When I used to live on the outskirts of Sheffield in the English county of South Yorkshire, I used to love driving my car.  It was the first car I ever owned – a white Ford Fiesta XR2, sports model complete with blue trim and rally racer front lights.   Living where I did, I was close to the wonderful countryside of Derbyshire and I could literally drive down the street outside my flat, turn left at the end and then next stop…the Derbyshire moors.   Friends say I have an in-built ‘satnav’ and I must admit that I do generally have a very good and reliable sense of direction.  Cocky in this belief, what I loved doing most was filling up the tank with petrol, jumping inside the car, rolling back the sun roof, turning the music on and then just pick a road…any road…..and drive.  Just venture off anywhere, picking any turn I fancied at any moment no matter how small or windy the road is.  OK, I did get in trouble a couple of times like the day I borrowed an estate car from work and got stuck in a pot hole half way up a hill or the time when just picking any road lead me to the heart of Telford – quite the most unremarkable town I’ve ever visited – near to the Welsh border.

So what’s all this got to do with ghosts and the mysterious ‘Flight 401′? Nothing, except that my same sense of adventure in the car also applies to some interesting journeys I make some times on the Internet – just browsing to see what’s out there.  And so one link leads to another and another and soon I’m following a trail that leads me to the true story of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401.   It’s not a pretty story, quite harrowing in fact and as a spoiler here for any readers about to fly and of a nervous disposition switch away now.  Why I stuck with the story was because I discovered that the aftermath of this particular air disaster created some sweeping changes that revolutionised airliner Cockpit safety and procedure right across the airline industry that remains in place today.  The other curious legacy of Flight 401 is not proven but well documented which took place months and years after the incident – that of ghostly goings on in the air.

On a dark 29th December night in 1972, EAL Flight 401 was approaching its destination city of Miami, Florida.  On board were 163 passengers mostly travelling to be with family for the New Year celebrations.   Taking care of them were 13 crew – Captain Bob Loft, First Officer Albert Stockstill and Flight Engineer Don Repo – and 10 flight attendants.

The Lockheed L1011 ’jumbo’ jet was a state-of-the-art airliner at the time.  401 had departed New York’s JFK airport earlier that evening and was preparing for landing in Miami, a route that took it deep over the famous Everglades swamplands.  While going through the procedures to prepare for landing, the flight crew lowered the undercarriage to deploy the wheels when they noticed that one of the lights on the instrument panel that should be lit indicating the nose wheel was deployed and locked – was off.  No nose wheel…no landing.   There was no other way to check the wheel had been deployed. Had it been daylight, Captain Loft could have requested a fly-by past Miami Control Tower so that the men on the ground could visually confirm the gear was in place.

At this point, all 3 of the flight crew became fixated and focussed on the stubbornly dark light switch.  While they tried to deal with the problem….even to try to pull the light out of the instrument panel to check the bulb was working, Captain Loft switched on the Auto-pilot and set it to fly the aircraft at a steady holding height of 2,000 feet.   Air crash investigators believe that it was at this point the key fatal mistakes were made that were subsequently addressed in the aftermath.   Nowadays and precisely because of what took place on board EAL 401, in a similar situation, the Captain’s first imperative is either to take control of the aircraft and secure its stability in the air or delegate it to his next in command.  Unbelievably, such very basic thinking was not part of airborne protocol and while it was absent, it allowed all 3 flight crew to focus on the smaller problem of the light panel….and miss a much bigger danger that would end in tragedy.   A second flaw in flight crew thinking right across the industry at the time was found to be pilots’ over confidence in the Auto-pilot.  What totally baffled the crash investigators was how an experienced flight crew of 3 had allowed the plane to drift from its preset holding height of 2,000 feet.  How could they not notice the plane was drifting downward when the Auto-pilot was meant to hold it in place?

