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I love you; Now Die
The other end of the dead stewardess spectrum is this stewardess who lived
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The Mile High Dead Club
- Thread starter cheesegrate
- Start date
cheesegrate
Rookie
cheesegrate
Rookie
CASE 11 - A Swamp Thing: Frog Gigger to the Rescue
Eastern Airlines Flight 401 plunged into the murky swamp water of the Florida Everglades just before midnight on December 29, 1972, flying from New York. It was carrying 163 passengers and 13 crew, of which 10 were flight attendants, all female. There were initially 77 survivors, but 2 died later in hospital. Of the crew, the flight engineer survived, along with eight of the ten flight attendants. The investigation labelled the cause as pilot error, as they did not pay attention to altitude while attending to an issue with the landing gear, and assumed the autopilot was still engaged when the plane, flying nearly horizontally, touched the tall sawgrass of the swamp with one wing tip, pulling the plane into the murk and causing the plane to break up into multiple large sections (the most intact being the tail section), each like an island of survivors amidst the shallow swamp water (only 6-12 inches deep for most of the Everglades)
The cabin crew of 10 stewardesses had been working a "stuffer" or quick turnaround schedule that day, a hectic duo of back-to-back flights whereby they work the shifts from destination A to B and then B to A in lockstep. In this case the first flight earlier in the day from Miami to New York was a full, busy "dinner flight" with full meal service. The flight back to Miami was quieter, but because the plane got into New York late, the flight attendants had only 20 minutes to board the second plane back to Miami without catching a break. Nevertheless, it was the Xmas holidays, and the women were in good spirits, snapping photos earlier the same day.
The two named stewardess are the ones who did not make it. Eerily, in another photo taken where the girls are goofing around, those two stewardess are the ones being pranked by the others, seemingly as if Fate was singling them out.
The return flight to Miami from New York was mostly uneventful. At 23:19 hours, the plane started final approach to Miami International Airport. But at 23:34 the plane did a go around due to the nose wheel landing gear light not coming on, indicating either a faulty light or the nose gear not deploying properly. The pilots and flight engineer turned their attention to the landing gear issue, failing to realize the autopilot had disengaged and the plane was slowly descending...Then at 23:42:10 it disappeared from radar.
But on board the surviving passengers recount harrowing experiences:
The first on the scene was an Airboat operator by the name of Robert "Bud" Marquis, who had been Frog Gigging (hunting frogs) in the swamp with Ray Dickinsin. He was making his way back to Miami in his airboat after gigging around 30 bullfrogs and was bringing back his catch. He and Dickinsin saw the brief flash of a small fireball in the distance and had heard the sound of a plane, but the flames were very brief as the fireball dissipated, plunging everything into darkness. (No fire occurred on the ground.) Nevertheless he instinctively knew it was a plane crash and headed back out into the swamp to search for survivors. He sustained injuries during the rescue but saved multiple people, and would later be recognized with awards for his bravery.
The surviving flight attendants also acted extremely professionally and bravery, coralling and helping the injured survivors and singing Christmas Carols to comfort people and keep people pre-occupied and raise morale. Many of the wounded passengers were bleeding or had fractures. Many had their clothes completely stripped or shorn off during the breakup of the plane, and were huddled together shivering naked in the swamp.
Emergency services were activated once the plane was registered as missing, and the Coast Guard was sent to search for the wreckage. Once the crash site was identified, a massive rescue effort was undertaken to pluck survivors from the black waters of the swamp at night.
The mud of the Everglades was a double-edged sword, staunching bleeding and perhaps reducing body heat loss. But the swamp water is a veritable petri dish of microbes of all sorts, so later on, many survivors developed serious infections from exposure to the swamp:
All remaining survivors were extricated from the swamp overnight. When daybreak came the next morning, the efforts shifted to body recovery and an FAA/NTSB investigation. Once a body was found it was numbered with a permanent marker on the skin, photographed, tagged, then sealed inside a body bag with a yellow flag to mark its location, to be picked up later by airboat:
Stewardess Pat Ghyssel's body was located and recovered the next day. But Stephanie Stanich's body remained missing until New Year's Day. It was of the last bodies to be pulled from the swamp, found near the mostly intact tail section where her jumpseat was.
She was still fastened into her seat, her body outwardly with little visible trauma and still fully clothed in her stewardess uniform. When rescuers found her body, it was mired in the mud and they had to remove one boot to free the body, leaving the remaining boot in the mud. It turned out this complication was actually serendipidous, because while the body recovery team was freeing her leg, they discovered the body of a 2 year old toddler, Jonathan Kaminer, who had also still been missing, submerged right next to her corpse. Small children or babies were not belted in but rather held by their mothers, and so were flung sometimes hundreds of feet from where they were seated in the plane. Investigators may have never found the body of the child had it not been for Stanich's body being mired in the mud right next to it.
In contrast to the fully clothed stewardess, only now missing one boot, the toddler's body was entirely nude, having been stripped of all clothing during the crash. Rather than sending for another body bag, the investigators placed the small boy's body between the legs of the stewardess at the foot of the bag, then sealed the body bag and brought both in together to the morgue in touching fashion.
