Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 Crashes Into Alligator-Infested Swamp | Mayday | Wonder

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] oh no tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] pull down and turn to your right if you force it you'll break it this won't come out bob push the switch forward a single light bulb is preventing a modern jetliner from landing screwing around with a 20 cent piece of light equipment on this plane struggling to fix a minor problem a much more serious one develops we're still at 2000 right hey hey what's happening here the plane crashes in a remote swamp those who survive the crash face a new danger the swamp has filled with jet fuel eastern 401 was a pivotal accident in aviation history the crash would point investigators to an astonishing danger lurking in all commercial cockpits [Music] [Music] december 29th 1972 the dawn of the jumbo jet era on its way to florida this l-1011 tristar is the most advanced passenger jet in the world the lucky tri-star was a fascinating bird it was a beautifully flying airplane it had a tremendous amount of power and a lot of innovation to it the cabin of this eastern airlines jet is large and quiet the service is first rate bob loft is the captain for eastern airlines flight 401 he's been with the airline for more than 30 years his first officer is albert stockstill his second officer is donald repo the jet has left the bitter cold of new york behind and is now descending towards miami welcome to miami the temperatures in the low 70s and it's a beautiful night out there today go ahead and throw them out [Music] angelo donnardeo is an off-duty eastern airlines maintenance expert he's catching a ride back to miami there are 176 people on board tonight's flight most are heading south for new years ron and lily infantino have been married for only 20 days they've just spent christmas with his family the seat belt sign came on as normal we're in a final approach i look out the window there and i can see lights at the airport close to midnight the plane begins its approach to miami international airport stock still flies the plane while repo performs a landing checklist radar dog panel is checked 35 33 gear down the captain notices a problem [Music] the light showing that the nose gear is locked hasn't lit up i'm gonna raise it back up the gear might not be all the way down [Music] loft tries again the sound of the landing gear echoes through the plane it makes a pretty loud grinding noise if you flow very much you're familiar with that sound so they did that several times the pilots did that several times and we weren't alarmed it's just one of those things that happens sometimes and we just kind of looked at each other and said great we're gonna be late getting home still no light loft isn't sure if his front landing gear is locked if it isn't landing could be disastrous uh tower this is easton401 looks like we're gonna have to circle we don't have a light on our nose area eastern 401 have you roger pull up climb straight ahead to 2000 go back to approach control 128.6 you want me to test the lights or not yeah check it flight engineer repo performs a test nicknamed the christmas tree it lights up every warning light in the cockpit to see if the bulbs are working the nose gear indicator light fails the test the bulb is probably burnt out there's a slim chance of a double failure both the light bulb and the landing gear could be broken uh bob can you just juggle the light but the troublesome bulb is out of the captain's reach on the ground air traffic control directs flight 401 to climb to two thousand feet and circle away from the airport until the problem is solved you want me to fly bro uh what uh frequency did you run a sideburn one twenty eight six uh it's right above that red one yeah i can't get at it from here wow yeah i can't make a pull out either [Music] it's a moonless night as the plane veers away from miami there's total darkness outside all of a sudden it turned pitch dark again and that means we were going back out west towards the everglades co-pilot stock still is flying the plane but captain loft needs his help to solve the problem put the autopilot on here the tristar is equipped with the most sophisticated autopilot in history it actually has the ability to land the plane on its own stock still programs it to fly at 2000 feet now see if you can get that light out [Music] the light is finally removed [Music] richard praglewski is an aviation engineer he takes this flight regularly and can tell that the plane is experiencing technical problems he was heading out towards the everglades i knew there was something wrong with the plane because if you have a delay they'll circle the plane the irritating problem isn't getting better now stock still can't get the light back in now push the switch just forward ah okay you got it sideways then eastern 401 turn left heading three zero zero okay three zero zero eastern 401 hey hey get down there and see if that damn nose wheel is down the electronics bay on the plane is underneath the cockpit the room nicknamed the hell hole is a unique feature on wide-bodied jets the front landing gear mechanism can be seen from there i've got a handkerchief or something so i can get a little better grip on this turn to your right anything i can do it would turn to your left one time get down there and see if that damn thing won't come out bob if i had a pair of pliers i could cushion it with that card i'll give you a pair of pliers but if you force it you'll break it just put it to hell with the hell with this get down and see if we're lined up with that red line that's all we care screwing around with a 20 cent piece of light equipment on this plane as the crew struggles to fix the problem in the cabin richard praglewski sees