Mayday (2013) s05e09 Episode Script

1 VOICEOVER: December 29, 1972.
The dawn of the jumbo jet era.
On its way to Florida, this L-1011 Tristar is the most advanced passenger jet in the world.
MAN: The Lockheed Tristar was a fascinating bird.
It was a beautifully flying airplane.
It had a tremendous amount of power and a lot of innovation to it.
The cabin of this Eastern Airlines jet is large and quiet.
The service is first-rate.
Bob Loft is the captain for Eastern Airlines Flight 401.
He's been with the airline for more than 30 years.
His first officer is Albert Stockstill.
His second officer is Donald Repo.
The jet has left the bitter cold of New York behind and is now descending towards Miami.
Welcome to Miami.
The temperature is in the low 70s and it's a beautiful night out there tonight.
Go ahead and throw 'em out.
Angelo Donadeo is an off-duty Eastern Airlines maintenance expert.
He's catching a ride back to Miami.
There are 176 people on board tonight's flight.
Most are heading south for New Year's.
Ron and Lilly Infantino have been married for only 20 days.
They've just spent Christmas with his family.
MAN: The seatbelt sign came on as normal.
We were on our final approach.
I look out the window there and I could see lights at the airport.
Close to midnight, the plane begins its approach to Miami International Airport.
Stockstill flies the plane while Repo performs a landing check list.
- REPO: Radar? - Up.
Off.
Hydraulic panels checked? 35.
33.
Gear down? The captain notices a problem.
Bert, is that handling? No nose gear.
The light showing that the nose gear is locked hasn't lit up.
I'm gonna raise it back up.
The gear might not be all the way down.
Loft tries again.
The sound of the landing gear echoes through the plane.
WOMAN: It makes a pretty loud grinding noise.
If you've flown very much, you're familiar with that sound, so they did that several times.
The pilots did that several times and we weren't alarmed.
It's just one of those things that happens sometimes and we just kind of looked at each other and said, "Great.
We're gonna be late getting home.
" Still no light.
Loft isn't sure if his front landing gear is locked.
If it isn't, landing could be disastrous.
Er, Tower, this is Eastern 401.
Looks like we're gonna have to circle.
We don't have a light on our nose gear yet.
Eastern 401, heavy, roger.
Pull up, climb straight ahead to 2,000.
Go back to approach control 1-28-6.
- Do you want me to test the lights? - Yeah.
Check it.
Flight engineer Repo performs a test nicknamed 'The Christmas Tree'.
It lights up every warning light in the cockpit to see if the bulbs are working.
The nose gear indicator light fails the test.
The bulb is probably burnt out.
But there's a slim chance of a double failure.
Both the light bulb and the landing gear could be broken.
Ah, Bob, can you just jiggle the light? But the troublesome bulb is out of the captain's reach.
On the ground, air traffic control directs Flight 401 to climb to 2,000 feet .
.
and circle away from the airport until the problem is solved.
- Do you want me to fly, Bob? - What frequency did he want us on? - 1-28-6.
- I'll talk to 'em.
- Isn't it right above that red one? - Yeah, I can't get at it from here.
Yeah, I can't make it pull out either.
It's a moonless night.
As the plane veers away from Miami, there's total darkness outside.
INFANTINO: All of a sudden, it turned pitch dark again.
And that means we were going back out west towards the Everglades.
Copilot Stockstill is flying the plane but Captain Loft needs his help to solve the problem.
Put the autopilot on here.
Alright.
The Tristar is equipped with the most sophisticated autopilot in history.
It actually has the ability to land the plane on its own.
Stockstill programs it to fly in at 2,000 feet.
Now, see if you can get that light out.
(SIGHS) The light is finally removed.
Richard Pragluski is an aviation engineer.
He takes this flight regularly and can tell that the plane is experiencing technical problems.
He was heading out towards the Everglades.
I knew there was something wrong with the plane.
Because if you have a delay, they'll circle the plane.
The irritating problem isn't getting better.
