Old and sick now, he lives in near poverty on the edge of the Everglades. Flight 401 may refer to: Iberia Airlines Flight 401, crashed on 5 May 1965. Game warden Gray Leonhard in the 70s; Photography courtesy of Gray Leonhard. Theyll find us eventually., Raposa had the survivors scoot together, sitting back to back so they could stay warm. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was on its final approach into Miami shortly before midnight 50 years ago this month when a single light bulb on the aircraft's instrument panel failed to illuminate. That was a godsend because I got to meet and befriend many of the club members, most of whom were successful small business owners enjoying the fruits of their labor by owning and operating private aircraft (something that is almost cost prohibitive in today's aviation, regulatory and business environments). Some may have tried to turn this actual human tragedy into a fictional ghost story, but it was the efforts of the real people involved who used it to extinguish a few real ghosts in the form of safety flaws, to reduce the chances of the same type of accident happening again. "I could get it running," he says, fighting for breath. The harrowing tale of three survivors of the 1972 crash of Eastern Airlines flight 401 into the Everglades. "Ladies, you're safe up there. Please review this photograph closely. No flicker from an air boaters headlamp. I come from an Eastern family - my mother, Betty Olson, retired from Eastern in 1976. 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. degree history and physical education. The reports were given by experienced and trustworthy pilots and crew. At first, the VP just assumed that this was the Captain of the flight he was on. 2017. The other flight crew members were First Officer John Stockhill, a flight engineer, and Donald Luis Repo, an aircraft mechanic, and flight engineer. "That wasn't my first brush with death," he said. Ernest F. Bloodgood 4/1/16
Loft told Stockstill to put the plane on autopilot while Repo went below to the avionics bay (called the "hell hole") to manually check the landing gear. They also told me that Bill had been called shortly after he got home by the police department helicopter unit to come back to the airport (the police helicopter unit was based at Opa locka) for emergency flight duty. The plane was a new Lockheed L-1011, pride of the Eastern fleet. Afterward, folks hope to take the old man into the Everglades, in his own airboat, if he wants. To the flight 401 survivors - Francoise Riette December 30, 2021, 4:08 pm. Bud Marquis had experienced better nights of frogging. 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. Please dont leave me! Infantino yelled. An attendant of Tri-Star 318 was so shocked to see Repo looking back at her, that she called other members of the cabin crew to confirm the sighting. Flight 401 - Flight Crew Fatal Photograph. This crux of the story was completely made up out of whole cloth. 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. 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. 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. If he saw legs kicking, he turned the seat over. It wouldn't take much.". It was a solemn and sobering return flight. Talk to anyone about ghosts or hauntings, and invariably images of abandoned old houses with dilapidated features or conditions will spring to mind. Robert L. Marquis - "Bud" to friends - wanted to eat frogs' legs. Adelaide Geneve Bearman 9/21/22
The problem had consumed all their mental energy. In its first three hours aloft, Flight 401 had been uneventful. "This is way in the past.". The NTSB also reported that 67passengers survived the carnage and 94 perished, as did two of the cabin crew. 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. More than a single person has often been present at the time, whether by accident or design. Web. I guess their clothes got blown off them.". May Albury, Verena Bieri, Carl Bolufe, Rigoberto Bolufe, Sandra Burt, Gustavo Cassado, Mrs Xeimara Casado, Miss Christina Casado, 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, Alan Weiss, Lorenzo Zetlin. Perhaps Fuller read it, and was inspired to concoct the rest of the story. Gas gangrene attacked his lungs. Loft and Repo have never been reported on the same flight, by the same witnesses, at the same time. The pilot Bob Loft and the flight engineer Don Repo were two of the 101 people who perished in the air crash. Song - The Ghost of Flight 401 - Lyrics |
Rob and Sarah Elder, 20 Aug. 2010. The last thing Raposa remembered seeing before she was knocked out was a waterfall of colors. The unexpected facts behind this famous ghost story from the 1970s. Rights and reuse information. 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. I have chosen to list him as a survivor as he was alive at the time of the NTSB hearings. I don't know if she ever did return to flying; my mother never told me one way or the other. Luis Bancroft 10/10/48
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. Bud waved the helicopter toward a nearby levee. Born in Seymour, Conn. on May 8, 1929, to Julius and Mary Kaslo Ulrich. 1 of 37. Trudy Smith didn't return to flying. But Infantino couldnt follow the voice. We went deeper and deeper, until wed gone about 50 yards. Viewers who enter The Ghost of Flight 401 looking for shivers and thrills might be disappointed. If one more time he could harvest a mess of frog legs in the Everglades. Frightened, they called the flight deck, and the flight engineer came down to have a look for himself. Stefan Jay Rubin 3/21/49