When the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) was eventually located and analysed, incredibly to the investigation team listening back to what took place in the final moments…an automated voice warning of the dangerously low height of the Tristar was clearly and repeatedly audible when the tape was played back.  Why had Loft, Stockstill and Repo not heard it and responded?  This mystery was possibly answered when it was discovered that Captain Loft had on two occasions sent Engineer Repo down into what was called the ‘Hell Hole’ – a small ‘room’ below the Fight Deck near the avionics to physically look through a small peephole made to visually check on the landing gear. In the dark night, for some reason Repo was unableto verify.   The speaker that the automated warning was audible through was located at Repo’s work station.   While he was away in the ‘Hell Hole’ it appears Captain Loft and First Officer Stockstill became oblivious to the warnings as they were fixated on the light and what they thought was the non-deployment of the nose wheel.

That still doesn’t explain why the aircraft started losing height without the crew noticing.  It was only in the months after the crash that other Eastern pilots who flew the Tristar reported odd behaviour with the Auto-pilot if the flight steering column is accidentally nudged when the Auto-pilot has been set. A nudge might deactivate the part of the Auto-pilot that maintains the height.  It is thought that at some point while Captain Loft was working to solve the problem of the light with Stockstill and with Repo below in the Hell Hole, he probably nudged the steering column deactivating the Auto-pilot.  Rather than a severe nose-dive, the aircraft just gradually lost height. With it being dark outside, there was no visual indicator to the pilots such as the ground drawing ever closer through the windows. The last words caught on the CVR indicate that right to the last seconds, the flight crew had no idea they had drifted out of preset altitude so perilously:

Stockstill: We did something to the altitude.

Loft: What?

Stockstill: We’re still at 2,000 feet, right?

Loft: Hey — what’s happening here?

After that there were what sounded like a desperate attempt to lift the plane but the recording ends about here.

Loft and Stockstill perished at the scene along with 2 of the 10 flight attendants. 69 of the 163 passengers survived. Flight Engineer Don Repo survived the initial crash being down in the ‘Hell Hole’ but later died of his injuries. It is thought more could have survived but for the crash site being virtually inaccessible in the heart of the Everglades.  A protracted and very difficult investigation eventually blamed the crash on pilot error at the hands of the flight crew.  Across the world, Cockpit procedures were tightened up to make sure it could never happen again that all the flight crew are diverted away from being in control of the aircraft at all times.  Auto-pilots everywhere were also reevaluated.    The lasting legacy from the fate of Flight 401 has been these changes to inflight procedures but there was another more eerie fall-out that catapulted the incident into aviation and urban legend.

Following the crash and the close of the investigation, Eastern Air Lines gathered up the parts from 401 that were salvageable and still in working order. These joined their spare parts inventory and soon made their way onto other Tristars in Eastern’s fleet.   It was shortly after this time that reports began to come in slowly at first but then ever increasingly from passengers and crew on-board Eastern Tristars of sightings of ghostly figures dressed wearing flight crew uniforms.  Crew who knew the men and saw the alleged apparitions claimed persistently that they recognised Loft and Repo in ghostly form. It was claimed that the aircraft on which these manifestations took place were found to be aircraft that were using spare parts from 401. It was also claimed at the time that the passengers and crew witnessing these sightings had no knowledge about what spare parts came from where on their flights.    As word of the sightings leaked into the media, the legend of the ‘Ghosts of Flight 401′ was born spawning books, movies, documentaries and heaps of speculation.  In an attempt to stem the rumours that were driving nervous potential customers away, Eastern issued an all-staff bulletin that any more reports of ghosts on their aircraft could be a sackable offence.

Interestingly that while doing this, the airline also decommissioned and destroyed all components from Flight 401 either in use or stockpiled.

In a final, cruel irony when the crash investigators combed through what remained of the Cockpit, they discovered the troublesome light that had so enrapt the flight crew. They found that the light bulb itself – a piece of equipment costing around $25 (£12) – was faulty. The nose wheel landing gear had in fact deployed and locked and Flight 401 had always been perfectly able to land.