something peculiar out of his window i could see the tower to my right in the distance and it looked like we were going into a glide path which i found very strange praglewski has noticed something the pilots haven't the plane is getting closer and closer to the swamp below eastern airlines flight 401 is flying over the florida everglades below it nothing but a dark deserted swamp to passenger richard progloski something doesn't seem right i felt kind of strange that they hadn't made any announcements but again he was still fairly high off the ground and i figured they would come out and tell us that when they were going to make the landing so i wasn't overly concerned put it in the wrong way huh looks square to me can't you get the hole lined up i don't know what the hell's holding that damn thing in there so it was something we could have made scheduled without a green light they still don't know if their landing gear is locked [Music] flight engineer don repo is now in the belly of the plane there's a viewing window in the hell hole which should let him see if the front wheels are locked in place i don't see it down there huh i don't see it it's not lined up i can't see it it's pitch dark and i throw the little light and get nothing [Music] the wheel lights on pardon wheel will light on captain loft has forgotten to turn on lights outside the plane that illuminate the landing gear now try it [Applause] at miami international controller charlie johnson has just finished dealing with another troubled jet national 607 has landed without incident fire trucks were deployed but they weren't used he notices that eastern airlines flight 401 seems to have dropped from 2000 feet to 900 but he's not overly concerned it's not unusual to get false readings for several radar sweeps in a row eastern 401 uh how are things coming along out there okay we'd like to turn around and come come back in captain loft believes that he'll soon get confirmation that his gear is locked he wants to return to the airport eastern 401 turn left heading one eight zero the plane is heading west away from the airport it will take several minutes to get lined up for the landing deep in the everglades bob marcus is hunting frogs with a friend eastern airlines flight 401 roars past sorry i just saw the southern lights blinking across the sky and it was it's a black there's no horizon in in the west and uh you could tell i couldn't tell how high the plane was suddenly the pilots make an alarming observation we did something to the altitude what we're still at 2000 right hey hey what's happening here i see the lights in the cabin just flickering on and off and i heard a noise it was a violent i mean a violent whipping sensation then all of a sudden all hell broke loose charlie johnson notices that flight 401's altitude now reads as coastal or sea level eastern 401 i've lost you on the radar there your transponder what's your altitude now there's no response from easton401 another plane makes a disturbing report flaming approach is national 6-1-1 we just saw a big flash looked like it came out west don't know what it means but wanted to let you know in a dark remote swamp those who survived the crash find themselves in a nightmare [Music] bob marcus races towards the site of the crash oh i was going as fast as i could it took me about 15 minutes i think to get to the right side [Music] remarkably richard praglewski is alive i knew i was badly injured because i could see my clothes hanging from my body had almost no clothes in the upper half of the body and i could see skin coming down my arms and i also knew that when you're in shock you feel no pain so i knew i really was seriously injured and i started thinking i said well you know the pain will come later but how do i keep calm and get out of there because longer than that swamp the condition i'm in the more danger men [Music] when the plane crashed a huge fireball tore through the cabin i remember that fire coming to my face i remember the flash i remember that i tried breathing i could not get my breath of course the fire took all the oxygen out of the air and that's the last thing i remember until i got up in the swamp itself ron infantino was knocked out by the crash he wakes up in the swamp so i was throwing quite a bit and i was away from wise you know everybody else nobody was even near me lily [Music] lily he's badly wounded his new wife lily was sitting next to him but now she's nowhere to be seen [Music] swamp water dowsed the initial flames but 20 000 kilograms of jet fuel has now leaked into the swamp [Music] a single spark could start a deadly blaze no one light a match we're covered in jet fuel what a sad thing to come through that crash and then have somebody do something stupid like strike a match and have us all just blow up that was the real fear hoping to help the survivors bob marcus jumps into the swamp he immediately feels the sting of the jet fuel on his skin it burnt my legs i had to treat my legs for for burns for about a week marcus quickly spots a survivor who's in grave danger the badly wounded man is still strapped to his seat he's on the verge of drowning and his head kept dropping down in the water he came up he said help me i can't hold my head up much longer and then drop back down in the water so i helped him i pulled him up don't worry i got you i got you bob marcus saves dozens of lives preventing many people from drowning [Music] isolated from the other survivors and unable to move ron infantino now has a new reason to fear for his life after a while the alligators and the snakes you could hear him in the weeds coming by and you could hear the croaking of the alligators because they started to come back to the natural habitat and as far as i'm concerned if a guy who came up to me or snake i was dead meat because i couldn't