Eastern Airlines Flight 401 plunged into the murky swamp water of the Florida Everglades just before midnight on December 29, 1972, flying from New York. It was carrying 163 passengers and 13 crew, of which 10 were flight attendants, all female. There were initially 77 survivors, but 2 died later in hospital. Of the crew, the flight engineer survived, along with eight of the ten flight attendants. The investigation labelled the cause as pilot error, as they did not pay attention to altitude while attending to an issue with the landing gear, and assumed the autopilot was still engaged when the plane, flying nearly horizontally, touched the tall sawgrass of the swamp with one wing tip, pulling the plane into the murk and causing the plane to break up into multiple large sections (the most intact being the tail section), each like an island of survivors amidst the shallow swamp water (only 6-12 inches deep for most of the Everglades)
The cabin crew of 10 stewardesses had been working a "stuffer" or quick turnaround schedule that day, a hectic duo of back-to-back flights whereby they work the shifts from destination A to B and then B to A in lockstep. In this case the first flight earlier in the day from Miami to New York was a full, busy "dinner flight" with full meal service. The flight back to Miami was quieter, but because the plane got into New York late, the flight attendants had only 20 minutes to board the second plane back to Miami without catching a break. Nevertheless, it was the Xmas holidays, and the women were in good spirits, snapping photos earlier the same day.
The two named stewardess are the ones who did not make it. Eerily, in another photo taken where the girls are goofing around, those two stewardess are the ones being pranked by the others, seemingly as if Fate was singling them out.
The return flight to Miami from New York was mostly uneventful. At 23:19 hours, the plane started final approach to Miami International Airport. But at 23:34 the plane did a go around due to the nose wheel landing gear light not coming on, indicating either a faulty light or the nose gear not deploying properly. The pilots and flight engineer turned their attention to the landing gear issue, failing to realize the autopilot had disengaged and the plane was slowly descending...Then at 23:42:10 it disappeared from radar.
But on board the surviving passengers recount harrowing experiences:
The first on the scene was an Airboat operator by the name of Robert "Bud" Marquis, who had been Frog Gigging (hunting frogs) in the swamp with Ray Dickinsin. He was making his way back to Miami in his airboat after gigging around 30 bullfrogs and was bringing back his catch. He and Dickinsin saw the brief flash of a small fireball in the distance and had heard the sound of a plane, but the flames were very brief as the fireball dissipated, plunging everything into darkness. (No fire occurred on the ground.) Nevertheless he instinctively knew it was a plane crash and headed back out into the swamp to search for survivors. He sustained injuries during the rescue but saved multiple people, and would later be recognized with awards for his bravery.
The surviving flight attendants also acted extremely professionally and bravery, coralling and helping the injured survivors and singing Christmas Carols to comfort people and keep people pre-occupied and raise morale. Many of the wounded passengers were bleeding or had fractures. Many had their clothes completely stripped or shorn off during the breakup of the plane, and were huddled together shivering naked in the swamp.
Emergency services were activated once the plane was registered as missing, and the Coast Guard was sent to search for the wreckage. Once the crash site was identified, a massive rescue effort was undertaken to pluck survivors from the black waters of the swamp at night.
The mud of the Everglades was a double-edged sword, staunching bleeding and perhaps reducing body heat loss. But the swamp water is a veritable petri dish of microbes of all sorts, so later on, many survivors developed serious infections from exposure to the swamp:
All remaining survivors were extricated from the swamp overnight. When daybreak came the next morning, the efforts shifted to body recovery and an FAA/NTSB investigation. Once a body was found it was numbered with a permanent marker on the skin, photographed, tagged, then sealed inside a body bag with a yellow flag to mark its location, to be picked up later by airboat:
Stewardess Pat Ghyssel's body was located and recovered the next day. But Stephanie Stanich's body remained missing until New Year's Day. It was of the last bodies to be pulled from the swamp, found near the mostly intact tail section where her jumpseat was.
She was still fastened into her seat, her body outwardly with little visible trauma and still fully clothed in her stewardess uniform. When rescuers found her body, it was mired in the mud and they had to remove one boot to free the body, leaving the remaining boot in the mud. It turned out this complication was actually serendipidous, because while the body recovery team was freeing her leg, they discovered the body of a 2 year old toddler, Jonathan Kaminer, who had also still been missing, submerged right next to her corpse. Small children or babies were not belted in but rather held by their mothers, and so were flung sometimes hundreds of feet from where they were seated in the plane. Investigators may have never found the body of the child had it not been for Stanich's body being mired in the mud right next to it.
In contrast to the fully clothed stewardess, only now missing one boot, the toddler's body was entirely nude, having been stripped of all clothing during the crash. Rather than sending for another body bag, the investigators placed the small boy's body between the legs of the stewardess at the foot of the bag, then sealed the body bag and brought both in together to the morgue in touching fashion.
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cheesegrate
Rookie
Regarding Case 11, beyond the premonition-like photo taken of the cabin crew earlier that day, and the weird serendipitous finding of two-year-old Jonathan Kaminer right next to Stanich's body (which wouldn't have happened if her body hadn't been stuck in the mud), I should also add that Eastern Flight 401 also is spooky for another reason: the post-crash ghost sightings of Captain Loft and his first officer Repo sitting at the flight controls of other Lockheed Tristar L-1011s. Stories circulated that parts of the crashed aircraft were salvaged after the investigation and refitted into other L-1011s. While Eastern Air Lines publicly denied their planes were haunted, they reportedly removed all salvaged parts from their L-1011 fleet.
The story of the crash and its aftermath were documented in John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401 and a television movie of the same title was broadcast on NBC during February 1978, offers a fictionalized depiction of the crash and alleged ghost sightings. Actual footage of the Everglades incident also appeared in the movie Days of Fury (1980), directed by Fred Warshofsky.
The story of the crash and its aftermath were documented in John G. Fuller's 1976 book The Ghost of Flight 401 and a television movie of the same title was broadcast on NBC during February 1978, offers a fictionalized depiction of the crash and alleged ghost sightings. Actual footage of the Everglades incident also appeared in the movie Days of Fury (1980), directed by Fred Warshofsky.
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