An Eastern plane crashed into the Everglades in 1972. See the coverage as it happened
Below are transcriptions of articles originally published in the Dec. 30, 1972. edition of the Miami Herald. The main headline the day after the crash: “N.Y.-to-Miami Plane Crashes In Everglades With 167 Aboard.”
Eastern Jet Left Kennedy
By Arnold Markowitz
An Eastern Airlines jet carrying 154 passengers and a crew of 13 crashed late Friday night in the Everglades, about 18 miles north of Miami International Airport.
There was no immediate word on the number of deaths. U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crews, first rescuers on the scene, took four survivors to Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah.
Coast Guard Lt. Mike McCormack, who piloted the first helicopter to reach the crash scene, said he saw “a lot of bodies. I presume many were dead. But there were also survivors.”
A hospital spokesman reporter they were two men and two women, and that “two of them are walking.” No report of their conditions was available.
One of them was Michael Laurie, 32, a private detective from Syosset, Long Island.
“I could hear people screaming,” he told The Herald’s Edna Buchanan, “I yelled for them to get away from the plane. I crawled over a lot of people who weren’t moving. I don’t think many got out alive.”
Laurie said that as the plane approached the airport from above the Everglades, nothing seemed to be wrong.
“But just before landing, when he (the pilot) made the approach, he poured on the coal and went around again,” Laurie said. “Apparently that boy was having trouble.”
“I saw the city lights fade away and then bang, fire, and then bang, the plane broke up.”
Palmetto General said it has been told that 20 more survivors were on the way there.
At 2:25 a.m., Palmetto General reported having received 16 survivors, including two babies — a fact that may eventually raise the total passenger load, because infants carried by parents are not counted.
Hospital officials said the most common apparent injuries were broken legs and head injuries. Some were unconscious. An eight-year-old boy in shock lay on a stretcher.
Hospital officials, off-duty staff members and volunteers ran a human conveyor belt between the building and the helicopter pad in its back yard, bringing in the victims on wheeled stretchers.
There was a tiny infant wrapped in a jacket, an unconscious boy about four years old, several men bleeding heavily from face cuts, an attractive young woman in shock and unable to talk.
The Coast Guard said four other survivors were taken to Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove.
The plane, a Lockheed 1011, was Flight 401 from New York’s Kennedy International Airport. William Wooten, an Eastern spokesman, said it left Kennedy at 9:20 p.m. and was due to land at Miami International at 11:36 p.m. The Coast Guard reported it went down at 11:43 p.m.
There were no confirmed reports of deaths as of 1:50 a.m.
The Coast Guard Air Station at Opa-locka Airport immediately sent four rescue helicopters to the scene. On their first pass over the crash site, the crews reported seeing no sign of survivors, but they found some when they landed.
A Coast Guard spokesman said a fifth helicopter was being sent, that more of its helicopters were being ordered in from the St. Petersburg base and that Homestead Air Force Base also was sending in helicopters.
The choppers were crowded with medics, doctors and first aid equipment. There was no other means of access to the scene, and the Tamiami Trail — about 10 miles to the south — was said to be the nearest road.
Coast Guardsmen said pieces of the plane were widely scattered around the crash scene, but there was no fire.
Two Air Force helicopter pilots, James M. Taylor and D.M. Cope, spoke to Herald reporter Steve Sink at the Coast Guard Air Station, where they flew to refuel and pick up medical workers.
“I didn’t see any fire, only smoke,” Taylor said. “The plane was not extremely broken up, but it was bad enough that I’m sure there were many fatalities.”
Cope said he saw an ambulance driving on a levee to within 200 feet of the crash scene. Attendants then had to walk to the wreckage.
Cope and Taylor then took off again for the scene, carrying with them three doctors and three rescue workers from the Miami and Miami Beach fire department rescue squads.
Highway Patrol and Metro police officers set up blockades at every major intersection along the Tamiami Trail from the Palmetto Expressway to far out into the Everglades.
There was feverish activity by emergency vehicles along the Tamiami Trail. Small aircraft and helicopters were circling in a general westward direction along the Trail from the Palmetto.
An officer at one of the blockages said he was told to keep one lane open along the Trail for emergency vehicles.
Wooten, Eastern’s regional supervisor, said the flight crew, all based at the airline’s Miami headquarters, are Capt. Robert A. Loft of Plantation in Broward County and first officer A.J. Stockstill of South Dade and second officer D. L. Repo of South Dade.
The Lockheed 1011 — 179-feet long — is the largest civilian aircraft ever to have crashed in the U.S. Friday night’s crash was the first for a 1011 since they were put into service in July.
Wooten said Eastern has been flying Lockheed 1011s since July 1, and now has 10 of them. They are used principally on the Miami-New York route, and the line plans to buy more of them — eventually phasing out its DC-8s and other older aircraft.
Most of Eastern’s New York-Miami flights are Boeing 727s, Wooten said.
Eastern was the first airline to put the 1011 into commercial service. It is almost identical to the DC-10, both of which are second in capacity to the giant Boeing 747.
Unlike the 747, however, the L-1011 can be used for shorter flights. It is noted for being smoke free and extremely quiet, considered the quietest airplane ever made for commercial service.
The engines are built by Rolls-Royce, which went into bankruptcy trying to complete development of the same engines. The U.S. government agreed to guarantee a loan to complete production of the engines.
The last major South Florida airline crash occurred Feb. 12, 1963, when 43 died as a Northwest Orient Airlines jet smashed into the Everglades near 40-Mile Bend, about 25-30 miles West-southwest of Friday night’s crash.
An investigative team from the National Transportation Safety Board was on its way early this morning from Washington, D.C. The team was headed by the NTSB’s chairman, John Reed. Douglas Dreyfus will be the investigator in charge.
‘I Saw The City — And Bang’
By Edna Buchanan
“I saw the city lights fade away and then bang, fire, and then bang, the plane broke,” said Michael Laurie, 32, one of the first survivors to arrive at Palmetto General Hospital.
“Nothing seemed to be wrong,” Laurie said, “but just before landing when he made the approach, he poured on the coal and went around again.”
Laurie described the scene after the plane crashed:
“It was completely dark, cold and wet, nothing left of the plane. Nothing left of the fuselage. We were in 10 inches to a foot of water.”
“I crawled as far as I could, a long way, 300 yards or so. I could hear people screaming. I yelled for them to get away from the plane.”
“A lot of people weren’t moving. After what seemed like an hour,” he said, “we were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. The chopper was unable to land because the ground was wet. They hovered and drug us up like you see in the movies.”
Laurie, a private detective from Syosset, Long Island, was unable to walk with a back injury.
Lying on a stretcher in the lobby of the hospital, Laurie said: “I know damn well that seat belt saved me. I’m alive. I never felt better.”
Nearby, Richard Micale, 21, was not doing so well. He was bleeding profusely and both his arms seemed to be broken.
“I thought we were landing,” said Micale, who lives in Homestead and was returning from New York.
Martin Simmerid, another survivor, was on a pay telephone trying to contact his next of kin. “I just went down,” he said. “There was no advance warning. The pilot didn’t come on or anything.”
Arnold Markowitz was a general assignment, courts, crime and investigative reporter for the Miami Herald from 1967 to 2001.
Edna Buchanan was a crime reporter for the Miami Herald from 1970 to 1988 and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting.
