Eastern Air Lines Flight 401

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.

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 2000 ft, 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, 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, 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:

Less than ten seconds after this exchange, Flight 401 crashed. The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 mi from the end of Runway 9L. The aircraft was traveling at 227 mph 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 wide and more than 100 ft 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 500 m long and 100 m wide in a southwesterly direction. Only small fragments of metal marked the wingtip's first contact, followed 15 m further on by three massive 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 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 250 m along the wreckage trail, the outer section of the starboard wing tore off, gouging a 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.