defend myself at all and then i heard christmas caroling [Music] to rally the survivor's spirits trudy smith and others sing christmas carols [Music] we knew instinctively that we weren't going to get out of there in a hurry because nobody knew where we were in the middle of the swamp midnight so what else are you going to do and you got to picture us this i mean in the dark at night before you hear us singing in the wilderness [Music] it was like beyond the titanic going down type of thing you know it was unbelievable [Music] within minutes coast guard helicopters are sent out in search of the crash site but in the pitch black knight they can't find the wreckage bob marcus tries to signal the distant helicopters but i could see where they were and they were going the wrong direction and i i just waved the light at him until i saw him turn and head back towards us [Music] it seemed like we've been in the swamps for a really long time when we heard a helicopter and it was such a welcoming sound because that means somebody knows that you're there less than half an hour after the crash the coast guard arrives but the nearest landing site is a hundred meters away marcus rushes to meet the helicopter and ferry the rescuers back to the crash site his first passenger is rescue worker don schneck i made it to the airboat he asked me where are all the rescuers and i said this is it let's go he took us out into the glades to a point where he said this is as far as i want to go because i don't want to run anybody over and he said there are bodies out here all over the place don schneck starts searching for survivors i approach the large object that i had seen in a small distance and realized it was the nose section of the aircraft he's amazed to discover that captain bob loft has survived the crash [Music] he was in badge he had lacerations so i knew he had broken ribs i could tell he was in shock so i calmed him down told him i'm the only one here right now but they're coming just hang in there i'm going to die he told me that and i argued with him anything to keep his anything going it just made me feel so inadequate because it was just me i turned around and i looked back towards miami and thinking where in the heck is everybody and at that time when i looked i must have seen 50 lights coming and i went thank god [Music] first officer bert stockstill was killed during the crash captain bob loft soon dies at the scene [Music] angelo donadeo and don repo have survived and are taken to hospital [Music] in all 77 people survived the crash 99 people are killed by dawn all the wounded have been transported to miami hospitals [Music] ron infantino is one of the many who are struggling to survive priest comes over and does the last rites so right then i knew i was in bad shape and it's a scary thought and of course at that time i'm still asking for lily you know have they seen her there was such a madhouse there that night you could imagine [Music] where's lily [Music] the crash is headline news around the world it's the first ever jumbo jet to crash and it produces the largest number of deaths in u.s civil aviation history there's tremendous pressure on investigators from the national transportation safety board to find out what happened it was an enormous puzzle because this was the newest the most sophisticated the best of the airliners it apparently was in perfect working condition so the ntsb perceived that this was going to be a very long investigation that involved multi-level potential problems the crash site itself is an important clue for investigators arriving at the scene the trail of debris is enormously long that suggests that the plane hit the swamp almost in the same nose-up position as it would while landing at an airport its descent was clearly slow and gradual ntsb investigators have documented the final settings for many of the instruments in the cockpit they discover that the autopilot was set to maintain an altitude of two thousand feet so why didn't it expert angelo donado is interviewed all he can tell investigators is the crew was trying to fix a light bulb before the crash within days the plane's two black boxes are recovered investigators hope they will provide some answers before they can extract the data flight engineer don repo dies in hospital ron infantino is given some devastating news of his own the body of his wife lily has been found under the plane's wing [Music] she's just a wonderful person i was 27 years old and she was the same age and it was actually my first love infantino is haunted by the memory of switching seats with lily just before the crash they had swapped seats quite casually earlier during the flight when she had gotten up to go to the restroom she was thrown into the swamp and drowned and he lit the swamp proves both a blessing and a curse for survivors that's what saved most lives actually because the plane broke up it absorbed all the energy and the mud absorbed it and the plane just dispersed the swamp water is so thick with mud it also clogs survivors wounds preventing many from bleeding to death but there's a deadly new threat facing some survivors their wounds have become infected contaminated by a deadly organism found in the black mud of the everglades the organism produces an infection called gas gangrene it can kill a person in just two days gas gangrene can only be destroyed in a hyperbaric chamber it's a pressurized container that gets filled with high levels of oxygen the oxygen gets forced into the wounds and kills the bacteria eight of the surviving passengers are infected with gas gangrene hyperbaric chambers must be found for all of them the only other way to save patients is to amputate the infected limb ron infantino's arm is badly infected doctor came in and says we've diagnosed that as gas gangrene he says we've got