Crash | |
---|---|
Directed by | Barry Shear |
Starring | William Shatner |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | October 29, 1978 |
Crash (also known as The Crash of Flight 401) is a made-for-TV drama film aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) on October 29, 1978. It was directed by Barry Shear and based on the true story of the first crash of a wide-body aircraft, that of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar which crashed in the Florida Everglades near Miami on the night of December 29, 1972. The film more or less follows the true events of the crash, although the names of key characters were changed and certain dramatic events were fictionalized. The crash sequence was one of the most authentic (and expensive) for television of the time, using multiple stunts, pyrotechnics and flyaway set pieces.
The film stars William Shatner as maverick National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator Carl Tobias, who is called in to review the jetliner crash under pressure from his superiors to exonerate Lockheed of responsibility. Although the film implies that Lockheed was negligent in the design of the TriStar's flight control systems, it concludes by citing the NTSB's official determination that the crash was due to pilot error: the crew's failure to properly monitor the flight instruments during the last four minutes of flight. The crew was distracted by a blown light bulb in the landing gear position indicator display panel, which caused them not to notice that they had inadvertently disengaged the autopilot and put the TriStar into a slow, imperceptible descent. Eddie Albert portrayed the captain, and Lane Smith, in an early role, portrayed the hospitalized and barely alive surviving flight engineer who alerts Tobias to a computer "mismatch" in the autopilot. The cast also included Adrienne Barbeau and Sharon Gless, whose characters were based on the actual flight attendants tending to the passengers that fateful night. Lorraine Gary, Ed Nelson, and Ron Glass played noteworthy passengers.
It was the second made-for-TV film based on the crash, following The Ghost of Flight 401 which aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in February 1978. [1]
Reviewer James Brown of the Los Angeles Times called it "a well-crafted, professionally polished work that falls into the unfortunate trap of trying to tell too much in too little time -- ending up with some admirable vignettes but no clear, sustaining focus to link them together." [2]
Eastern Air Lines was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1926 to 1991. Before its dissolution, it was headquartered at Miami International Airport in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, Florida.
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar is an American medium-to-long-range, wide-body trijet airliner built by the Lockheed Corporation. It was the third wide-body airliner to enter commercial operations, after the Boeing 747 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. The airliner has a seating capacity of up to 400 passengers and a range of over 4,000 nautical miles. Its trijet configuration has three Rolls-Royce RB211 engines with one engine under each wing, along with a third engine center-mounted with an S-duct air inlet embedded in the tail and the upper fuselage. The aircraft has an autoland capability, an automated descent control system, and available lower deck galley and lounge facilities.
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Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades, causing 101 total fatalities. All three cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived.
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