The First Ever Jumbo Jet Crash | Fatal Distraction | Mayday: Air Disaster

[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 up [Music] angelo donadeo 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 year's 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 uh i could 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 panels checked 3533 gear down the captain notices a problem bird is that handling no nose gear 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 going to 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 [Music] 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 but 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 jiggle 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 2000 feet and circle away from the airport until the problem is solved you want me to fly bro uh what uh frequency did you bonus onboard one twenty eight six uh it's right above that red one yeah i can't get at it from you 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 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 they 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 is the four one 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 hellhole 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 down and 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 i can give you a pair of pliers but if you force it you'll break it just to hell with it to 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 to 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 it 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 it's always 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 damn 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 the wheel lights on pardon wheel light on captain loft has forgotten to turn on lights outside the plane that illuminate the landing gear [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 i just saw the southern lights blinking across the sky and it was it's a black there's no horizon 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 [Music] i see the lights in the cabin just flickering on and off and i heard a noise there 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 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] oh remarkably richard praglewski is alive i knew i was badly injured because i could see my clothes hanging from my body he had almost no closing 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 in that swamp the condition i'm in the more danger men 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 wasn't 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 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 them 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 me because i couldn't defend myself at all and then i heard christmas caroline [Music] to rally the survivors spirits trudy smith and others sing christmas carols 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 seems 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 approached 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 badger 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 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 had they seen her there was such a madhouse there that night you could imagine [Music] where's lily 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 2000 feet so why didn't it maintenance 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 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 well we've diagnosed it as gas gangrene he says we got to take your arm off immediately or i 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 [Music] 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 you

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: FKK262r6qAE

Length: 27min 51sec (1671 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021