Eastern Airlines Flight 401
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Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was a Lockheed L-1011 jet that crashed into the Florida Everglades on the night of December 29, 1972, causing 101 fatalities. It was the first crash of a wide-body aircraft. The crash was a controlled flight into terrain as a result of the flight crew's failure to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight. It is best known, though, for reported paranormal activities stemming from the salvage of aircraft parts. The story of the crash - and its aftermath - was documented in John G. Fuller's book The Ghost of Flight 401.
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The Crash
The plane, registered N310EA, was a four-month-old Lockheed L-1011 and was carrying 163 passengers and 13 crewmembers. Flight 401 left New York's JFK on Friday, December 29th, 1972 at 9:20 pm, en route to Miami International Airport. At the controls were Captain Robert Loft, 55, a veteran Eastern Airlines pilot ranked 50th in senority at Eastern, and first officer Bert Stockstill. The flight engineer was Don Repo.
The flight was routine until 11:32 PM, when the flight began its approach into Miami International Airport. After lowering the gear, co-pilot Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator, the green light that identifies that the nose gear is properly locked in the 'down' position did not illuminate. This failure has two possible explanations: either the gear was not down, or the light was not working. Either way, this is considered to be little more than an inconvenience for pilots, as the gear can be lowered manually. The pilots recycled the landing gear and still didn't get the confirmation light.
"Well," Stockstill said in a calm voice. "Want to tell 'em we'll take it around and circle around and fart around?"
Loft, who was working the radio during this leg of the flight, told the tower that they would abort their landing and asked for instructions to circle the airport for a bit. The tower instructed the L-1011 airplane to pull out of its descent, climb to two thousand feet (610 m), and then make a U-turn and flight west over the darkness of the Everglades.
The cockpit crew removed the light assembly and the flight engineer, Don Repo, was dispatched into the avionics bay beneath the flight deck to visually check if the gear was down through a small viewing window. Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude and when the plane was halfway through its U-turn, the captain, Robert Loft, instructed Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot. For the next eighty seconds the plane maintained level flight. Then it dropped one hundred feet (30 m), and then again flew level for two more minutes, after which it began a descent so gradual it could not be perceived by the crew. In the next seventy seconds, the plane lost only 250 feet (76 m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under the engineer's workstation. The engineer, Don Repo, had gone below, and there was no indication by the pilot's voices that they heard the chime. In another fifty seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude. At the moment when Stockstill's radio altimeter beeped the plane was passing through one hundred and one feet (31 m), the plane was dropping at 50 ft/s (15 m/s). The cockpit crew heard the warning, but it was too late.
The airplane crashed at 25 degrees, 51 minutes and 53 seconds north latitude and 80 degrees, 35 minutes, 43 seconds west longitude. The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 miles from the end of runway Nine Left. The plane was traveling 227 miles per hour when it flew into the ground. The left wingtip hit first, then the left engine and the left landing gear. Together they slashed three trails through the saw grass, each five feet wide and more than 100 feet long. When the main part of the fuselage hit the ground it continued to move through the grass and water, disintegrating as it went.
The Cause
For reasons unknown, the autopilot had been switched from Command Mode, to CWS (Control Wheel Steering Mode). In the latter, any small inputs to the flight controls will instruct the autopilot how to alter the airplane's course. In this case, small forward pressure on the steering column would force the plane into a descent. Investigators believe the autopilot accidentally switched modes when the captain leaned against the steering column while turning to speak to the flight engineer, who was sitting behind and to the right of him. Like tapping the brakes in a car that is in cruise control, pressure on the steering column switches the autopilot out of command mode.
The NTSB report cited the cause of the crash as pilot error, specifically: "the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed."
94 passengers and 5 crewmembers died during the crash and two more died of injuries later. The incident was due to burned-out light bulbs with a replacement value of twelve dollars. The landing gear was found to be in the down and locked position.
The Ghost of Flight 401
An interesting side show to this incident developed over the following months and years as employees of Eastern Airlines began reporting sightings of the dead crew members onboard another L-1011 (N318EA). The story, later made into a best-selling novel by John G. Fuller, was that parts of Flight 401 were salvaged after the crash investigation and refitted into the other L-1011. "Sightings" of the spirits of Don Repo and Bob Loft spread throughout Eastern Airlines to the point where Eastern's management warned employees that they could face dismissal if caught spreading ghost stories. Eastern Airlines CEO Frank Borman called it all a bunch of "crap" and considered suing the producers of the 1978 made-for-TV movie "The Ghost of Flight 401" for libel. However, some crew members still swear by their testimonies and certain people do believe that there is at least some truth behind the alleged sightings and experiences.
The apparitions of the crew members were sighted inside a Foster Refrigerator infrared oven that had been in the galley of Flight 401, was later salvaged and put into another airplane. After the ghostly sightings the oven was sent back to Foster Refigerator in Hudson, New York, and sat for years almost forgotten in a secret place in the Foster warehouse.
The crash inspired two made for TV movies. One titled "Crash" (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0077377/) which dramatized the crash, rescue efforts and NTSB investigation, and another, The Ghost of Flight 401 (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0077610/) which was based on the John G Fuller book of the same name.