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I remeber a film from the early-mid eighties but can't quite remember it's name, can anyone help?

It was based around an internal US flight which crashed through some sort of flaw, killing I'm not sure how many including the pilot. Bits salvaged from the plane were transplanted into others of the same type. Anyway, the dead pilot started to appear on the transplanted seats in the other planes and in the galley of another, where he talked to the cabin staff. It was supposed to be based on a true story.
 
Can't quite remember the flight number of the plane, RD, but I do remember that Ernest Borgnine was in the picture! There also was a book of the same name. A google search should help.

There was some scene of an apparition appearing on the front of a salvaged microwave.
 
"The crew of the L-1011was preoccupied with a nose gear problem and the co-pilot was trying to replace the landing gear indicator light, while on autopilot and in a holding pattern. As the captain got up to help, he inadvertently pushed on the yoke releasing the autopilot. With no ground reference and under nighttime conditions, the aircraft gradually descended until it crashed into Everglades, 18.7 miles west-northwest of Miami . The accident was caused by the failure of the crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final 4 minutes of flight and to detect a descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. After, spare parts from the L-1011 were used on other planes and soon, apparitions of the dead captain, Bob Loft and the FE Don Repo, began to be reported by Eastern Air Line employees on the planes using the spare parts. The book and movie "Ghost of Flight 401" is based on this accident."

Taken from http://planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm

Funny coincidence - just looking at that website, then saw this thread.
 
I found the book to be fascinating in places, merely (!) interesting in others.

It could be said that the disaster was caused by
1) a blown indicator bulb;
2) no torch (which made physically checking the nose-wheel lock under the cabin floor almost impossible); and
3) an alarm that was only loud enough to be heard by the aircrew member who was, at the time, out of his seat, checking the nose-wheel.

Don't remember ever seeing the film.....
 
Ectoplasmic Airlines Frequent Flier's Club

John G. Fuller's book is on The Ghost of Flight 401 is well worth reading but for a more intriguing, more complex, and more compelling case, or series of interlinked cases really, try his book The Airmen Who Would Not Die, which he calls, with some justification, the best argument he knows for the survival of our personalities after our bodies' deaths.
 
Airmen don't die. Nor do soldiers. Army Air Corps messes are really weird places...
 
Fuller has written several books on Fortean subjects - 'The Interrupted Journey' (about the Hill abduction case), which was also made into a film. And another book which is called, I think, 'The Ghost of 49 Megacycles', is about EVP. I'm sure he's witten about 7 or 8 books on Fortean subjects.
 
I had heard of the book and the hauntings (one of those cases that makes it into nearly every book that has the words unsoved, mysteries or unexplaned as all or part of the title and a big picture of a grays head and stonehenge on it) and was over joyed to find the book in a second hand shop...

My joy was a bit short lived though when i found out that for a book about so many hauntings it's rather dull and is quite poorly writain :(
 
Re: this thread and Terror at 38,000 feet thread

I've been reading the Terror at 38,000 thread as I'm not one of the world's happiest flyers. The first time I ever flew anywhere was in December 1972, to Majora for the New year.

I wasn't wildly enthusiatic at the concept of flying and arrived at Euston station with the family to find that the the news of the crash of L-1011/Flight 401 in the Everglades was all over the front of all the newspapers. My parents went into distraction mode 'oh look at that over there...' hoping that I wouldn't notice them.
 
Re: But did you survive the flight

Unless this is the afterlife and there's internet access to the Otherworld, I think that's a yes.
 
Sorry

It was simply my overly-clever way of asking if you proceeded to indeed board the plane. Glad all is well.

Did you know each airliner has over a million parts, any single one of which is capable of failing catastrophically?
 
No need to apologise FL, I should have put a smiley on that last message.

....And all of the parts in the plane are supplied by the lowest bidder.:) :(
 
Re: Sorry

FraterLibre said:
Did you know each airliner has over a million parts, any single one of which is capable of failing catastrophically?

That's a bit of an UL - I ran that past a friend of mine who's an aerospace engineer involved in wing manufacture and installation for Airbus. He thought it was funny, but 'daft'. Any machine that acted in such a way would never work nor be allowed to be used. The 'lowest bidder' is also a bit of a tall tale too, apparently.
 
Or

Or so they would have you believe.

I think I got that figure from Airframe by Michael Crichton, so if it's an urban legend, blame his research, mine having been nonexistent. lol
 
I had the book about this for years and only recently lost it by lending it out.
The early chapters are terrifying- ouija boards, lost spirits, hooooooooooo.......
One of the lost spirits asks people through a ouija board to 'help me get rid of my past'. Everyone is spooked out and the lights go back on sharpish like!

