ALM Antillean Airlines Flight 980 was a flight scheduled to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to

Princess Juliana International Airport Princess Juliana International Airport is the main airport on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. The airport is located on the Dutch side of the island, in the country of Sint Maarten, close to the shore of Simpson Bay Lagoon. In 2015, the ...

St. Maarten Sint Maarten () is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. With a population of 41,486 as of January 2019 on an area of , it encompasses the southern 44% of the divided island of Saint Martin, while the north ...

Netherlands Antilles nl, In vrijheid verenigd"Unified by freedom" , national_anthem = , common_languages = Dutch English Papiamento , demonym = Netherlands Antillean , capital = Willemstad , year_start = 1954 , year_end = 2010 , date_start = 15 December , ...

, on 2 May 1970. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the aircraft's fuel was exhausted, and it made a forced water landing (ditching) in the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexic ...

off St. Croix, with 23 fatalities and 40 survivors. The accident is one of a small number of intentional water ditchings of jet airliners.

Aircraft and crew

The aircraft was a twin-engine Douglas DC-9-33CF, operated on behalf of

ALM Antillean Airlines ALM Antillean Airlines ( nl, Antilliaanse Luchtvaart Maatschappij) was the main airline of the Netherlands Antilles between its foundation in 1964 and its shut-down in 2001, operating out of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. History ALM Antillea ...

Overseas National Airways The original Overseas National Airways Inc (ONA) was an American airline, formed in June 1950 as a supplemental air carrier. It ceased operations on September 14, 1978. The airline started as Air Travel in 1946 and was renamed Calasia Air Transpo ...

(ONA), with an ONA aircraft and flight crew, and an ALM cabin crew. It was registered in the United States with FAA tail number The flight carried 57 passengers and 6 crew. The flight crew consisted of Captain Balsey DeWitt (37), First Officer Harry Evans II (25), and Navigator Hugh Hart (35).

Flight and ditching

Flight 980 made a normal departure from Kennedy Airport, and had an uneventful flight to the Caribbean. After the flight was given descent clearance to , regional

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

(ATC) advised that weather in St. Maarten was below landing minima, a set of criteria that determine whether landing is possible. The captain elected to divert to

San Juan San Juan, Spanish for Saint John, may refer to: Places Argentina * San Juan Province, Argentina * San Juan, Argentina, the capital of that province * San Juan, Salta, a village in Iruya, Salta Province * San Juan (Buenos Aires Underground), ...

, but shortly thereafter, the

tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specific ...

at St. Maarten advised them that the weather had improved sufficiently for landing. The flight made an initial approach to

, but failed to see the runway in time to line up for landing, and announced a

missed approach Missed approach is a procedure followed by a pilot when an instrument approach cannot be completed to a full-stop landing. The instructions for the missed approach may be assigned by air traffic control (ATC) prior to the clearance for the approa ...

. Flight 980 then made a second landing attempt, but it, too, was unsuccessful because of alignment with the

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

. After breaking off that approach, the crew made a third attempt, but the aircraft was too high to land safely. After assessing the weather and fuel situation, the crew elected to divert to St. Croix, and received a vector and clearance. At this point, the crew noticed a possible discrepancy between the fuel gauges and what had been computed as the amount of fuel remaining. The captain advised ATC of his intention to ditch the aircraft, and began a low approach over the water. Flight 980 ditched in the

at 3:49 PM local time, 30 miles east of St. Croix. Although the pilots flashed the seat belt signs just prior to ditching, confusion remained in the cabin as to when or whether the plane was to touch down. The

public address system A public address system (or PA system) is an electronic system comprising microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and related equipment. It increases the apparent volume (loudness) of a human voice, musical instrument, or other acoustic sound sou ...

was not working on the plane, so the cabin were not given any warning of the impending ditching. Consequently, an unknown number of passengers and crew were either standing up, or had their seat belts unfastened, when the aircraft struck the water. The sea was rough at the time as a result of the weather conditions. The aircraft remained relatively intact after the water landing, but soon sank in about of water, and was never recovered. The accident resulted in 23 fatalities, as well as injuries to 37 of the 40 survivors. Both pilots and the navigator survived. The survivors were left bobbing in the turbulent and shark-infested sea in their life jackets until rescue came. Recovery of the survivors by helicopter began approximately hours after the ditching, and the last survivor, the first officer, was picked up about 1 hour later. The helicopters were guided to the rescue site by a

Pan American Airways Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and commonly known as Pan Am, was an American airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States ...

plane, whose pilot reported the ditching by radio, then circled the scene until help came to help guide rescuers. Rescue efforts included units from the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, and

U.S. Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through co ...

, and a number of survivors were rescued by

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attribu ...

Investigation and aftermath

The accident was investigated by the U.S.

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

(NTSB). The report concluded that the cause of the accident was poor fuel management, complicated by the crew's inattention and distraction as a result of the weather situation and multiple diversions. Some specific issues cited include miscalculation of the rate of fuel consumption, misreading fuel gauges, and incorrect computation of the amount of fuel expected to be remaining at the time of landing. The NTSB report stated: The NTSB also concluded that the chances of survival in the accident were worsened by poor coordination among the crew before and during the ditching. The recommendations in the report included adding "warn passengers" to the checklist of procedures for emergency landings and ditchings, requiring that flights not be dispatched without a working

public address A public address system (or PA system) is an electronic system comprising microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and related equipment. It increases the apparent volume (loudness) of a human voice, musical instrument, or other acoustic sound sou ...

system, and phasing out an older type of

seat belt A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt red ...

then in use in favor of more modern designs. DeWitt was fired six months after the incident; he never piloted a plane again.

In popular culture

The ditching of Flight 980 is featured in the first season 1 episode of

The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather foreca ...

documentary '' Why Planes Crash''. The episode is titled "Brace for Impact", and was aired in July 2009. It featured an interview with Captain Balsey DeWitt.

References

External links