Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades. All three cockpit crew members, two of the ten flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed. 75 people survived, with 58 of them suffering serious injuries.
The crash is believed to have been caused by a subtle bump of the yoke on the aircraft, causing it to switch the autopilot from altitude hold mode, to Control Wheel Steering mode, causing the aircraft to begin a descent. Due to the focus on a malfunctioning landing gear indicator light, the pilots did not notice the auto pilot being shut off. The aircraft gradually lost altitude and crashed. This was the first hull loss and fatal crash of a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. It was also the first severe widebody aircraft crash.
Aircraft
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a regularly scheduled flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. On December 29, 1972, Flight 401 was operated using a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar (registration N310EA), which had been delivered to the airline just a few months earlier on August 18. The aircraft was fleet number 310, and the tenth TriStar delivered to the carrier.
Flight crew
The flight was commanded by Captain Robert Albin Loft, aged 55, a veteran pilot ranked fiftieth in seniority at Eastern Air Lines. Loft had been with the airline for 32 years and had accumulated a total of 29,700 flight hours during his career making him an exceedingly experienced aviator. He had logged 280 hours in the L-1011. His flight crew included First Officer Albert John Stockstill, aged 39, who had 5,800 hours of flying experience (with 306 of them in the L-1011) and Flight Engineer Donald Louis Repo, aged 51, who had 15,700 hours of flying experience (with 53 of them in the L-1011). A company employee—technical officer Angelo Donadeo, aged 47, returning to Miami from an assignment in New York City—accompanied the flight crew for the journey, but was officially an off-duty, "nonrevenue passenger".
Accident
Flight 401 departed New York on Friday, December 29, 1972, at 21:20 EST, with 163 passengers and 13 crew members aboard. The flight was routine until 23:32, when the plane began its approach into Miami. After lowering the gear, Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the "down" position, had not illuminated. This was later discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. The landing gear could have been manually lowered nonetheless. 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 discontinue their approach to their airport and requested to enter a holding pattern. The approach controller cleared the flight to climb to 2,000 ft (610 m), and then hold west over the Florida Everglades. The cockpit crew removed the light assembly, and Repo was dispatched to the avionics bay beneath the flight deck to check via a small porthole whether the landing gear was indeed down. Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, Loft instructed Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot.
For the next 80 seconds, the aircraft maintained level flight. Then, it dropped 100 ft (30 m), and then again flew level for two more minutes, after which it began descending so gradually that it could not be perceived by the crew. In the next 70 seconds, the airplane lost only 250 ft (76 m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under Repo's workstation. Repo had gone below, and there was no indication on the cockpit voice recorder that the pilots had heard the chime. In another 50 seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude.
As 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.Loft: What?Stockstill: We're still at 2,000 feet, right?Loft: Hey—what's happening here?
— Transcript, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 Cockpit Voice Recorder
Less than ten seconds after this exchange, Flight 401 crashed. The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 mi (30.1 km) from the end of Runway 9L. The aircraft was traveling at 227 miles per hour (197 kn; 365 km/h) when it hit the ground. With the plane in mid-turn, the left wingtip hit the surface first, then the left engine and the left landing gear, making three trails through the sawgrass, each 5 ft (1.5 m) wide and more than 100 ft (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 number 1 engine and the port main undercarriage. The disintegration of the aircraft that followed scattered wreckage over an area 1,600 ft (500 m) long and 330 ft (100 m) wide in a southwesterly direction. Only small fragments of metal marked the wingtip's first contact, followed 49 ft (15 m) further on by three massive 115 ft (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 number 1 (port) engine, and fragments from the port wing itself and the port tailplane. About 490 feet (150 m) from the wingtip's initial contact with the ground, the massive fuselage had begun to break up, scattering components from the underfloor galley, the cargo compartments, and the cabin interior. At 820 ft (250 m) along the wreckage trail, the outer section of the starboard wing tore off, gouging a 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, number 2 tail-mounted engine, and remains of the empennage—finally came to rest substantially further forward than other major sections, was probably the result of the center-mounted number 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.
Rescue and aftermath
Robert Marquis (1929–2008), a local airboat pilot, was out frog gigging with Ray Dickinsin when they witnessed the crash. The two men 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, 35 years after the crash, 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 people survived the crash—67 of the 163 passengers and eight of the ten 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, as flashlights were not part of the standard equipment on commercial airliners at the time, and singing Christmas carols to keep up morale and draw the attention of rescuers. Of the cockpit crew, only Repo and Donadeo survived the initial crash; both were in the avionics bay at the moment of impact. Stockstill was killed on impact, while Loft died in the wreckage of the flight deck before he could be transported to hospital. Repo was evacuated to hospital, but later died from his injuries. Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flight-deck occupants, recovered from his injuries.
Frank Borman, a former NASA astronaut and Eastern's senior vice president of operations, was awakened at home by a telephone call reporting a probable crash. He immediately drove to Eastern's Miami offices and decided to charter a helicopter to the crash site, as the swampy terrain made rescue difficult, and Eastern had not heard any news of progress in rescue efforts. There he was able to land in a swampy patch of grass and coordinate rescue efforts. He accompanied three survivors on the helicopter to hospital, including a flight attendant and a passenger who lost her baby in the crash.
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 muddy waters of the Everglades had covered the 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 gas gangrene. Eight passengers became infected and were treated with hyperbaric chambers. All the survivors were injured; 60 received serious injuries and 17 suffered minor ones that did not require hospitalization. The most common injuries were fractures of ribs, spines, pelvises and lower extremities. Fourteen survivors had various degrees of burns.
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation discovered that the autopilot had been inadvertently switched from altitude hold to control wheel steering (CWS) mode in pitch. In this mode, once the pilot releases pressure on the yoke (control column or wheel), the autopilot maintains the pitch attitude of the aircraft until the yoke is again moved. 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.
Investigation into the aircraft's autopilot showed that the force required to switch to CWS mode was different between the A and B channels (15 and 20 lbf or 65 and 90 N, respectively). Thus, the switching to CWS in channel A possibly did not occur in channel B, thus depriving the first officer of any indication the mode had changed (channel A provides the captain's instruments with data, while channel B provides the first officer's).
Simultaneous to Eastern 401, another flight in the area, National 607, was also having a landing gear incident, but flight 607's gear was actually jammed. Charles Johnson, one of the air traffic controllers on duty, had been dealing with the incident and aftermath of flight 607 when he was handed ATC control of Eastern 401. Miami ATC had only one three-dimensional radar that could show the height, speed, etc., and Johnson was using that radar. He then received Eastern 401's transmissions. The flight had not declared an emergency. So, Johnson only knew about the so-called "jammed nose gear". He noticed the decrease in Eastern 401's altitude, and made one call to the pilots, asking for their progress. He was told by Loft that 401 was about ready to change course back to the airport. He did not mention their decrease in altitude, as that was not part of the job of ATC at the time, and he did not make further contact before the crash. Another possible cause for Johnson's relaxed attitude regarding the decrease in altitude is that the radar used at the time was known to occasionally report incorrect altitude for brief periods, before correcting. NTSB investigators later determined Johnson was the only person who noticed Eastern 401 descending, but did not fault him, as he had followed all the ATC procedures in place at the time.