35 Miles from Shore (31 page)

The story continued to draw wide attention in the Caribbean as the search for survivors continued. In the U.S., news coverage of the accident and the continued search for survivors was reduced to a few buried paragraphs in the
New York Times
. By Tuesday, the story of ALM 980 was pushed into obscurity by a much bigger story back home. On May 4, 1970, four students were killed by National Guardsman on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Reactions to that tragedy would occupy headlines for days.

The escalating tensions in the U.S. were of little consequence to Balsey, Harry, and Hugh. The three remained isolated from all that was going on around them. When Ed Starkloff showed up at the hotel on Tuesday, he called Balsey to tell him that it was best that they not talk. “There's a lot going on right now, Balsey,” he said. “You better listen to your side and I'll take mine.” It was an early indication of management's decision to distance itself from the three crewmembers. Ed Veronelli stopped by to talk, but Balsey steered the conversation away from the accident. Steedman's time was occupied with meetings with the FAA, Dutch officials, and representatives of ALM. Eventually, attorneys Steve Lang and Bob Wagenfeld met with Balsey to ask some questions. It didn't take long for Balsey to conclude that the lawyers weren't there for his protection but to protect ONA.

Balsey had legal representation through the pilots union. An ALPA attorney from Miami, John O'Brien, was assigned to represent the two pilots. John O'Brien, however, still hadn't arrived in St. Croix. In the interim, Balsey met with Milt Marshall, the ALPA MEC Chairman at ONA, and Tommy Ahern, another ONA ALPA representative. Their job was to advise pilots in situations similar to that
in which Balsey now found himself. But Milt Marshall, who sometimes referred to Balsey as “Mr. United,” didn't care for Balsey. He had protested Balsey's seniority number. He had filed complaints against him. The two had a mutual dislike for each other. Milt Marshall may have been there under the pretense of wanting to help, but Balsey thought otherwise. He could see the satisfaction in Milt Marshall's eyes. The two men told Balsey that if he wanted to get out of the mess that he had created, he had better listen to them. They were insensitive to Balsey's emotional state. When one of them made a comment about people having been killed, Balsey's eyes welled up. He knew at that point that he wasn't going to get any help from ALPA, at least not at the local level. He later asked to have the two removed from his case. Balsey would talk only to ALPA national.

There were several attempts by members of the news media to talk with Balsey and the other two crewmembers. All three declined. Those looking for answers may not agree with the reluctance of flight crews to discuss their involvement in fatal accidents, but it is always best to remain silent as the potential to incriminate one's self is too great, especially in the immediate days following an accident when emotions can interfere with clear and rational thinking.

By Monday evening, the three crewmembers had yet to talk to the investigators. They learned later that the delay was due to the Dutch officials, who wanted the crew interviews conducted on Dutch soil. The three kept to themselves as the NTSB and the Dutch worked out their differences. They didn't have access to English language newspapers, which only added to their sense of isolation. They did learn that there were still twenty-two people missing, a number that weighed heavily on each of them.

The disagreements between the NTSB and the Dutch officials were eventually resolved, and the crew met with investigators on Tuesday afternoon, May 6. Representatives from both ONA and
ALM were present. Balsey was the first to be questioned. He was told that none of the information obtained during questioning could be used against him. He was asked if he had any objections to the FAA sitting in. Balsey felt that he had nothing to hide, so he allowed the FAA to be present. It was a decision that would later prove harmful to his career.
¹

Balsey was forthcoming in his answers to investigators. He went through the entire flight, careful to not overlook any details that might be important. He described the problems he encountered on his three failed landing attempts. He told them about the problems with the fuel totalizer. He mentioned not being able to find the St. Croix approach charts or the emergency checklist. He described his efforts to reenter the plane after exiting the cockpit.

The investigators were especially interested in hearing what Balsey had to say about his decision to continue to St. Maarten after initially starting a diversion to San Juan. The St. Maarten tower facility did not have the capability to record communications. The investigators had received conflicting statements from eyewitnesses on the ground at St. Maarten, indicating that the weather was below minimums at the time of the approaches. One eyewitness estimated that during one of the approaches the visibility was as low as ¼ mile in heavy rain showers. There were also unconfirmed reports that the St. Maarten tower controller might have been pressured to overstate the weather conditions by an influential resident who had been waiting for a passenger on the flight.
^*
Balsey stated that he had been told that the ceilings were 1,000 broken, 5,000 overcast and visibility was 3 miles. He added that when he broke out on the first approach, the only place the weather appeared to be above minimums was directly over
the airport. But without a recorded transcript to back him up, it was his word against the tower controller's. Fortunately, days later a transcript of the conversation with the St. Maarten tower controller would turn up and confirm Balsey's account. While St. Maarten didn't record their communications, the tower at the Isla Grande airport, which shared the same tower frequency as St. Maarten, did have a recorder.
*

One detail that was overlooked during questioning was the fact that the PA system wasn't working. It would be several months before investigators would discover this important piece of information.

After Harry and Hugh were interviewed, all three were asked to remain in St. Croix in case there were additional questions. They stayed on the island another two days. Upon arrival back in New York on Friday, they were ushered into a small briefing room at ONA's headquarters and told to not talk to anyone about the accident. They were asked to submit written statements and to have them completed by the following Monday. The company was sympathetic and almost apologetic when they told them that they would be off duty for the next thirty days while the incident was investigated.

