1972, an Eastern Airlines L-1011 trying to land at Miami flies instead into the Everglade swamps at night. Earlier n 1972 I was aboard an Eastern L-1011 landing at Miami. "Might be a little choppy," said the voice of the captain. I muttered something about my being paralyzed with fright because of the possibility of an accident. "Never happen," replied the flight attendant.
This airplane was in a wide circle near Miami International. Told to stay at 2,000 feet, it slowly dropped lower until it flew directly into the Everglades. There is no fire because of the swamp water but always the danger of one. We see the injured survivors crawling through the much and hear the chirp and rattle of night sounds in a swamp.
The program usually hews closely to the facts but in this case slightly smudges it honor with comments about man-eating alligators, as if the violent crash of a huge airliner were an exceptionally large, loud dinner bell. "You could hear the croaking of the alligators as they came back to their natural habitat," although of course by this time their natural habitat had been turned into a slough of toxic jet fuel.
A frog hunter in a nearby airboat arrived quickly at the scene and within half an hour a Coast Guard helicopter. Bodies and wreckage are strewn all about. In all, 77 people survived the crash. Ninety-nine were killed. The mud at the crash site dispersed the airplane parts and passengers. It clogged some of the open wounds and may have prevented some deaths, but at the same time the mud harbors a vicious microorganism that causes gas gangrene, genus Clostridium, which, if it hadn't been invented, there would have been no need to invent. It also causes botulism. Eight passengers are infected and complicated chambers must be found to treat them. The only alternative is amputation.
The airplane itself is mechanically sound, state of the art, and the autopilot is set at the proper altitude of 2,000 feet. So why did it descend? The main cause was that the pilot and copilot were exclusively focused on trying to fix a light on an instrument that shows the nose wheel is down and locked. They disregarded the perfectly audible chime that sounds a warning when the airplane is descending beyond the altitude set by the autopilot. The warning chime was sounded at the flight engineer's station but he wasn't there. He was in the belly of the aircraft trying to view the nose wheel and see if it had come down. The autopilot is easily disengaged by any movement of the wheel. The purpose is to make it possible in an emergency for the pilot to grab the controls and take over manually without having to bother with switching off the autopilot. It only takes the slightest bump to disengage the autopilot and the conclusion is that someone in the crew nudged the controls, disengaging the autopilot, without realizing it. The autopilot still registered its original setting, 2,000 feet, but the altimeter was ignored and the night was too dark for the crew to have any grasp of the fact that they were losing altitude.
The aftermath had positive results. Whatever criticisms one might make of the airlines -- the delays, the long lines -- one thing that can be said for all of them is that they learn from their mistakes. New rules regarding "cockpit resource management" (ie., who does what?) were implemented. Another result of the crash was really bizarre. Some of the L-1010's equipment was in nearly pristine condition and was installed on other Eastern airplanes, whose crews then began to report ghostly passengers who spoke only rarely and then cryptically. A TV film was made of the story, "The Ghost of Flight 504."
This airplane was in a wide circle near Miami International. Told to stay at 2,000 feet, it slowly dropped lower until it flew directly into the Everglades. There is no fire because of the swamp water but always the danger of one. We see the injured survivors crawling through the much and hear the chirp and rattle of night sounds in a swamp.
The program usually hews closely to the facts but in this case slightly smudges it honor with comments about man-eating alligators, as if the violent crash of a huge airliner were an exceptionally large, loud dinner bell. "You could hear the croaking of the alligators as they came back to their natural habitat," although of course by this time their natural habitat had been turned into a slough of toxic jet fuel.
A frog hunter in a nearby airboat arrived quickly at the scene and within half an hour a Coast Guard helicopter. Bodies and wreckage are strewn all about. In all, 77 people survived the crash. Ninety-nine were killed. The mud at the crash site dispersed the airplane parts and passengers. It clogged some of the open wounds and may have prevented some deaths, but at the same time the mud harbors a vicious microorganism that causes gas gangrene, genus Clostridium, which, if it hadn't been invented, there would have been no need to invent. It also causes botulism. Eight passengers are infected and complicated chambers must be found to treat them. The only alternative is amputation.
The airplane itself is mechanically sound, state of the art, and the autopilot is set at the proper altitude of 2,000 feet. So why did it descend? The main cause was that the pilot and copilot were exclusively focused on trying to fix a light on an instrument that shows the nose wheel is down and locked. They disregarded the perfectly audible chime that sounds a warning when the airplane is descending beyond the altitude set by the autopilot. The warning chime was sounded at the flight engineer's station but he wasn't there. He was in the belly of the aircraft trying to view the nose wheel and see if it had come down. The autopilot is easily disengaged by any movement of the wheel. The purpose is to make it possible in an emergency for the pilot to grab the controls and take over manually without having to bother with switching off the autopilot. It only takes the slightest bump to disengage the autopilot and the conclusion is that someone in the crew nudged the controls, disengaging the autopilot, without realizing it. The autopilot still registered its original setting, 2,000 feet, but the altimeter was ignored and the night was too dark for the crew to have any grasp of the fact that they were losing altitude.
The aftermath had positive results. Whatever criticisms one might make of the airlines -- the delays, the long lines -- one thing that can be said for all of them is that they learn from their mistakes. New rules regarding "cockpit resource management" (ie., who does what?) were implemented. Another result of the crash was really bizarre. Some of the L-1010's equipment was in nearly pristine condition and was installed on other Eastern airplanes, whose crews then began to report ghostly passengers who spoke only rarely and then cryptically. A TV film was made of the story, "The Ghost of Flight 504."
