‘We’re Down.’ Flight 401 Crashed in Miami 50 Years Ago. Survivors Now Have a Message

Beverly Raposa switched seats from her regular position in the galley for a flight from New York to Miami.

The plane was crossing over the Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972, when she turned to fellow flight attendant Stephanie Stanich.

Raposa, 25, had noticed something strange.

“Those engines don’t sound right.”

“They sound fine,” Stanich responded.

“No, they don’t,” Raposa, now 75, recalls telling Stanich.

Shortly after, the plane crashed into the swamp.

Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was one of South Florida’s deadliest airline disasters. The crash killed 101 people, including Stanich. Raposa was one of 75 survivors.

The crash changed the course of the aviation industry through new safety measures that require pilots to maintain communication with the cabin crew and require flight attendants to carry larger flashlights.

For decades, many of the 75 survivors have reflected on ways to honor those who died in the tragedy. On Dec. 29, they’ll unveil a memorial in Miami Springs to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Eastern crash.

The granite marker, engraved with the names of the people who perished, will stand in a median near the Miami Springs Country Club for future generations to see.

READ MORE: Eastern Flight 401 introduced new safety measures — and books, movies and ghost stories

Final moments on Eastern Flight 401

Thirteen seconds past 11:42 p.m., the plane flew into the Everglades and crashed almost 20 miles northwest of Miami International Airport and eight miles north of Tamiami Trail.

The Lockheed L-1011 was the pride of the Eastern fleet — and the first of a new generation of wide-body jumbo jets to crash. The death toll was, in 1972, the highest of any one-plane accident.

READ MORE: The day when an Eastern Airlines jet crashed into the Florida Everglades

A series of errors brought down the plane that December night, between Christmas and New Year’s.

As the crew crossed over the Florida Everglades, they were trying to lower the landing gear. But a light didn’t confirm whether the landing gear was down.

The cockpit crew, scrambling to identify the problem, got permission from air traffic control to circle the Everglades.

Was it a burned-out $12 bulb or a faulty landing gear?

Then came the final — and fatal — mistake. Amid the confusion, the distracted crew didn’t notice the auto pilot button was switched off.

And the aircraft gradually descended into the mushy swamp from 20,000 feet.

Memory, pain and lessons

Mercy Ruiz, 29, also noticed something strange that night. The plane was heading away from the city lights.

She asked fellow flight attendant Patricia Ghyssels, who sat across from her, what was going on.

“Oh, Mercy, stop complaining,” Ghyssels responded. “It’s the holidays. If we’re a little late, it’s overtime.”

Then, luggage shot out of the overhead bins. The flooring of the plane crumbled. Pieces of the aircraft scattered across the sawgrass.

Those are the last moments Ron Infantino, 76, who now lives in The Villages in Central Florida, remembers before blacking out. One minute, he was resting in his seat with his arms folded. The next, he was covered in water up to his chin.

It all happened so quickly that he couldn’t turn to check on his wife of 20 days, Lilly Infantino, who sat beside him on the flight from New York to Miami.

Infantino, then 26, awoke bobbing in the swamp, unable to move with an injured arm, chest and knee. He heard alligators and snakes splash around him as whirring airboats and helicopters searched for survivors. He wasn’t rescued until four or five hours later, he remembers reading in his hospital records.

In another part of the Everglades, flight attendant Mercy Ruiz shivered, her body soaked in kerosene. She, too, couldn’t move because of a fractured pelvic bone.

It was so dark she couldn’t see her hands in front of her. She was dazed and disoriented but noticed a penlight flashing nearby. Raposa had found her.

“What happened, Beverly?” Ruiz asked.

“Honey, we crashed.”

“No, we didn’t crash, Beverly. It’s a bad dream. We’re gonna wake up.”

“No, Mercy, we’re down.”

After placing a seat cushion under Ruiz’s head, Raposa left to search for other survivors. She came across a woman who found an 11-month-old baby as she scouted the wreckage for her son. Raposa brought the baby to Ruiz, who cradled him to keep warm.

As frog hunters who witnessed the crash helped rescue survivors, Raposa led those remaining in renditions of “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.” The last group was rescued at 3:30 a.m. Dec. 30, almost four hours after the crash.

In the hospital, Infantino barely survived. His right arm was nearly severed, his left knee broken, his chest crushed. He was so weak that doctors opted to operate without anesthesia.

He held out hope that his wife had survived — another patient with their last name was admitted to a hospital in Florida. But that turned out to be Infantino’s uncle, who wasn’t on the plane.