It'sa cracking read, even though the passengers' fatal injuries are rather dwelt upon.............:cross eye
 
Re: Sorry

FraterLibre said:
Did you know each airliner has over a million parts, any single one of which is capable of failing catastrophically?

Presumably the 1 million parts runs from the wings to the catch on your tray table. Both could fail catastrophically but you're more likely to die if its the former.
 
Of course, it could be said that that your body is made up of millions of parts, all of which could fail catastrophically.

In fact, thousands of them do, every day.

Isn't that a cheery thought?:D
 
There was an old joke I heard regarding U.S. Military aviation (forgive the Americanisms- you'll get the idea):

Military jets:
1. Designed by people with PhDs,
2. Flight tested by people with Masters' degrees,
3. Flown by people with Bachelors' degrees,
4 Maintained by high-school graduates!

(Of course this is just a joke- the US and every other armed force I'm sure places very high emphasis on training of enlisted maintenance crew!)
 
22 Years

My wife was in the U. S. Air Force for 22 years and I can report that it's not only quite true about the hierarchy of education declining as one goes from design to maintenance, but also that the military does a better job maintaining their planes -- often by far -- than the civilian airlines.

Another sobering thought.
 
A few years back whilst visiting a friend in Tuscon, I went into a second hand book store to purchase a good read for my flight back to London. Being a supernatural kinda chick I picked one that was called something like "The Mystery of Flight 401" or 410, I dont remember. Anyway, it was a fascinating story of a crashed airliner that was broken up and had the parts distributed for use elsewhere. Staff on the planes that received these parts started to report hauntings of the dead crew, sitting in the cockpit and their faces appearing in the door of the elevator to the hold/kitchen. This book purported to be a true story, but I cannot find any mention of it when I put it into a search engine. Has anyone read the book, or can anyone confirm that this was a true story? I would love to know, but seem to have mislaid the book since.
 
'The Ghost of Flight 401' was written by John G. Fuller. You can get a copy from Amazon, as the most recent imprint was in 1996. As to how much it's 'true' is anyone's guess - but Fuller investigated the case himself and spoke to alot of witnesses (as the book details).

Hope that helps.
 
I remember reading this book when I was very young.I loved it.
 
A bit about the ghosts from the same site as before:

The strange tales of the ghostly airmen of Flight of 401 circulated in the airline community. An account of the paranormal happenings even appeared in a 1974 US Flight Safety Foundation's newsletter. John G. Fuller, the best-selling author of The Ghost of Flight 401, carried out an exhaustive investigation into the hauntings with the aid of several cautious airline personnel. A mass of interesting testimony was produced as a result.

Although Eastern Airlines refuses to discuss the matter, researchers have interviewed numerous individuals claiming to have encountered the ill-fated pair on L-1011s. As the reports would have it, Loft and Repo have devoted their after-lives to watching over the passengers and crew of these little Lockheed passenger planes. Many come from people in highly responsible positions: pilots, flight officers, even a vice president of Eastern Airlines, who allegedly spoke with a captain he assumed was in charge of the flight, before recognizing him as the late Loft.

Other sightings are convincing because they have multiple witnesses. A flight's captain and two flight attendants claim to have seen and spoken to Loft before take-off and watched him vanish - an experience that left them so shaken they cancelled the flight.

One female passenger made a concerned enquiry to a flight attendant regarding the quiet, unresponsive man in Eastern Airlines uniform sitting in the seat next to her, who subsequently disappeared in full view of both of them and several other passengers, leaving the woman hysterical. When later shown a sheet of photos depicting Eastern flight engineers, she identified Repo as the officer she had seen.

Another incident occurred when one of the L-1011 passenger planes that fitted with salvaged parts was due for take-off. The flight engineer was mid-way through carrying out the routine pre-flight inspection when Repo appeared to him and said, "You don't need to worry about the pre-flight, I've already done it."

Repo and Loft are apparently not content merely to be present on these airplanes. Often their style is far more hands on, particularly in Repo's case. Aside from his appearance to a pre-flight engineer whom he appeared to have been assisting, there is testimony from a flight attendant who observed a man in flight engineer's uniform, whom she later recognized as Repo fixing a galley oven. The insistence of the plane's own flight engineer that he had not fixed the oven, and that there had not been another engineer on board, would seem to lend weight to her claim. Repo has also been seen in the compartment below the cockpit by a flight engineer who had accessed it in order to investigate a knocking he heard coming from there.

http://www.geocities.com/donuts13/main_9.htm
 
Isn't this where one of the cabin crew
appeared to be looking back at someone from
out of an eye-level oven?

I've never looked at domestic
air travel the same, since!

TVgeek
 
chez1807 said:
I remember reading this book when I was very young.I loved it.

Ditto.

There was a TV movie made of the story as well. Ernest Borgnine, of Airwolf and Convoy fame, played one of the pilots.
 
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