Now Stockstill can't get the light back in.
Now, push this switch just forward Ah, OK.
You got it sideways, then.
MAN: (ON RADIO) Eastern 401, turn left heading 300.
OK.
300, Eastern 401.
Hey, hey, get down there and see if that damn nose wheel is down.
The electronics bay on the plane is underneath the cockpit.
The room, nicknamed 'The Hellhole', is a unique feature on wide-bodied jets.
The front landing gear mechanism can be seen from there.
You got a handkerchief or something so I can get a little better grip - Pull down and turn to your right.
- Anything I can do it with? Now, turn to your left one time.
Get down there and see if that damn thing It won't come out.
If I had a pair of pliers, I could cushion it I can give you a pair but if you force it, you'll break it.
To hell with it.
To hell with this! Get down and see if we're lined up with that red line.
That's all we care.
Screwing around with a 20-cent piece of light equipment.
On this plane! (LAUGHS) (ALL LAUGH) As the crew struggles to fix the problem .
.
in the cabin, Richard Pragluski sees something peculiar out of his window.
I could see the tower to my right in the distance.
And it looked like we were going into a glide path .
.
which I found very strange.
Pragluski has noticed something the pilots haven't.
The plane is getting closer and closer to the swamp below.
Deep in the Everglades, Bob Marquis is hunting frogs with a friend.
Eastern Airlines Flight 401 roars past.
Here I am, just saw the lights blinking across the sky and there was just black.
There's no horizon in the west and you couldn't tell how high the plane was.
Suddenly the pilots make an alarming observation.
We did something to the altitude? - What? - We're still at 2,000, right? Hey, hey.
What's happening here? (ALARM BEEPS) (ALL GROAN) INFANTINO: I see lights in the cabin just flickering on and off and I heard a noise.
There was a violent - I mean, a violent - whipping sensation, then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose.
(ALL SCREAM) (CRASH!) Charlie Johnson notices that Flight 401's altitude now reads as coastal or sea-level.
Eastern 401.
I've lost you on the radar there, your transponder.
What's your altitude now? There's no response from Eastern 401.
Another plane makes a disturbing report.
MAN: (ON RADIO) Miami Approach, this is National 611.
We just saw a big flash.
Looks like it came out west.
Don't know what it means but wanted to let you know.
In a dark, remote swamp, those who survived the crash find themselves in a nightmare.
Bob Marquis races towards the site of the crash.
MARQUIS: Oh, I was going as fast as I could.
It took me about 15 minutes, I think, to get to the crash site.
(WAILS, GROANS) (SOBS) Remarkably, Richard Pragluski is alive.
PRAGLUSKI: I knew I was badly injured because I could see my clothes hanging from my body, had almost no clothes in my upper half of the body.
And I could see skin coming down my arms.
And I also knew that when you're in shock, you feel no pain.
So I knew I really was seriously injured and I started thinking, "The pain will come later.
"But how do I keep calm and get out of there? "Because the longer I'm in that swamp, the condition I'm in, "the more danger I'm in.
" (ALL SCREAM) When the plane crashed, a huge fireball tore through the cabin.
I remember that fire coming into my face.
I remember the flash.
I remember that I tried breathing.
I could not get my breath.
Of course, the fire took all the oxygen out of the air.
And that's the last thing I remember till I got up in the swamp itself.
Ron Infantino was knocked out by the crash.
He wakes up in the swamp.
I was thrown quite a bit and I was away from - I don't know - everybody else.
Nobody was even near me.
Lilly? (INSECTS CHIRP) Lilly? He's badly wounded.
His new wife, Lilly, was sitting next to him.
But now she's nowhere to be seen.
Swamp water doused the initial flames.
But 20,000kg of jet fuel has now leaked into the swamp.
A single spark could start a deadly blaze.
(SHOUTS) No-one light a match! We're covered in jet fuel.
What a sad thing to come through that crash and then have somebody do something stupid, like strike a match, and have us all just blow up.
That was the real fear.
