Eastern Flight 401 introduced new safety measures — and books, movies and ghost stories
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The crash of Eastern Flight 401
An Eastern Airlines jet heading from New York to Miami crashed in the Everglades 50 years ago. Now, survivors are planning the first memorial marker.
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‘We’re down.’ Flight 401 crashed in Miami 50 years ago. Survivors now have a message
An Eastern plane crashed into the Everglades in 1972. See the coverage as it happened
Eastern Flight 401 introduced new safety measures — and books, movies and ghost stories
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Eastern Airlines Flight 401 left a mark on the aviation industry — and permanent scars for survivors and loved ones of those who died in the crash.
But it also crept into popular culture through books, TV movies and legends of ghosts in the years following the tragedy.
Here’s a look at the impact Flight 401 had after its Dec. 29, 1972, crash in the Everglades, killing 101 people.
READ MORE: ‘We’re down.’ Flight 401 crashed in Miami 50 years ago. Survivors now have a message
A book that made it to TV screens
Rob Elder, a Miami Herald reporter in the 1970s, and Sarah Elder wrote “Crash,” a book published in 1977 that focused on the Eastern Flight 401 tragedy. The book tells the story of several passengers, the investigation and the aftermath of Flight 401.
The book was adapted in 1978 for a made-for-TV movie with the same name, starring Eddie Albert as a pilot and William Shatner as a National Transportation Safety Board investigator. Though based on the Elders’ book, some names and events were changed for the movie.
Spirits and sightings on Eastern jets
“Crash” wasn’t the only book — or movie — about the 1972 tragedy.
Alleged sightings of the ghost of Second Officer Donald Repo, a flight engineer, became the basis for the 1976 book and 1978 movie “The Ghost of Flight 401.” Repo died when the aircraft slammed into the Everglades.
The book, written by author, TV writer and columnist John Fuller, claimed that Eastern salvaged parts of the doomed jet and installed them in other planes. Some Eastern workers claimed phantoms of crew members show up on L-1011 flights across the country.
Several Eastern employees, Fuller’s book says, spotted the ghosts warning them about problems on the plane but were sent to the company psychiatrist when they told management.
In 1983, Fuller told the Miami Herald he believes Repo’s ghost haunted L-1011 jumbo jets.
“It really still to this day bugs me,” he said. “I never believed in life after death, but now I am almost convinced that there is. That is a lot for a guy like me. I was always a skeptic.”
In his book, Fuller writes about how he used a Ouija board — one time with Repo’s widow — to contact Repo’s spirit. They, Fuller said, received messages about Repo’s private life, including pet names for his wife and locations of a coin collection.
Eastern eventually removed the Flight 401 parts from planes, Fuller said. A fundamentalist Christian airline pilot had even performed an exorcism on a L-1011 jet with the most ghost sightings.
Then, the ghost sightings vanished, and so did the airline.
This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
