35 Miles from Shore (3 page)

A few minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart, a final passenger strode briskly across the ramp and up the stairs. He took
the first seat he came to as he entered the cabin. The passenger was Emerson Ussery, a general contractor and developer of commercial and residential properties in the Caribbean. He had flown to New York three days earlier from San Juan to meet with a group of investors involved in the construction of a resort on Antigua. He was originally scheduled to return to St. Croix on a Pan Am flight. Earlier in the day, however, Emerson had received a call from one of the investors asking him if he would instead fly to St. Maarten to close a deal on some property for a future hotel and casino. When Emerson arrived at the airport, he was told that he could exchange his Pan Am ticket at the KLM ticket counter. But when Emerson tried to exchange the ticket, the KLM ticket agent refused to accept it. An argument ensued. The argument continued as the boarding began. Emerson was determined to get on the flight; he threw his Pan Am ticket on the counter and proceeded to board the aircraft over the objections of the KLM ticket agent.
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The KLM ticket agent immediately called her supervisor. A few minutes later, the supervisor boarded the plane along with a uniformed security officer. Emerson pleaded his case with the supervisor, who finally agreed to accept the Pan Am ticket after talking over the situation with stewardess Margareth Abraham, who happened to be in the forward galley at the time.
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Emerson's insistence on getting on the flight had a lot to do with the phone call he had received earlier that morning. Prior to arriving at the airport, he had stopped to pick up two cashier's checks that were to be used for closing the property deal in St. Maarten. In addition to two $150,000 cashier's checks, Emerson also received $350,000 in cash. The deal he was being asked to close was to be
an “under the table” deal, one intended to usurp taxes and other restrictions. The money was in a briefcase that he quietly stuffed under his seat.
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With everyone boarded and accounted for, the stairs were raised and the cabin door was closed. If there were any concerns about the flight, chances are they had more to do with the possibility of being hijacked than of being involved in an aircraft ditching. In 1970, a hijacking took place somewhere in the world on average of once every eight days.
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The day before, a British West Indies Airways Boeing 727 had been hijacked on a flight from Kingston, Jamaica to Grand Cayman Island. The plane was diverted to Havana, Cuba, where the two hijackers were taken into custody.
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At 11:02
A.M.
Eastern Daylight Time, ALM 980 taxied from the international ramp. It was a perfect spring day with partly cloudy skies, a light southeast wind, and a temperature of 64 degrees. Purser Wilfred Spencer gave the first passenger briefing from the front of the plane while reading from a briefing card. Stewardess Margareth Abraham stood in the aisle near the front, and steward Tobias Cordeiro was positioned toward the rear of the plane. Wilfred began with a welcome aboard announcement that included information about the estimated flight time and the planned cruising altitude. He then gave the standard emergency briefing covering the seatbelts and emergency exits. This was done in both English and Dutch. He also instructed the passengers to review the emergency briefing cards in the seat pockets in front of them. There was no demonstration of the oxygen masks or the life vests, despite the fact that the flight would be flown over water almost from the moment of liftoff until touchdown. It was common practice at that time to wait until after takeoff to brief the passengers on those items so as not to delay the departure. Not that it mattered; the majority of the passengers paid little attention to what was being said or demonstrated.
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Traffic was light at JFK as ALM 980 taxied to runway 13R. The flight was cleared for takeoff at 11:14
A.M.
Both the captain and the first officer noted that the fuel totalizer indicated 28,450 pounds of fuel as the power was brought up for takeoff.
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It was a number that both would later be asked to recall.

Shortly after takeoff, Wilfred gave the oxygen mask and life vest briefing. Once again he read from a briefing card while Margareth and Tobias demonstrated the procedures. There was no mention of life rafts.
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C
LIMBING OUT FROM
JFK, ALM 980
BANKED TO
the right and took up a southerly course. The plane was over water and would remain so for the duration of the flight, except for a minute or two when it would pass over Bermuda. Passengers on the right side of the aircraft could still see the coast and the hundreds of small boats that dotted the waters close to shore. Those on the left side of the aircraft might have caught a glimpse of a large tanker or a lone sailboat in search of less-crowded seas. From this altitude the water looked peaceful, almost inviting
.

As ALM 980 thundered into an azure sky, the president and CEO of Overseas National Airways, thirty-eight-year-old Steedman Hinckley, was at a family gathering in Virginia.
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It was a much needed break for Steedman. He had been working non-stop for months and had been looking forward to getting away from New York for a few days. He spent the afternoon relaxing with his family and enjoying the warm spring weather while his parents doted on
his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Annalisa. It would turn out to be a short reprieve. Before the day was through, Steedman would be consumed with concerns over the fate of the passengers and crew aboard ALM 980, the future of his airline, and the role a business decision he had made weeks earlier might have played in the tragedy that was to take place that afternoon.

In aviation circles, Steedman Hinckley was considered to be something of a phenom, an airline whiz-kid who was just thirty-three when he started ONA, or more accurately, resurrected it, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Steedman was an innovator along the lines of Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic Airways. And while he wasn't as flamboyant as those two better known airline CEOs, he shared their sense of adventure and ability to see opportunities long before the competition.

Steedman's interest in aviation can be traced back to his father, who had served in the Army Air Corps and later as a colonel in the Air Force.
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His father was also a successful stockbroker who had done well enough in that pursuit that he was able to purchase a single engine Cessna. The small plane was housed in a hangar built right on the family farm. Steedman learned to fly in his dad's plane.

At fourteen, Steedman attended the renowned Phillips Exeter Academy, a private New England boarding school. Steedman flourished in the college like atmosphere at Exeter. He busied himself with his class work and played intramural sports during his free time. If there was one drawback at Exeter, it was the fact that there were no female students, which may have been the reason his parents had sent him there in the first place.
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Absent the normal distractions facing most teenagers, Steedman excelled academically. By the time he moved on to Princeton, he was light-years ahead of his classmates.

