that of his deceased friend. Please review this photograph closely. On December 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing over 100 souls. That simple piece of plastic represents a tie between me and what happened to the passengers and crew on Flight 401 on December 29, 1972. 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 . 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 . The oven choices for airlines were either Nordskog or the Bowmar/Calrod brand. Flight 401 - First Response | In the days and weeks following the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, recovery efforts captivated the nation, and perhaps because of its iconic, unforgiving, alligator-riddled crash site, the event has remained seared in the memories of Floridians for decades. "I think I can still do it. "CRASH" BOOK AND MADE FOR TV MOVIE (1977/ 1978). Anne Ponte 1/7/16 But the passengers were her peopleher responsibilityand it was still her job to help them. It's like it's a charm," she said. He has never taken pleasure in talking about what he saw after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 went down and how he felt about it. None of them realized in the dark that they were gradually descending, as their attention was on debugging the landing gear indicator. 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? "Nobody paid him to go out there and try to rescue people," says Ken Pine, who recently fixed Bud's roof. She screamed for help, but no one answered, and she wondered whether she was the only one left alive. A fireball rushed through the fuselage, and the plane began pinwheeling like a giant Ferris wheel spun loose from its mount. 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. So, being the thoughtful brother-in-law he was, unbeknownst to me he had collected some of the wreckage of Flight 401. Captain Bob Loft was also seen on a few occasions, but never as often as Repo. The control tower at Opa locka shut down at 11pm each evening back then so the L1011 had to be in contact with Miami Approach Control, since we assumed it was ultimately being vectored for an approach to MIA. Angelo Donadeo, whose survival may be the most remarkable of all, says the only thing still bothering him is his back, but not very much. Rose Kashman 9/22/15 Flight 401 - Flight Crew Fatal Photograph. That left two seats open. Hansel Meighen died on April 15, 1999, and is buried in Ft. Pierce, Florida. The warden noted nothing of interest. One of them attracted . By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. 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.. The Infantinos were exhausted from celebrating Christmas with Rons parents in New York. At least he lives near his precious Everglades. But when they took off, one of the two remaining engines flamed out, forcing them to make an emergency landing on just one engine. The memories don't. "They gave us six months off and then we were expected to be 'over it. 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. The single-engine Cessna 152 was . They were both 26 years old. Following the crash, Raposa was praised for her valor. DALLAS - December 29, 2022, will mark a half-century since the fatal crash of Eastern Air Lines (EA) Flight 401. Before a bad back forced an early retirement, Bud laid carpet, grew avocados and worked as a game warden in the Everglades. That section of the Everglades is a tangle of sawgrass, tree islands, canals and levees. NOTE - There is no official death certificates for "Mrs. McAvoy," which appeared in passenger lists released to the press at the time. Documentary, Unscripted. Albert J. Stockstill 6/9/33 Bill was a career police officer who had been exposed to death and trauma, but his comments really reflected an attitude of both wonder and sadness. Darrylle Becker 3/16/43 They have two sons and live in Dade City now, near Tampa. Obviously, this is a red flag waving at us vigorously that we should be sure to take this tale with several good grains of salt. "It needs new points and plugs, maybe a new set of rings. The plane was dropping from the sky at a rate of 200 feet each minute. Rose Marie Cillis - Mark Paternoster May 15, 2021, 11:07 pm. He saw tangled metal and smelled aviation fuel. Raposa sensed a different tone in the engines. Game warden Gray Leonhard in the 70s; Photography courtesy of Gray Leonhard. An elevation of only eight feet felt like being on a hilltop in the Everglades. The plane descended out of the sky as pilots were distracted over a landing gear warning light. What songs will we sing? one passenger asked. In particular, an oven and the elevator (for the L-1011 had an elevator leading to a spacious downstairs galley) were salvaged from Flight 401 and installed on another L-1011 in the fleet, on which Repo usually appeared. Bill and