Hoping to help the survivors, Bob Marquis jumps into the swamp.
He immediately feels the sting of the jet fuel on his skin.
It burnt my legs.
I had to treat my legs for burns for about a week.
(WOMAN GROANS) Marquis quickly spots a survivor, who is in grave danger.
The badly wounded man is still strapped to his seat.
He's on the verge of drowning.
MARQUIS: And his head kept dropping down in the water.
Came up, he said, "Help me.
I can't hold my head up much longer," and dropped back down in the water.
I helped him up, pulled him up.
Don't worry.
I gotcha.
I gotcha.
Bob Marquis saves dozens of lives, preventing many people from drowning.
Isolated from the other survivors and unable to move, Ron Infantino now has a new reason to fear for his life.
After a while, the alligators and the snakes, you could hear them in the weeds coming by, and you could hear the croaking of the alligators because they started to come back to their natural habitat.
And as far as I'm concerned, if it came up to me, I was dead meat, 'cause I couldn't defend myself at all.
And then I heard Christmas carolling.
WOMAN: (SINGS) # Silent night # Holy night BOTH: (SING) # All is calm # To rally the survivors' spirits, Trudy Smith and others sing Christmas carols.
Round yon virgin TRUDY: We knew, instinctively, that we weren't going to get out of there in a hurry.
Because nobody knew where we were.
In the middle of the swamp, midnight So what else are you gonna do? Sleep in heavenly And you gotta picture us, I mean, in the dark, at night, all you hear is singing in the wilderness.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
It was maybe "on the 'Titanic' going down", type of thing, you know? It was unbelievable.
(GROANS) Within minutes, Coast Guard helicopters are sent out in search of the crash site.
But in the pitch-black night, they can't find the wreckage.
(HELICOPTER RUMBLES) Bob Marquis tries to signal the distant helicopters.
MARQUIS: Well, I could see where they were and they were going in the wrong direction.
And I, I just waved the light at them until I saw them turn and head back towards us.
VOICEOVER: Less than half an hour after the crash, the Coastguard arrives.
But the nearest landing site is 100m away.
Marcus rushes to meet the helicopter and ferry the rescuers back to the crash site.
His first passenger is rescue worker Don Schneck.
I made it to the airboat.
He asked me, "Where are all the rescuers?" And I said, "This is it.
Let's go.
" He took us out into the 'glades to a point where he said, "This is as far as I wanna go "because I don't wanna run anybody over.
" And he said, "There are bodies out here, all over the place.
" Don Schneck starts searching for survivors.
I approached the large object that I had seen at a small distance.
I realised it was the nose section of the aircraft.
(COUGHS) He's amazed to discover that Captain Bob Loft has survived the crash.
He was in bad shape.
(GROANS) He had lacerations, so I knew he had broken ribs.
I could tell he was in shock, so I calmed him down, told him, "I'm the only one here right now, but they're coming.
"Just hang in there.
" I'm going to die.
He told me that and I argued with him.
Anything to keep his Anything going.
It just made me feel so inadequate because it was just me.
I turned around and I looked back towards Miami, thinking, "Where in the heck is everybody?" And at that time when I looked, I must have seen 50 lights coming.
And I went, "Thank God.
" First Officer Bert Stockstill was killed during the crash.
Captain Bob Loft soon dies at the scene.
Angelo Donadeo and Don Repo have survived and are taken to hospital.
In all, 77 people survive the crash.
99 people are killed.
By dawn, all the wounded have been transported to Miami hospitals.
Ron Infantino is one of the many who are struggling to survive.
Priest comes over and does the last rites, so right then I knew I was in bad shape.
And it was a scary thought.
And of course, at that time, I'm still asking for Lilly, you know.
Had they seen her? It was such a madhouse there that night.
You can imagine.
Lilly.
Where's Lilly? The crash is headline news around the world.
It's the first ever jumbo jet to crash, and it produces the largest number of deaths in US civil aviation history.
There's tremendous pressure on investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to find out what happened.