The normal course for someone with Steedman's background would have been to go directly into the corporate world, where promotions and pay increases would have come quickly and easily. Steedman, however, had fallen in love with flying. He flew every chance he got, usually during the holidays or during his summer breaks from Exeter and Princeton. When he graduated from Princeton in 1953 with a degree in English, Steedman put his corporate prospects on hold and enlisted in the Air Force. He had hoped to contribute to the Korean War effort, but the war ended before he completed his flight training. Instead of flying fighter jets over North Korea as he had hoped, he was put to work flying long supply flights between military bases in the U.S. and abroad. He saw most of the U.S. and much of Europe from the cockpit of a DC-6.

Upon the completion of his military commitment, Steedman took a job with the Aerospace Division of Chrysler. His work involved the Red Stone Missile Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. It was just the type of job that his father had hoped Steedman would seek. But Steedman disliked the job. Sitting behind a desk to him was akin to a sailor being adrift in a calm sea. He was still flying part time in the Air Force Reserve, but that only made his job at Chrysler even more unbearable. When he learned of an opening with a New York-based charter airline called Overseas National Airways, he jumped at the chance to get back into the air on a full time basis.

The flying at ONA was not that far removed from the flying that he had done in the Air Force. ONA was primarily a Military Air Transport Service (MATS) carrier. Not only was he flying the same type of aircraft, but he was flying into and out of the same military bases. His familiarity with the aircraft and routes allowed him to move up the ladder quickly at ONA. He went from line pilot to the training department to assistant chief pilot. He worked in sales and promotions. He so impressed the management of ONA that it paid
the cost of sending him to the middle management program at Harvard Business School.

At its peak in 1960, ONA was one of the largest MATS carriers in the country, with a fleet of DC-4s, DC-6s, and DC-7s and operations on both coasts. ONA's dominance in the military market, however, came at the expense of its competitors, which it consistently underbid, sometimes at a loss. When a new bidding process was implemented in 1961, the airline saw its contracts drop drastically. Adding to its difficulties was increased competition from the major airlines, which had begun bidding on MATS contracts using more efficient jet aircraft. Unable to purchase its own jet aircraft, financially strapped ONA was forced to cease operations in the fall of 1963.

By this time, Steedman had taken an interest in the business side of running an airline. He had some savings and some money in a trust fund that had been set up by his grandparents. He used those funds to purchase twenty percent of the stock of Saturn Airways, a competing supplemental carrier.
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He also went to work for Saturn as an executive vice president.

While there was plenty of opportunity at Saturn, Steedman was often at odds with upper management, which he saw as resistant to change and profligate in its spending. When Saturn began talks for a possible merger with a smaller rival, Steedman decided that the time was right to set out on his own.

Rather than undertake the time and expense of starting an airline from scratch, Steedman approached the former owners of ONA with a proposal to purchase the airline's operating certificate. ONA existed only on paper at the time; there were no aircraft or employees. But the airline still had authority to fly. Steedman was confident that the ONA name still had clout in the military market. The Vietnam War
was just starting to heat up. The promise of one or two military contracts was all he would need to lure financial backers. In return for a seat on the board of the new airline, George Tompkins, the former president and founder of ONA, agreed to sell the operating certificate to Steedman for just one dollar.

Unlike the previous owners, who had focused primarily on military charters, Steedman planned to expand into the commercial charter market. He had seen firsthand how the former owners' total dependence on military contracts had led to the airline's demise. But there were several other factors driving his decision. First, there was the introduction of the jet aircraft, which was revolutionizing air travel. Jet aircraft were faster, quieter, and more comfortable than the piston aircraft that made up the majority of the airline fleets in 1965. Their size and efficiency also helped to make air travel more affordable.

Another important development in 1965 was the first widespread use of credit cards, which for the first time major banks began issuing to hundreds of thousands of customers. The combination of easy credit and the novelty of the jet aircraft jump-started an ailing airline industry. A whole new market segment was created—the leisure traveler. Major airlines scrambled to replace their older piston aircraft with new Boeing 707s and Douglas Aircraft DC-8s and DC-9s.

The rush to convert to jet aircraft created a glut of piston aircraft. Steedman picked up two bargain-priced DC-7s and put them to work flying MATS flights. He also secured the help of several financial backers who provided the funding needed to place orders for two new DC-8s.
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With two jets on the way and plans for purchasing additional aircraft, Steedman set out for Sweden to hire stewardesses. He was
planning on doing a lot of international flying and wanted stewardesses who could speak several languages. It was during this visit that Steedman met a young Swedish girl named Ingrid.

Ingrid was among a large group of attractive women waiting anxiously in a hotel conference room. The women were there in response to an ad for stewardesses for a New York-based airline.

Ingrid made a favorable impression on Steedman. She was bright, articulate, and spoke several languages, including German, Swedish, English, and a little French. Steedman's only concern was her age. Ingrid was just eighteen at the time. To make sure he didn't forget the striking young woman, he wrote a note to himself on Ingrid's application. The note, written along the margins, simply read: “exceptional Swedish beauty.”
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Ingrid accepted a job offer at ONA and moved to New York to begin work as a stewardess. She hadn't been working very long before she was asked if she would be interested in doing some public relations work. Ingrid agreed and was subsequently featured in an ONA print advertisement. The advertisement had Ingrid posing in a bikini. The public relations work put Ingrid in direct contact with Steedman. She accompanied him on a return trip to Sweden to interview additional stewardesses. Steedman met Ingrid's mother on the visit and promised her that he would personally look after Ingrid.