N310EA, the aircraft involved in the accident, in March 1972.AccidentDateDecember 29, 1972 ( 1972-12-29)Summarydue to and loss of situational awarenessSitenear:AircraftAircraft typeOperatorN310EAFlight originDestinationOccupants176Passengers163Crew13Fatalities101Injuries75Survivors75Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from to. On December 29, 1972, the crashed into the, causing 101 fatalities.
The pilots and the flight engineer, two of 10 flight attendants, and 96 of 163 passengers died; 75 passengers and crew survived. The crash occurred while the entire cockpit crew was preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light. They failed to notice that the autopilot had inadvertently been disconnected and, as a result, the aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed.The crash gained unusual notoriety when stories began circulating of the deceased flight crew haunting components scavenged from the wreckage. Contents.Aircraft Flight 401 was a regularly scheduled flight from in, to in. On the day of the crash, Flight 401 was operated using a Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar ( N310EA), which had been delivered to the airline on August 18, 1972.: 30: 99 The aircraft was fleet number 310, and the tenth Tristar delivered to the carrier.
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Flight crew The flight was under the command of Captain Robert Albin (Bob) Loft, 55, a veteran pilot ranked 50th in seniority at Eastern. Captain Loft had been with the airline for 32 years and had accumulated a total of 29,700 flight hours throughout his flying career. He had logged 280 hours in the L-1011. His flight crew included First Officer Albert John (Bert) Stockstill, 39, who had 5,800 hours of flying experience (with 306 of them in the L-1011), and Second Officer (flight engineer) Donald Louis (Don) Repo, 51, who had 15,700 hours of flying experience, with 53 of them in the L-1011.: 27–29 A company employee—technical officer Angelo Donadeo, 47, returning to Miami from an assignment in New York—accompanied the flight crew for the journey, but was officially an off-duty '.: 98 Flight and crash. The aircraft flightpath summary, as shown in the reportFlight 401 departed JFK Airport on Friday, December 29, 1972, at 21:20, carrying 163 passengers and 13 crew members on board.: 3The flight was routine until 23:32, when the plane began its approach into. After lowering the gear, First Officer Stockstill noticed that the indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the 'down' position, had not illuminated.: 3 This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb.: 9 The landing gear could have been manually lowered nonetheless.: 101 The pilots cycled the landing gear, but still failed to get the confirmation light.: 3Loft, who was working the radio during this leg of the flight, told the tower that they would discontinue their approach to their airport and requested to enter a. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000 feet (610 m), and then hold west over the Everglades.: 3The cockpit crew removed the light assembly,: 102 and Second Officer Repo was dispatched to the avionics bay beneath the flight deck to confirm via a small porthole if the landing gear was indeed down.: 4 Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Captain Loft instructed First Officer Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot.: 4 For the next 80 seconds, the plane maintained level flight.
Then, it dropped 100 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.: 4 In the next 70 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.: 4 The engineer (Repo) had gone below, and no indication was heard of the pilots' voices recorded on the CVR that they heard the chime. In another 50 seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude.: 5As Stockstill started another turn, onto 180°, he noticed the discrepancy. The following conversation was recovered from the flight voice recorder later:Stockstill: We did something to the altitude. Stockstill: We're still at 2,000 feet, right? Loft: Hey—what's happening here?: 5Less than 10 seconds after this exchange, the jetliner crashed:Cockpit Area Microphone (CAM): Sound of click CAM: Sound of six beeps similar to radio altimeter increasing in rate CAM: Sound of initial impact: 5The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 miles (30.1 km) from the end of runway Nine Left (9L).: 5 The plane was traveling at 227 miles per hour (365 km/h) when it hit the ground.
With the aircraft in midturn, the left wingtip hit the surface first, then the left engine and the left landing gear,: 8 making three trails through the, each five feet (1.5 m) wide and more than 100 feet (30 m) long. When the main part of the fuselage hit the ground, it continued to move through the grass and water, breaking up as it went.Crash sequence The TriStar's port outer wing structure struck the ground first, followed by the No. 1 engine and the port main.
The disintegration of the aircraft that followed scattered wreckage over an area 1,600 feet (500 m) long and 330 feet (100 m) wide in a southwesterly direction. Only small fragments of metal marked the wingtip's first contact, followed 49 feet (15 m) further on by three massive 115 feet (35 m) swaths cut through the mud and sawgrass by the aircraft's extended undercarriage before two of the legs were sheared off.