I left for our respective homes after securing the clubhouse. Flight attendants of flight 401. The third, Repo, used a porthole to try and get a visual on the gear. Surprisingly, he found that there were large pieces of wreckage still out in the glades. Roberto Palma 6/10/27 NOTE - There is no official death certificates for "Mrs. McAvoy," which appeared in passenger lists released to the press at the time. On December 3rd 2007, survivors of Eastern Air Lines flight 401 gathered at the Metro-Dade Firefighters' Memorial Building in Miami to honor Robert "Bud" Marquis, and to remember those who lost their lives in the crash nearly 35 years ago. Adapted from Bad Guys, Bullets, and Boat Chases by Bob H. Lee. Thanks to Jim Kalafus for the corrected names of Flight 401 victims drawn from Dade Country death certificate files and his continued research and participation in this effort. He sold 13 in a month. Right: Beverly celebrates her 26th birthday in Mercy Hospital, January 4th 1973, with fellow surviving flight attendants Trudy Smith and Sharon Transue (Photo: Roy Bartley, Miami Herald). Aground. Delta pilot pay varies depending on schedule, aircraft and other factors, but current flight pay can range from an average of $75,000 a year for a starting first officer to more than $300,000 a . Thanks to Jim Kalafus for the corrected names of Flight 401 victims drawn from Dade Country death certificate files and his continued research and participation in this effort. 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. Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar 1. Some survivors recovered and adjusted better than others. For over thirty years Charlie worked with the FAA as an Air Traffic Controller. At first, witnesses reported nothing more severe than standing in the aisles, occupying the galley and cockpit. That was an unsurvivable crash, but we made it out," she said. The company folded in 1991 and is perhaps still better known for some of the more compelling and credible paranormal encounters to date. Several survivors tracked him down to thank him personally. The Ghost of Flight 401 (TV 1978) - YouTube | Riding with him were two Federal Aviation Administration officials. Sadie Yellin 1/9/15 Edward presented the ring in a glass of champagne. Marquis is also survived by a son, Donald Marquis of Altamonte Springs; a daughter, Terri Mabie of Tucson; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. I told Hansel that we needed to check, before we got into the air, whether there were any flight restrictions over the crash site which seemed pretty logical to me. If he saw legs kicking, he turned the seat over. 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. Rosa Losano 11/1/01 After graduation, he hitchhiked to Oregon and California to visit relatives, returning to Connecticut a couple of years later. Raposa popped the release buckle and fell into the marsh, landing on her hands and knees. In late 1972 the two were passengers in a plane crash that left both with debilitating painful injuries. A team catalogues the mangled remains of the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 aircraft at the crash site in the Everglades. The left wingtip banked into the marsh at 227 miles per hour. Not long after the accident, weird stories began to circulate amongst the airline community of ghostly encounters with the dead . I was tired and hit the sack as soon as I got home. Born in Seymour, Conn. on May 8, 1929, to Julius and Mary Kaslo Ulrich. 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. Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into the Everglades, in his own airboat, if he wants. Like so many such cases, its exploitation of a tragedy for financial gain and publicity was disrespectful to both the victims and the survivors. Three women on the jetliner's tail, about 20 feet above the water, begged Bud to save them. Off I went to check with the FAA Flight Service Station. Im sure they all ran away. She spit the words out quickly, doing her best to sound convincing. The only piece of wreckage I did keep, and which I still have in my possession, is one of the plastic passenger window panes. theYear = now.getYear() The Ghost of Flight 401. Witnesses include pilots, various other members of Eastern Air Lines staff and their passengers. Their marriage spanned 47 years. Burning jet fuel engulfed the aircraft as it plowed through the swamp. "He was just a guy out there frogging and minding his own business who knew he had to help people in trouble. He was an aviation business student at Miami-Dade Community College then, and used some of his money to start a commuter airline. Despite the crewsattempts to lower the landing gear, the signal that it was down and locked failed to appear. 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