. We've been married going on 18 years now." Some would rather not remember. I saw people burned in agony. As other reviewers note, this is the nonfiction story of Eastern Flight 401, which crashed in the Everglades back in 1972. This guy had been hurled from the plane like a human cannonball. I'd be able to do the right thing today.". Henry Nunez 8/18/23
Were still at 2,000, right? the first officer asked. (Deer in south Florida are almost anemic compared to deer in other parts of the country.) On December 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing over 100 souls. Even at 78, Marquis is an old-fashioned country boy. The flight attendant, Mercy Ruiz, was badly injured, with a broken pelvis and a severe laceration on her forehead. They didn't find each other until morning. None of them realized in the dark that they were gradually descending, as their attention was on debugging the landing gear indicator. Not long after the crash, the ghosts of Loft and Repo were seen on more than twenty occasions by crew . Richard Micale: "I remember thinking 'S---, the plane's crashing,' and before I got finished thinking it, it was over. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, crashed on 29 December 1972. 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. Carmen Jorge 7/7/46
He lost interest in his job and just wanted to be alone. '," she says now. She worked in the executive offices at Easterns Miami base. Loft, Robert Albin |
Ghosts of Flight 401. There was an enormous flash of flame as two fuel tanks burst open. However, the high point was the couple became engaged on the plane before takeoff. He wants to show them how to gig frogs. The guy laughed and said "Scary. This killed the First Officer instantly. He invested in real estate, too. The disaster took the lives Rons eyes blinked open upon hearing the engines roar to full power. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. The stories began four years later with the publication of John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401, which revealed that those four years had been filled with incidents of flight crew being startled by apparitions of Loft and Repo appearing on board other Eastern Air Lines planes. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. Isell Delgado 1/23/25
She had been recovering from a heartbreak of her own for a year and a half. All three of Loft, Stockstill, and Repo were among the unlucky majority who perished. He knows exactly how he'd go about it. He was trapped beneath the water. On Thursday the victims of that crash were honored with a memorial in Miami Springs. A Florida plane crash scene became even more disturbing when an alligator was spotted devouring the victim's body. He had promised to show a slight acquaintance, Ray Dickinson, how to gig frogs. They never met again, never talked again, and never will: Ray died years ago in Arcadia. Below is a list of those on board, according to family, friends or officials . I have lost contact with Bill Elliott. When the Coast Guard helicopter attempted a landing, the prop wash threw hunks of debris dangerously around. That credo seems to be exemplified in every major airplane crash. I especially remember Bill describing passengers who apparently survived the crash impact, but were knocked unconscious and were still strapped into their seats. A pale glow lightened the sky above Miami more than 40 miles away. I vaguely remember that we ended up taking a total of five people on that flight. "Life's played funny tricks on me," said Richard N. Micale, 41, not laughing. Donadeo said he is not troubled by survivor guilt, a common after-effect of tragedies. Fuller's claims that Eastern executives tried to bully their employees into silence about the ghosts led them to nearly file suit against the publisher, but Borman nixed the plan, rightly feeling that doing so would give the book even more publicity. The third, Repo, used a porthole to try and get a visual on the gear. But it kept jamming. In the end, it appears that the source of the stories was an article in an issue of the Flight Safety Foundation. An hour or so later, a Christmas carol floated through the air, reassuring Infantino he was not alone. Source: Google Sites. 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. Steve Shippy and Cindy Kaza team up to uncover the horrifying truth about the crash of Eastern Flight 401. The lack of confirmation from the interior landing light signal so consumed the entire crews attention, that none of them noticed that one of them had inadvertently switched off the autopilot. 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.. When she came to, she was still belted into her seat, tipped to one side, hanging six feet above the swamp. Effectively, we turned the clubhouse into the European equivalent of a weekend pub. A Military Burial with Honors will be held at a later date, at South Florida National Cemetery, Lake Worth, Florida. Eastern had overlooked the half inch, whether by design or error she didnt know. The Sun Flying Club wasn't really a "flying" club. Five hours after the crash, the welcome sounds of voices and legs sloshing through water, labored breathing and flashlight beams probing the dark broke the silence. The other 101 people on Eastern Airlines Flight 401 died quite horribly -- 98 in the Everglades where the airplane crashed, three later in hospitals. 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. document.write(theYear) Flamingo Magazine, This Recent University of Tampa Graduate Just Won the Florida Filmmaker Award. Flight 401 Survivors, Years After the Crash and Memorial Efforts. 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