It was an enormous puzzle because this was the newest, the most sophisticated, the best of the airliners that was apparently in perfect working condition.
So the NTSB perceived that this was going to be a very long investigation that involved multilevel potential problems.
The crash site itself is an important clue for investigators arriving at the scene.
The trail of debris is enormously long.
That suggests that the plane hit the swamp almost in the same nose-up position as it would while landing at an airport.
Its descent was clearly slow and gradual.
NTSB investigators have documented the final settings for many of the instruments in the cockpit.
They discover that the autopilot was set to maintain an altitude of 2,000ft.
So why didn't it? Maintenance expert Angelo Donadeo is interviewed.
All he can tell investigators is the crew was trying to fix a light bulb before the crash.
Within days the plane's two black boxes are recovered.
Investigators hope they will provide some answers.
Before they can extract the data, flight engineer Don Repo dies in hospital.
Ron Infantino is given some devastating news of his own.
The body of his wife Lilly has been found under the plane's wing.
She was just a wonderful person.
I was 27 years old and she was the same age and it was actually my first love.
Infantino is haunted by the memory of switching seats with Lilly just before the crash.
They had swapped seats, quite casually, earlier during the flight, when she had gotten up to go to the rest room.
She was thrown into the swamp and drowned and he lived.
The swamp proves both a blessing and a curse for survivors.
That's what saved most of the lives, actually.
Because the plane broke up, it absorbed all the energy.
The mud absorbed it and the plane just dispersed.
The swamp water is so thick with mud it also clogs survivors' wounds, preventing many from bleeding to death.
But there's a deadly new threat facing some survivors.
Their wounds have become infected, contaminated by a deadly organism found in the black mud of the Everglades.
The organism produces an infection called gas gangrene.
It can kill a person in just two days.
Gas gangrene can only be destroyed in a hyperbaric chamber.
It's a pressurised container that gets filled with high levels of oxygen.
The oxygen gets forced into the wounds and kills the bacteria.
Eight of the surviving passengers are infected with gas gangrene.
Hyperbaric chambers must be found for all of them.
The only other way to save patients is to amputate the infected limb.
Ron Infantino's arm is badly infected.
Doctor comes in and says, "Well, we've diagnosed it as gas gangrene.
" And he says, "We gotta take your arm off immediately "or have to get you into a hyperbaric chamber.
" "Unfortunately," he says, "the only hyperbaric chambers at Mercy Hospital "has all been taken advantage of.
" Unless doctors can find a chamber soon, Infantino will lose his arm.
While doctors search for a chamber for Ron Infantino .
.
investigators examine what's left of the plane.
They test its flight controls, engines, instruments and its electrical and hydraulic systems.
SARAH: The plane was virtually new.
It was in perfect condition.
There was no mechanical reason found that would have caused the crash.
In fact, some parts of the plane are in such good condition, that the NTSB gives them back to Eastern Airlines so they can be installed on other airplanes in its fleet.
An unused hyperbaric chamber is finally found for Ron Infantino at a navy base in Panama City.
He spends 40 hours in the chamber.
The pressurised oxygen kills the bacteria and saves his life.
Gentlemen, we have three causes of the crash to explore.
A state-of-the-art jetliner plunged 2,000 feet without the crew noticing.
Investigators know the plane was mechanically sound.
They now focus on other possible reasons for the unobserved descent.
At the top of the list is "subtle incapacitation of the pilot".
The autopsy of Captain Bob Loft has yielded a gruesome discovery.
Captain Loft had a large undetected tumour growing in his brain.
It pressed into the part of his brain responsible for sight.
Medical records reveal that between the ages of 50 and 52 vision in the pilot's left eye had rapidly deteriorated.
Doctors believe that the captain may have reduced peripheral vision.
The tumour could have created blind spots.
As his attention became focused on the malfunctioning light, he may not have noticed dire warnings on his altimeter.
Investigators consider a stunning possibility .
.
an undetected medical ailment may have contributed to the world's first jumbo jet disaster.