Then came scattered parts from the No. 1 (port) engine, and fragments from the port wing itself and the port. 490 feet (150 m) from the wingtip's initial contact with the ground, the massive had begun to break up, scattering components from the underfloor, the cargo compartments, and the cabin interior. At 820 feet (250 m) along the wreckage trail, the outer section of the starboard wing tore off, gouging an 59-foot-long (18 m) crater in the soft ground as it did so. From this point on, the breakup of the fuselage became more extensive, scattering metal fragments, cabin fittings, and passenger seats widely. The three major sections of the fuselage—the most intact of which was the tail assembly—lay in the mud towards the end of the wreckage trail.
The fact that the tail assembly—rear fuselage, No. 2 tail-mounted engine, and remains of the —finally came to rest substantially further forward than other major sections, was probably the result of the No. 2 engine continuing to deliver thrust during the actual breakup of the aircraft. No complete cross-section of the passenger cabin remained, and both the port wing and tailplane were demolished to fragments.
Incongruously, not far from the roofless fuselage center section with the inner portion of the starboard wing still attached, lay a large, undamaged and fully inflated rubber dinghy, one of a number carried on the TriStar in the event of an emergency water landing. The breakup of the fuselage had freed it from its stowage and activated its inflation mechanism.: 107–109 Rescue and aftermath Robert 'Bud' Marquis (1929-2008), an pilot, was out with Ray Dickinsin (1929-1988) when they witnessed the crash. They rushed to rescue survivors. Marquis received burns to his face, arms, and legs—a result of spilled jet fuel from the crashed TriStar—but continued shuttling people in and out of the crash site that night and the next day.
For his efforts, he received the Humanitarian Award from the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation and the 'Alumitech – Airboat Hero Award', from the American Airboat Search and Rescue Association.In all, 75 survived the crash—67 of the 163 passengers and 8 of the 10 flight attendants. Despite their own injuries, the surviving flight attendants were credited with helping other survivors and several quick-thinking actions such as warning survivors of the danger of striking matches due to jet fuel in the swamp water and singing Christmas carols to keep up hope and draw the rescue teams' attention, as flashlights were not part of the standard equipment on commercial airliners at the time. Of the cockpit crew, only flight engineer Repo survived the initial crash, along with technical officer Donadeo, who was down in the nose electronics bay with Repo at the moment of impact.: 102,108 Stockstill was killed on impact, while Captain Loft died in the wreckage of the flightdeck before he could be transported to a hospital. Repo was evacuated to a hospital, but later succumbed to his injuries.: 107–108 Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flightdeck occupants, recovered from his injuries., a former NASA astronaut and Eastern's senior Vice President of Operations, took a helicopter to the crash site to investigate the incident, as well as to help the survivors of the accident.Most of the dead were passengers in the aircraft's midsection.
The swamp absorbed much of the energy of the crash, lessening the impact on the aircraft. The mud of the Everglades may have blocked wounds sustained by survivors, preventing them from bleeding to death. However, it also complicated the survivors' recuperation, as organisms in the swamp caused infection, with the potential for. Eight passengers became infected; doctors used to treat the infections. All the survivors were injured; 60 received serious injuries and 17 suffered minor injuries that did not require hospitalization.: 108 The most common injuries were fractures of ribs, spines, pelvises, and lower extremities.
Fourteen survivors had various degrees of burns.: 6 Cause of the crash The (NTSB) investigation discovered that the autopilot had been inadvertently switched from altitude hold to (CWS) mode in pitch.: 23 In this mode, once the pilot releases pressure on the (control column or wheel), the autopilot maintains the pitch attitude selected by the pilot until he moves the yoke again. Investigators believe the autopilot switched modes when the captain accidentally leaned against the yoke while turning to speak to the flight engineer, who was sitting behind and to the right of him. The slight forward pressure on the stick would have caused the aircraft to enter a slow descent, maintained by the CWS system.: 110Investigation into the aircraft's autopilot showed that the force required to switch to CWS mode was different between the A and B channels (15 vs. 20 lbf or 6.8 vs. 9.1 kgf, respectively).
(report number AAR-73/14). June 14, 1973. Retrieved February 8, 2016. Cite journal requires journal=. ^ (1994). 'Chapter 12: Hey - what's happening here?'
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Floyd, E. (2002) In the Realm of Ghosts and Hauntings' pp 64-70 Boyne City, Michigan: Harbor House. 'Mysteries at the Museum: Lotto Scam, Somali Pirates, Haunted Plane'.
October 4, 2010. Missing or empty series=. Retrieved July 22, 2017. ^ (1980). From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. Pp. 490–491. Loft v.
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Atheneum, New York.External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to. '.' Multimedia presentation on flight 401. on.
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