to take your arm off immediately or have to get you to a hyperbaric chamber unfortunately he says the only hyperbaric chamber is at mercy hospital and that's all been taken advantage of unless doctors can find a chamber soon infantino will lose his arm [Music] while doctors search for a chamber for ron infantino [Music] investigators examine what's left of the plane they test its flight controls engines instruments and its electrical and hydraulic systems the plane was virtually new it was in perfect condition there was no mechanical reason found that would have caused the crash in fact some parts of the plane are in such good condition that the ntsb gives them back to eastern airlines so they can be installed on other airplanes in its fleet an unused hyperbaric chamber is finally found for ron inventino at a navy base in panama city he spends 40 hours in the chamber the pressurized oxygen kills the bacteria and saves his life gentlemen we have three causes of the crash to explore a state-of-the-art jetliner plunged 2000 feet without the crew noticing investigators know the plane was mechanically sound they now focus on other possible reasons for the unobserved descent at the top of the list is subtle incapacitation of the pilot the autopsy of captain bob loft has yielded a gruesome discovery captain loft had a large undetected tumor growing in his brain it pressed into the part of his brain responsible for sight medical records revealed that between the ages of 50 and 52 vision in the pilot's left eye had rapidly deteriorated doctors believe that the captain may have had reduced peripheral vision the tumor could have created blind spots as his attention became focused on the malfunctioning light he may not have noticed dire warnings on his altimeter [Music] investigators consider a stunning possibility an undetected medical ailment may have contributed to the world's first jumbo jet disaster we're still at 2000 right hey hey what's happening here investigators learn what they can about captain bob loft they interview people who knew him and pour over his medical records the investigators heard that captain loft so far as his family and friends knew had perfect vision he was an expert marksman he shot dubs particularly which are very small target loft's records show that he'd recently passed a medical in which he was issued corrective glasses for flying but the evidence doesn't support the notion that his vision was dangerously impaired he was 55 years old and who gets to be 55 without wearing reading classes not many dr joe davis who did the autopsy told me that even though the tumor was pressing on areas of his brain the control vision there was no reason to think that it had yet begun to affect that he felt it had nothing to do with the accident investigators still don't know why flight 401 started descending in the first place put the autopilot on here right could the autopilot which was supposed to keep the plane at two thousand feet have malfunctioned the plane's computers survived the crash they're removed and examined eleven days after the crash the autopilot computers are installed on another tristar it flies the same route as flight 401 the autopilot holds that plane at 2000 feet so why hadn't it on the night of the accident investigators will need to explore other leads to find out there's another question that dogs this investigation why didn't the miami tower alert the crew that their plane was dropping the world's first three-dimensional radar had recently been installed there it meant that controller charlie johnson knew the location altitude and speed of flight 401 national 607 is declaring investigators study recordings of johnson's conversations and discover that on the night of the crash it was another plane that demanded most of his attention national airlines flight 607 was coming into land just ahead of flight 401 that flight was having its own landing gear problems runway nine will need fire and ambulance sent out right away as he focused on the emergency johnson handed flight 401 over to another controller but just as national 607 came in for its emergency landing the other controller phoned johnson and handed flight 401 back to him heavies coming back to you unsafe nose gear [Music] at the time flight 401 was already over the swamp johnson had five other planes to monitor he was also dealing with the aftermath of his emergency landing national 607 has landed without incident trucks that's when he noticed that flight 401's altitude had dropped to 900 feet the way the radars work still to a certain extent this happens but back then it was even worse coast mode was a very well known phenomena i mean you might lose the target for two or three minutes in terms of the altitude reporting part of it and it goes and gives you some weird altitude and then boom is right back where it should be but the controller didn't stop there and this was really to his credit johnson decided to make contact with flight 401. eastern 401 uh how are things coming along okay we'd like to uh turn around and come uh come back in eastern 401 turn left heading 1-8-0 after that brief exchange johnson assumed there was no problem eastern 401 uh how are things coming along okay investigators conclude that at that moment controller johnson was the only one who could see that the plane was losing altitude why hadn't he passed that information along to the crew u.s government regulations for air traffic controllers provide the answer it simply wasn't part of a controller's job at the time of the crash the faa required approach controllers to maintain a separation of the airplanes it did not give them a duty to maintain the altitude of the airliner with regard to the ground now investigators try to determine how the plane's own warning system failed to alert pilots to their growing danger