We're still at 2,000, right? Hey, hey! What's happening here? Investigators learn what they can about Captain Bob Loft.
They interview people who knew him and pore over his medical records.
The investigators heard that Captain Loft, so far as his family and friends knew, had perfect vision.
He was an expert marksman.
He shot doves, particularly, which are a very small target.
Loft's records show that he'd recently passed a medical in which he was issued corrective glasses for flying.
But the evidence doesn't support the notion that his vision was dangerously impaired.
He was 55 years old and who gets to be 55 without wearing reading glasses? Not many.
Dr Joe Davis, who did the autopsy, told me that even though the tumour was pressing on areas of his brain that control vision, there was no reason to think that it had yet begun to effect that.
He felt it had nothing to do with the accident.
Investigators still don't know why Flight 401 started descending in the first place.
Put the autopilot on.
Could the autopilot, which was supposed to keep the plane at 2,000 feet, have malfunctioned? The plane's computers survived the crash.
They're removed and examined.
11 days after the crash, the autopilot computers are installed on another Tristar.
It flies the same route as Flight 401.
The autopilot holds that plane at 2,000 feet.
There's another question that dogs this investigation.
Why didn't the Miami tower alert the crew that their plane was dropping? The world's first three-dimensional radar had recently been installed there.
It meant that controller Charlie Johnson knew the location, altitude and speed of Flight 401.
MAN: National 607 Investigators study recordings of Johnson's conversations Fire and ambulance sent out right away.
.
.
and discover that on the night of the crash it was another plane that demanded most of his attention.
National Airlines Flight 607 was coming in to land just ahead of Flight 401.
That flight was having its own landing gear problems.
Emergency, Runway 9.
We'll need Fire and Ambulance sent out right away.
As he focused on the emergency, Johnson handed Flight 401 over to another controller.
But just as National 607 came in for its emergency landing, the other controller phoned Johnson and handed Flight 401 back to him.
Eastern heavy's coming back to you.
Unsafe nose gear.
Oh, no.
At the time, Flight 401 was already over the swamp.
Johnson had five other planes to monitor.
He was also dealing with the aftermath of his emergency landing.
National 607 has landed without incident.
That's when he noticed that Flight 401's altitude had dropped to 900 feet.
The way the radars work - still, to a certain extent, this happens but back then it was even worse - "coast mode" was a very well-known phenomena.
I mean, you might lose the target for two or three minutes, in terms of the altitude-reporting part of it, and it goes and gives you some weird altitude and then, boom, it's right back where it should be.
But the controller didn't stop there and this was really to his credit.
Johnson decided to make contact with Flight 401.
Eastern 401, er, how are things coming along? OK.
We'd like to turn around and come, ercome back in.
Eastern 401, turn left, heading 1-8-0.
After that brief exchange, Johnson assumed there was no problem.
Eastern 401, er, how are things coming along? OK, er Investigators conclude that at that moment Controller Johnson was the only one who could see that the plane was losing altitude.
Why hadn't he passed that information along to the crew? US Government regulations for air traffic controllers provide the answer.
It simply wasn't part of a controller's job.
SARAH: At the time of the crash, the FAA required approach controllers to maintain a separation of the airplanes.
It did not give them a duty to maintain the altitude of the airliner with regard to the ground.
Now investigators try to determine how the plane's own warning system failed to alert pilots to their growing danger.
The L-1011 is equipped with an alarm that sounds if the plane goes 250 feet above or below the altitude selected by the pilots.
As investigators replay the tape from the black box, they clearly hear that alarm sounding in the cockpit as the plane passed through 1,750 feet.
(FAINT TWANG) Do you hear that? How could they miss it? Investigators closely examine the cockpit transcript to try to understand how the alarm was missed.
Put it in the wrong way, huh? It looks square to me.
Investigators notice that just before the alarm sounded in the cockpit, warning the crew that the plane is too low, both pilots were completely absorbed with the landing gear light.
The conversation also tells investigators that the flight engineer was below in the Hellhole.
