In early 1973, the captain on the flight of Eastern Airlines was asked to check for a strange passenger in the first class cabin.

The passenger is also an Eastern Airlines pilot, taking a flight from New Jersey to Miami. He did not answer the flight attendant's questions but just stared forward as if in a coma. As the captain approached the man, he exclaimed, "My God, it's Bob Loft."

Bob Loft is their former colleague, but there's one problem: Bob Loft died a few months ago.

On December 29, 1972, flight 401 from New York to Miami took off at John F. Kennedy airport at 9:20 pm. There are 176 people on the Lockheed L-1011, nicknamed the "whispering plane" because it makes less noise than other aircraft. At 23:30, the captain spoke loudly, welcoming passengers to the city when the plane dropped to elevation to land at Miami International Airport.

However, the incident occurred, the plane crashed at a speed of 365 km / h at 23h42. Captain Bob Loft died. Aircraft engineer Don Repo survived the accident but died in the hospital a few days later. A total of 101 people were killed and 75 survived.

Over the next 1.5 years, many Eastern Airlines employees said they saw the ghost of Repo and Loft on other flights of the airline. The flight attendants saw the mirror image of Repo on the stove door. A flight attendant on a New York - Miami flight saw Loft's face when he opened the closet. The entire crew on a flight saw Repo sitting with them and they said that he had warned about electrical circuit faults, which was later discovered and fixed. Even a vice president of Eastern Airlines saw Loft on the plane about to take off from John F. Kennedy airport.

The accounts are narrated in the book "Ghost of Flight 401" by investigative reporter John G. Fuller and in a 1974 newsletter of the non-governmental Flight Safety Foundation. Eastern Airlines denied, Frank Borman's CEO called these stories "trash".

However, the log of all flights that have seen the ghost disappear. This is very noticeable because Eastern Airlines has a requirement that the crew have to record all incidents in the flight log, whether it is a small matter or a questionable issue.

Fuller wrote in the book that Eastern Airlines had reused parts from Flight 401, many of which were fitted on Flight 318. Most of the time ghost sighting occurred on Flight 318.

Eastern Airlines considered suing Fuller, but did not proceed, saying it would make the book more popular. In 1978, the book was adapted into a movie. Singer Bob Welch recorded a song titled Ghost Flight 401 for the album released in 1979.

All parts reused from the last 401 were removed from other aircraft. Eastern Airlines dissolved in 1991.