l-1011 is equipped with an alarm that sounds if the plane goes 250 feet above or below the altitude selected by the pilots as investigators replay the tape from the black box they clearly hear that alarm sounding in the cockpit as the plane passed through seventeen hundred and fifty feet [Music] do you hear that how'd they miss it investigators closely examined the cockpit transcript to try to understand how the alarm was missed put it in the wrong way huh investigators noticed that just before the alarm sounded in the cockpit warning the crew that the plane is too low both pilots were completely absorbed with the landing gear light the conversation also tells investigators that the flight engineer was below in the hellhole the warning chime came out of a speaker at his workstation [Music] investigators begin to realize that the two pilots were unable to hear a perfectly audible alarm because they were focused so entirely on solving another problem their chime which is clearly heard on the cockpit voice recorder was not registering in the minds of all the men on that flight deck not because they weren't trying to pay attention but because they were tunneled in on this one problem that's what we do as humans investigators now focus on crew distraction as a likely cause of this accident several instruments would have displayed the decreasing altitude the major question was why were the pilots so preoccupied that they were not looking at the instrument panel they had to look at the human beings they had to look at the interaction they had to look at why no one was paying attention to the airplane as it began to creep out of 2000 feet that was scary territory in 1972 investigators interview a number of pilots and make a startling discovery pilots admitted that they placed a lot of trust in the modern new autopilots flying their planes they may have become overly dependent on the technology put the autopilot out here investigators suspect that the eastern crew was so confident in their autopilot that they didn't monitor their instruments as closely as they should have now see if you can get that light out once the autopilot was on none of the pilots paid attention to actually flying the plane still gotta find out why that plane went down investigators still haven't determined the most crucial piece of information if the autopilot was working why did the plane dive into the swamp did something to the altitude what the pilot's conversation clearly shows that they hadn't deliberately started descending we're still at 2000 right hey hey what's happening here so why did it happen the answer comes in a dramatic form when the ntsb conducts a public hearing in miami two months after the crash before the hearing an eastern airlines pilot named daniel gellert wrote the chairman of the ntsb offering to testify on his own behalf he had flown the tristar l-1011 and noticed some abnormalities the world of airline piloting in 1972 was hostile to a pilot going around his chief pilot and his airline and raising his hand to the ntsb and saying hey wait a minute i've had an experience too because airlines were far more insular than they are today gellar tells the hearing that during a recent flight on a tri-star he had accidentally dropped a map on the cockpit floor as he bent down to pick it up he nudged his control column he noticed immediately that the plane's autopilot had been affected the part of the autopilot controlling altitude had been turned off the ntsb discovers that gellert's experience is shared by others [Music] in fact 17 days after the accident eastern airlines tacked a notice onto a company bulletin board and also mailed it to all of its tristar pilots the bulletin warned against accidentally bumping the control wheel one of the things that we built into all the modern jetliners and airliners is simply a pressure switch so if you if you need to take over right now you don't want to be wasting time down here on the panel turning the autopilot off you just grab it and the autopilot goes away the flight data recorder tells investigators the precise moment that the plane's altitude started to drop it was 11 37 and 8 seconds by studying the voice recorder transcript investigators can tell what was happening in the cockpit at that exact time hey hey get down there and see if that damn nose wheel is down by turning to speak to the flight engineer investigators believe that captain loft bumped his control wheel he did it with just enough pressure to disengage that part of the autopilot that had been controlling the plane's altitude without anyone realizing it a simple nudge of the control wheel started a gradual descent on a dark moonless night the pilots had no visual cues to tell them they were falling it was determined that occasionally with just a soft bump an autopilot had been disengaged so before the crash it wasn't part of the training a training director for eastern airlines eventually reveals that before the everglades crash pilots were never taught that a bump could disengage the autopilot the ntsb comes to a sobering conclusion the plane crash was due to pilot error the crew was distracted they mishandled the plane's sophisticated automation and they hadn't been properly trained eastern 401 was a pivotal accident in aviation safety history and and we really didn't know this for about 10 or 15 years in terms of the true import of what it did to us in focusing our attention on the fact that the way we handle things in a cockpit was not only not correct but it was dangerous investigators also make a disheartening find when the nose gear indicator light assembly is examined they discover that a light bulb inside is burnt out flight 401's landing gear was locked the plane could have landed the only piece of the plane that failed was a 12 light bulb the full legacy of flight 