Three days after the crash, Lilly Infantino’s body was found. Infantino had met his wife, a Little Havana resident, when he moved to Miami after the Air Force. The couple dated for a few years before getting married in December 1972.

“That memory never goes away,” he told the Miami Herald 50 years later. “I just regret not getting a chance to say goodbye. I think about her every day.”

Infantino, around the time of his wedding, had completed an aptitude test, sent in his résumé and applied for a job as a pilot at Eastern Airlines.

In the days following the crash, Infantino’s mother brought him a pile of mail. One of the envelopes was a letter from Eastern requesting an interview.

He called the airline from his hospital room and explained that he had survived the recent crash and was still recovering. The airline still wanted to interview him for an opening that he could start after his health improved.

Eastern employees visited Infantino for a two-hour interview. He was offered the job. He turned it down.

Infantino started a commuter airline of his own, which later folded, and got married to his respiratory therapist, who also experienced heartbreak after losing her fiancé in a drunk-driving accident. The couple had two sons.

Looking back, Ruiz, now 78, who worked at Eastern until the company stopped flying in 1991, sees signs in the events of Dec. 29, 1972.

Amid the plane’s wreckage, her cream-colored, company-issued suitcase was the only one that remained intact. But what was inside was the real prize: a Kodak Instamatic camera and rolls of film.

The flight crew had taken pictures as a keepsake for what would have been their last trip of the year together. Only nine smiling faces appear because one volunteered to take the photo.

The group wanted to balance their pose, so they stood in two lines of four with one of the flight attendants stretching out over the top of a closet. It was a picture no one was supposed to see, and instead, it has been all over the world, known for being taken right before the disaster.

Copies of that photo are now bound in a leather album that Eastern gave all the flight attendants of Flight 401 after the tragedy.

There’s another photo Ruiz has analyzed over the years. In it, the crew pranked two of the flight attendants: one with devil horn fingers coming from her head and another jokingly grabbed by the neck.

They were Stanich and Ghyssels, the two flight attendants who died in the crash.

“That also gave me an impression like the two girls were marked,” Ruiz said. “Why them two?”

Through five decades, lessons stick with the survivors of 401.

Infantino looks back on the crash when he’s frustrated about the inconveniences he faces in his daily life.

“I number things from 1 to 10, and 10 [is] a plane crash,” he said. “So when I’m stuck in traffic, I say, ‘Ron, What number is this? It’s not a 10.’ ”

Raposa, who worked in a travel agency after leaving Eastern, reminds herself to not leave the house angry and to tell her loved ones how much she cares for them — because returning is never a guarantee.

“When you’ve stared death in the face just as I have,” she said, “you don’t take things for granted anymore.”

Remembering those who perished

Survivors will unveil a memorial marker on a grassy median of Curtiss Parkway in Miami Springs, across from the country club, on Dec. 29, the anniversary of the crash. The event, which will begin at 1 p.m., is open to the public. Anyone interested in attending should email [email protected].

Miami Springs, a bedroom community bordering Miami International Airport, was home to many Eastern employees in the 1970s and ‘80s. Raposa, who now lives in Broward County, studied to become a flight attendant just steps away from the memorial site.

Organizers are still seeking donations to cover the cost of the memorial, a bill that stands at about $20,000. Anyone wishing to donate can write a check payable to the National Air Disaster Foundation or donate online.

In 2021, a memorial marker was installed in the Everglades to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the May 11, 1996, ValuJet crash. The crash, another seminal moment in South Florida aviation history, killed all 110 people on board. The plane plunged into the Everglades after taking off from the Miami airport.

The idea for a memorial for Eastern Flight 401 first popped up at the 35th anniversary gathering in the Everglades. A group of survivors drafted plans for a marker, but life got in the way.

Five years ago, Raposa revived the idea and got approval to place it on a plot of public land in Miami Springs. That time, finances got in the way.

At the start of 2022, Raposa remembered her promise to honor those who lost their lives on the flight. She downsized plans for the memorial so it could be completed while the remaining survivors are still alive.

“I carry those folks in my heart every single day,” Raposa said of those who died in the tragedy. “There has not been one day in the last 50 years that they haven’t been in my heart and that I haven’t wanted to make sure that I kept my promise to them. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like 50 years.”

For Ruiz, the memorial will be a light in the darkness, a place to pray, reflect and remember the souls lost in the tragedy.

It’s like the light they needed in the Everglades on that December night 50 years ago.

©2022 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.