The warning chime came out of a speaker at his workstation.
Investigators begin to realise that the two pilots were unable to hear a perfectly audible alarm .
.
because they were focused so entirely on solving another problem.
That chime, which is clearly heard on the cockpit voice recorder was not registering in the minds of all the men on that flight deck, not because they weren't trying to pay attention, but because they were tunnelled in on this one problem.
That's what we do as humans.
Investigators now focus on crew distraction as a likely cause of this accident.
Several instruments would have displayed the decreasing altitude.
Investigators interview a number of pilots, and make a startling discovery.
Pilots admitted that they placed a lot of trust in the modern new autopilots flying their planes.
They may have become overly dependent on the technology.
- Put the autopilot on here.
- Alright.
Investigators suspect that the Eastern crew was so confident in their autopilot that they didn't monitor their instruments as closely as they should have.
Now, see if you can get that light out.
Once the autopilot was on, none of the pilots paid attention to actually flying the plane.
We still gotta find out why that plane went down.
- We did something to the altitude? - What? The pilots' conversation clearly shows that they hadn't deliberately started descending.
- We're still at 2,000, right? - Hey, hey.
What's happening here? So why did it happen? The answer comes in a dramatic form when the NTSB conducts a public hearing in Miami, two months after the crash.
Before the hearing, an Eastern Airlines pilot named Daniel Gellert wrote the chairman of the NTSB offering to testify on his own behalf.
He had flown the Tristar L-1011, and noticed some abnormalities.
The world of airline piloting in 1972 was hostile to a pilot going around his chief pilot and his airline and raising his hand to the NTSB and saying, "Hey, wait a minute - I've had an experience too," because airlines were far more insular than they are today.
Gellert tells the hearing that during a recent flight on a Tristar, he had accidentally dropped a map on the cockpit floor.
As he bent down to pick it up, he nudged his control column.
He noticed immediately that the plane's autopilot had been affected.
The part of the autopilot controlling altitude had been turned off.
The NTSB discovers that Gellert's experience is shared by others.
In fact, 17 days after the accident, Eastern Airlines tacked a notice onto a company bulletin board .
.
and also mailed it to all of its Tristar pilots.
The bulletin warned against accidentally bumping the control wheel.
One of the things that we built in to all the modern jetliners and airliners is, simply, a pressure switch, so if you need to take over right now, you don't want to be wasting time down here on the panel, turning the autopilot off.
You just grab it and the autopilot goes away.
The flight data recorder tells investigators the precise moment that the plane's altitude started to drop.
It was 11:37:08.
By studying the voice-recorder transcript, investigators can tell what was happening in the cockpit at that exact time.
Hey, hey.
Get down there and see if that damn nose wheel is down.
By turning to speak to the flight engineer, investigators believe that Captain Loft bumped his control wheel.
He did it with just enough pressure to disengage that part of the autopilot that had been controlling the plane's altitude.
Without anyone realising it, a simple nudge of the control wheel started a gradual descent.
On a dark, moonless night, the pilots had no visual cues to tell them they were falling.
It was determined that occasionally, with just a soft bump, an autopilot had been disengaged.
So before the crash, it wasn't part of the training? A training director for Eastern Airlines eventually reveals that before the Everglades crash, pilots were never taught that a bump could disengage the autopilot.
The NTSB comes to a sobering conclusion.
The plane crash was due to pilot error.
The crew was distracted.
They mishandled the plane's sophisticated automation, and they hadn't been properly trained.
Eastern 401 was a pivotal accident in aviation safety history, and we really didn't know this for about 10 or 15 years, in terms of the true import of what it did to us in focusing our attention on the fact that the way we handled things in the cockpit was not only not correct, but it was dangerous.
Investigators also make a disheartening find.
When the nose gear indicator light assembly is examined, they discover that a light bulb inside is burnt out.
Go ahead and throw 'em out.
Flight 401's landing gear WAS locked.
The plane could have landed.
