35 Miles from Shore (21 page)

Figure 39. Margareth Abraham and Robby Schouten.

Figure 40. Bill Bohlke Jr. was a civilian pilot who, along with four others, aided in the rescue by dropping two life rafts and also acted as a communications relay for the Coast Guard.

Figure 41. Tito Cordeiro and Balsey DeWitt. This picture was taken at the ALM exhibition in Curacao on August 1, 2005. It was the first time the two men had met since the accident.

I
N A DARKENED ROOM NEAR THE
S
AN
J
UAN
I
NTERNA
tional Airport, controller Charles Silvia marked an X on his radar scope at the point where the tiny blip representing ALM 980 and its sixty-three passengers and crew disappeared. He called out to the watch supervisor that Antillean 980 had just ditched. The supervisor, who had already been alerted to the possible disaster, notified the Coast Guard station in San Juan, setting in motion one of the largest rescue operations in the history of the Caribbean.

The closest aircraft to the X on Silvia's scope was a Pan American 727 Clipper flying from Point A Pietra Guadeloupe to San Juan. The aircraft was at 24,000 feet. The crew consisted of Captain William Pash, First Officer William M. Hall, and Flight Engineer James L. Phillips, who went by his middle name, Larry.
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Charles Silvia radioed Pan Am 454 and asked for their assistance. The first officer on the 727 made a brief announcement to the twenty passengers on board explaining the emergency taking place in the waters below. The captain then pulled the power back and
began a rapid descent in an effort to not over-fly the scene. Their eyes were glued to the radar altimeter as they descended through the thick overcast. At around 800 feet, they started to break out below a ragged ceiling. They were on a north heading as they passed over the spot where Silvia had marked an X on his scope. There was no sign of the aircraft or any survivors. It wasn't what the crew was hoping to find. Captain Pash took up a southerly heading and descended to 500 feet to get below the clouds. He called for flaps and slowed to 140 knots. He then began flying a boxed search pattern.

Looking out the first officer's side window, flight engineer Larry Phillips spotted an oil slick about three hundred meters long. He followed the thin dark line until he saw what looked like oranges floating in the water. He pointed out the spot to the other two crewmembers. As they approached the scene, details began to emerge and they saw what they believed was an inflated life raft with two or three people inside and twenty or more people in the water around it. Other passengers were scattered around an area about the size of a football field. There was debris floating in the water but no sign of the aircraft. Having arrived over the accident scene within minutes of the ditching, the Pan Am crew assumed the plane had broken apart on impact, and the detritus below them was all that remained.
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Captain Pash made a low pass over the survivors to let them know that they had been spotted and that help was on the way. He banked the plane around and told the controller to “mark” as he passed over the scene a second time. Silvia placed another X on his scope a few centimeters from the first.

As news of the ditching spread at the San Juan Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), off-duty controllers began gathering around controller Charles Silvia. He had started his shift at 3:30
P.M.,
about the time Antillean 980 had begun its diversion to St. Thomas. The controller he was to replace, Alexander Sambolin, had been too busy with other aircraft to give him a briefing. So Silvia had plugged in his headset next to Sambolin in order to get up to speed on the traffic in the sector. He was listening in when ALM 980 first reported that it was “a little short on fuel.” He took over the radar from Sambolin at 3:37
P.M.
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Two and half minutes later, ALM 980 reported that there was a possibility that they might have to ditch.

Sitting to Silvia's right was controller Charles Saunders. He was working the D3 sector. Saunders was also supposed to have been relieved at 3:30
P.M.
He continued to work his sector because he didn't have time to give his replacement a proper briefing. There was too much going on between the weather, traffic, and Antillean 980. The D3 sector was not a radar control position. The D3 controller's primary job was to issue clearances to traffic outbound from San Juan to points east including St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Maarten, and other points to the southeast and Europe. Directly in front of Saunders was a speaker and two rows of toggle switches that allowed him to communicate directly with the tower controllers at St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. Maarten. The following transcript is the inter-facility communications related to ALM 980 from the start of the approaches at St. Maarten to the ditching.
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Once again the times are UTC.