401 will take years to unfold it will ultimately alter how pilots are trained and how accidents are investigated but first the tale of eastern airlines flight 401 will take a very bizarre twist as far as the ntsb is concerned the investigation into eastern airlines flight 401 is over several recommendations were laid out to prevent similar accidents those include new regulations instructing air traffic controllers to warn pilots when they're getting too close to the ground but four years later it became clear there was a bigger lesson to be learned from eastern airlines flight 401 in 1977 two 747s collided on a runway in tenerife on the canary islands it was the deadliest plane crash of all time [Music] that accident was caused by a string of miscommunications in the cockpit [Music] investigators established that 70 of crashes were due to pilot error [Music] both of these accidents uh tenerife and 401 what you see is is crews dedicated to doing a good job but not realizing that they're human not realizing how many things can go wrong if you don't appreciate how human beings fail by the late 1970s nasa began to explore a new behavioral science designed to reduce pilot error and uh pilots be on the lookout for any different behavior it's called crew resource management or crm crew resource management simply means that we're not going to have one pilot leading and everybody else following it means that the captain has to be a leader and listen to and interact with his subordinate crew members and the subordinate crew members have to speak up decades later flight 401 is taught in aviation courses around the world as a textbook example of poor crm the problem was that we did not teach bob loft or stock still or any of these folks at the time that when something goes wrong the commander's first responsibility is to maintain aircraft control and either do it himself or assign somebody for up to 2000 women to fly bro uh what frequency did he want us on board one twenty to him on flight 401 captain loft did not clarify who should be doing what instead all three crew members worked on the same problem bob can you just juggle the light it's gotta gotta come out a little bit and then snap in with the co-pilot flying the captain commanding from the left seat you already had cross purposes here it's right above that red one yeah i can't get at it from here and you had a light quadrant the captain couldn't quite reach and the co-pilot could but the co-pilot is flying the airplane you've just set them up for a major problem and guess what systemically we never taught them what to do today crm also trains flight crews not to be intimidated by one crew member's mood i'm going to handkerchief or something so i can get a little better grip on this anything i can do it with get down there and see if that damn thing won't come out bob so if the leader is having a problem in this case with a light bulb ah okay you got it sideways though and he's really irritated at it and the co-pilot has now made the problem worse co-pilot is not going to be happy with himself over that i don't know what the hell's holding that damn thing in there don repo is not gonna be happy that he got downstairs to try to solve the problem and he couldn't see anything and he's gotta come up and report that i don't see it they're all tens it's not lined up i can't see it and when you get a crew like that tense it's not trying to turn around to the captain and say you shouldn't have done that but this is part of the evolution of what air safety has now learned and been able to teach so many other industries [Music] the enduring legacy of flight 401 is the delegation of specific tasks in the cockpit the result is fewer crashes there was also much more bizarre fallout from this crash a while it seemed that the crew of flight 401 was haunting other eastern airlines flights for some time after the crash flight crews and passengers report seeing lifelike apparitions of flight 401's crew [Music] many of the ghost sightings were on aircraft fitted with recovered parts from flight 401 the ghost stories spread quickly one book devoted entirely to those stories suggests that the ghosts were there to protect passengers and crew from further mishap the official reaction at eastern airlines uh to these ghost stories was one of absolute eye-rolling denial in public and in private a certain bit of panic there are so many ghost sightings that eventually eastern airlines removes flight 401's cannibalized plane parts from all other aircraft none of those who survived the crash will ever forget the horror they witnessed in the everglades that night and 35 years after their ordeal many of them returned to that swamp to finally recognize the heroic efforts of marcus to recognize and to say thank you we're bob [Music] many of the ones who lived lived because robert marcus was there with his airboat he saw them drowning and decided that the thing that he could do would be to save the ones he could save robert mars was the kind of person that i hope that all of us ultimately would be if we were confronted with that sort of thing but he drew on some special courage to do what he did he was one of the true heroes of the crash [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Wonder

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Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, mayday, mayday air crash investigation, mayday air disaster, air crash investigation full episodes, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, eastern airlines 401, eastern airlines flight 401, eastern airlines flight 401 crash animation, eastern airlines flight 401 cockpit voice recorder, eastern airlines flight 401 air crash investigation, eastern airlines flight 401 mayday

Id: RvTPDb1-7fY

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 23 2021