Captain Bob Loft
The crash
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, a four-month-old Lockheed L-1011 carrying 163 passengers and 13 crew members, left New York’s JFK on Friday, December 29, 1972 at 9:20 pm, en route to Miami International Airport. At the controls were Captain Robert Loft, 55, a veteran Eastern Air Lines pilot ranked 50th in seniority at Eastern, and first officer Albert Stockstill, known as Bert. 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. The reason, found out after much investigation was due to a burnt out lightbulb. The landing gear could have been manually lowered either way. The pilots cycled the landing gear but still failed to get the confirmation light.
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. The tower cleared the flight to pull out of its descent, climb to two thousand feet (610 m), and then fly 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 check visually if the gear was down through a small viewing window. Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, 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 recorded on the CVR that they heard the chime. In another fifty seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude.
As Stockstill started another turn, onto 180 degrees, he noticed the discrepancy.
The airplane crashed at 
25°51′53″N, 80°35′43″W. The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 miles from the end of runway Nine Left. The plane was traveling at 227 miles per hour when it flew into the ground. The left wingtip hit first, then the left engine and the left landing gear, making 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, breaking up as it went.
The crew of Flight 401, taken aboard Flight 26 while on the ground in Miami earlier the day of the crash. Back row: Pat Ghyssels, Trudy Smith, Adrianne Hamilton, Mercy Ruiz. Front row: Sue Tebbs, Dottie Warnock, Beverly Raposa, Stephanie Stanich. Laying on the coat rack, Patty George. Not shown, Sharon Transue (she was taking the photo).
Rescue
Robert “Bud” Marquis, an airboat pilot, was out hunting frogs with Ray Dickinsin when they witnessed the crash. They rushed in to rescue survivors. Marquis received burns to his face, arms and legs, but continued shuttling people into 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 “Alumitec – Airboat Hero Award,” from the American Airboat Search and Rescue Association. In 2007, the Homestead, Florida resident was given an award plaque.
Repo died in a hospital.
Above, the nose resting in the swamp the morning after the crash. Below, NTSB officials in the debris field.
The cause of the crash
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 switched modes when the captain accidentally 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. Investigation has shown (citation needed) that Eastern had installed mismatched control columns on the aircraft. The pilot side auto pilot would disengage at a lighter pressure than the co pilots. The co pilot, who was flying the aircraft, auto pilot indicator stayed lit and would have never displayed that the system had been disengaged inadvertently.
The final 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.” Ninety-four passengers and five crewmembers died in the crash and two more died of injuries during the days following. The series of events leading to the crash of Flight 401 was initiated by two burned-out light bulbs indicating to the flight crew that the landing gear had malfunctioned. The landing gear was found to be in the down and locked position.
Investigators discovered that Bob Loft had an undetected tumor in his brain; despite the fact that the tumor had presence in areas that controlled his vision, Loft still had his vision intact.
The swamp absorbed much of the energy of the actual crash, lessening the impact on the aircraft. The swamp mud blocked many wounds sustained by survivors, preventing them from bleeding to death. An organism in the swamp infected wounds sustained by the survivors; the organism had the potential to cause gas gangrene. Eight passengers became infected; doctors used hyperbaric chambers to treat the passengers and kill the infections.
The Ghost of Flight 401
The story of the crash and its aftermath was documented in John G. Fuller’s book The Ghost of Flight 401 (ISBN 0-425-06234-1).
Over the following months and years, employees of Eastern Air Lines began reporting sightings of the dead crew members on board another L-1011 (N318EA). The story 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 Air Lines to the point where Eastern’s management warned employees that they could face dismissal if caught spreading ghost stories. Eastern Air Lines CEO Frank Borman called it “garbage” and considered suing the producers of the 1978 made-for-TV movie The Ghost of Flight 401 for libel.
The apparitions of the crew members were allegedly sighted inside a Foster Refrigerator infrared oven that had been in the galley of Flight 401, and was later salvaged and put into another L-1011. After the supposed ghostly sightings, the oven was sent back to Foster Refrigerator in Hudson, New York.
The crash inspired two made-for-television movies. Crash dramatized the crash, rescue efforts and NTSB investigation, while The Ghost of Flight 401 was based on Fuller’s book. The crash also appeared in a Season 5 episode of Mayday (also known as Air Crash Investigation). The episode was entitled “Who’s at the Controls?” (or “Fatal Distraction” in some countries).
The aircraft in question was sold to Cathay Pacific after Eastern Air Lines went bankrupt. It was re-registered in Hong Kong as VR-HOI and served with Cathay Pacific until 1996 when the airline replaced its Tristar fleet with Airbus A330-300 aircraft.
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