The only piece of the plane that failed was a 12 light bulb.
The full legacy of Flight 401 will take years to unfold.
It will ultimately alter how pilots are trained, and how accidents are investigated.
But first, the tale of Eastern Airlines Flight 401 will take a very bizarre twist.
By the late 1970s, NASA began to explore a new behavioural science designed to reduce pilot error.
And, pilots, be on the lookout for any different behaviour It's called 'Crew Resource Management' or 'CRM'.
JOHN NANCE: Crew Resource Management simply means that we're not gonna have one pilot leading and everybody else following.
It means that the captain has to be a leader and listen to and interact with his subordinate crew members.
And the subordinate crew members have to speak up.
Decades later, Flight 401 is taught in aviation courses around the world as a textbook example of poor CRM.
The problem was that we did not teach Bob Loft or Stockstill or any of these folks at the time that when something goes wrong, the commander's first responsibility is to maintain aircraft control, and either do it himself or assign somebody.
CAPTAIN LOFT: We're up to 2,000.
- Do you want me to fly it, Bob? - What frequency did he want us on? - 1-28-6.
- Oh, I'll talk to him.
On Flight 401, Captain Loft did not clarify who should be doing what.
Instead, all three crew members worked on the same problem.
Er, Bob, could you just jiggle the light? It's gotta It's gotta come out a little bit and then snap in.
(SIGHS) With the copilot flying, the captain commanding from the left seat, you already had cross-purposes here.
- It's right above that red one.
- Yeah.
I can't get at it from here.
And you had a light quadrant the captain couldn't quite reach, and the copilot could, but the copilot was flying the airplane.
You've just set them up for a major problem.
And guess what.
Systemically, we never taught them what to do.
Today, CRM also trains flight crews not to be intimidated by one crew member's mood.
You got a handkerchief or something so I can get a little better grip on this? - Anything I can do it with? - Go down and see if that damn This won't come out, Bob.
So if the leader is having a problem, in this case with a light bulb OK.
You got it sideways, then.
.
.
and he's really irritated at it, and the copilot has now made the problem worse.
Copilot's not going to be happy with himself over that.
I don't know what the hell's holding that damn thing in there.
Don Repo is not gonna be happy that he got downstairs to solve the problem and he couldn't see anything, and he's gotta come up and report that.
- I don't see it.
- They're all tense.
- It's not lighting up.
- I can't see it.
Now, when you get a crew like that tense, it's notto turn around to the captain and say, "You shouldn't have done that.
" But this is part of the evolution of what air safety has now learned and been able to teach so many other industries.
The enduring legacy of Flight 401 is the delegation of specific tasks in the cockpit.
The result is fewer crashes.
There was also much more bizarre fallout from this crash.
For a while, it seemed that the crew of Flight 401 was haunting other Eastern Airlines flights.
For some time after the crash, flight crews and passengers report seeing lifelike apparitions of Flight 401's crew.
Many of the ghost sightings were on aircraft fitted with recovered parts from Flight 401.
The ghost stories spread quickly.
One book devoted entirely to those stories suggests that the ghosts were there to protect passengers and crew from further mishap.
The official reaction at Eastern Airlines to these ghost stories was one of absolute eye-rolling denial in public, and in private, a certain bit of panic.
There are so many ghost sightings that eventually, Eastern Airlines removes Flight 401's cannibalised plane parts from all other aircraft.
None of those who survive the crash will ever forget the horror they witnessed in the Everglades that night.
And 35 years after their ordeal, many of them return to that swamp to finally recognise the heroic efforts of Bob Marquis.
Oh! They have found us! We're here today to recognise and to say thank you.
Many of the ones who lived, lived because Robert Marquis was there with his airboat.
He saw them drowning and decided that the thing that he could do would be to save the ones he could save.
Robert Marquis was the kind of person that I hope that all of us ultimately would be if we were confronted with that sort of thing.
But he drew on some special courage to do what he did.
He was one of the true heroes of the crash.
Supertext Captions by Red Bee Media Australia