The Monday after the accident, Bill Bohlke stopped by the hospital to see his wife and new baby girl. Once again, he was approached by survivors asking about missing loved ones. He didn't stay long before heading to the airport. That afternoon, two men came to see him. The two men were Robby Schouten and Margareth's twin brother Carol Abraham. They had heard that Bill had been involved in the rescue and wanted to know if he had seen Margareth. When Bill told
them that he had not, they asked if he would be willing to fly them to the accident scene so they could conduct their own search. Bill agreed to take the pair up in a Piper Cherokee Arrow.

The weather on Monday was vastly different from the day of the ditching. The skies were crystal clear and devoid of even a wisp of a cloud. The sea was calm. They spotted a few items that looked like debris from the aircraft, but they saw nothing else. They searched for a solid three hours, flying various altitudes and headings. Bill let Robby and Carol make the decision on when to call off the search.

The next day Robby and Carol returned to the airport wanting to rent a plane for a second search. George Johnson, who had flown on the Skyvan with Bill Bohlke the day of the ditching, was the pilot.
*

The Coast Guard continued to search for survivors on Tuesday as well. They had two helicopters and one fixed-wing aircraft in the area. The Coast Guard cutter
Point Whitehorn
was also involved in the search on Tuesday. No bodies or survivors were recovered, and subsequent searches were called off.

When Wilfred and Tobias returned to Curaçao on Tuesday, ALM held a press conference in which Octavio Irausquin praised the two flight stewards and Margareth for getting the passengers into their life vests prior to the ditching. Margareth was singled out for her sacrifice.

The survivors began leaving the hospital as early as Sunday, with several of them reserving hotel rooms as they made arrangements to fly back to New York. Six passengers were listed as critical; among them, Loretta Gremelsbacker, who had a broken back.

Rick Arnold left the hospital on Monday. He shared a hotel room with his brother Bob, who had flown to St. Croix to accompany him back to New York. On their return trip to New York on Tuesday, Bob gave Rick a Valium to relieve the stress of having to get back on an airplane so soon after the accident. Rick made the mistake of having a drink on the flight and, for better or worse, the combination of the Valium and the alcohol put him to sleep for most of the flight.

Three passengers were transported back to New York by stretcher. Special arrangements were made to accommodate the three on a Pan Am commercial flight. The flight engineer on the flight was Larry Phillips, who had been the flight engineer on Pan Am 454, the first aircraft on the scene. When he learned that three survivors of the ditching were on board, he introduced himself. He was greeted warmly by the survivors, who expressed how relieved they had been upon spotting the 727.
²

One couple opted not to return to New York and instead negotiated with ALM to have it pay for a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. George and Martha Kellner, both in their mid twenties, had not been injured in the accident. They had been looking forward to having five days off in the Caribbean. They were obviously saddened over those who were injured and those who were still missing, but there was little they could do to change things. Martha was four months pregnant with their second child, and her husband was starting a new job the following week. There wouldn't be another opportunity for a vacation anytime soon, so they asked ALM to pay for a flight to San Juan and four nights at a resort hotel.
³

Jeannie Larmony was one of a handful of survivors too injured to leave the hospital. Following her second day in the hospital, she was moved to another bed to free up her room for a woman with even more serious injuries. Jeannie found out later that the woman was the mother of the two little girls who had died in the accident.

Two weeks after the accident, Jeannie was asked if she was ready to go home. She was stretched out in a bed and unable to move. Her neck was in a collar; she ached from head to toe. Her back had taken such a beating from scraping against the air vents and the reading lights that she had to lie on a donut cushion to keep her back from coming in contact with the bed. She was told that she could be transported back to New York on a stretcher. There was no way Jeannie was going to fly back to New York tied to a stretcher. “When I feel like I'm able to sit up, then I'll go home,” Jeannie said. She left the hospital a week later. Her son, Charlie, who worked for ONA, accompanied her on the trip.

I
N THE DAYS AND WEEKS FOLLOWING THE ACCIDENT
, Balsey was asked to provide additional details regarding the ditching to investigators and ONA management. He answered questions by phone and made at least one trip to ONA headquarters to give a briefing there. He cooperated fully. Balsey was well aware of the uniqueness of the accident. It was the first open-water ditching of a commercial jet. There were countless questions from the NTSB investigators and the aircraft manufacturer:
What was the attitude of the aircraft when it hit the water? What was its speed? What was the configuration? How much damage was sustained? How long did the aircraft stay afloat? Did the aircraft sink tail first or nose first?
*
(There was some speculation that the plane would have been brought down tail first by the weight of the two rear mounted engines.)

Despite the loss of life, the ditching was considered a success. Forty-three people were known to have exited the aircraft. There was some talk of having Balsey travel around the country to speak to other pilots about his experience as the first and only pilot to have ditched a commercial jet. Eventually the questions subsided and the attention shifted back to the facts surrounding the accident. It may have been a successful ditching, but it was a ditching that had become necessary only because the plane had run out of fuel.

Balsey spent much of his free time trying to re-create the flight on paper. He took copies of communication transcripts and overlaid position reports with known altitude, time, and fuel readings. He drew countless diagrams on plain paper or drafting paper, painstakingly going over every minute of the flight down to the last second before the ditching. He drew diagrams of his approach and three circles, plotting his altitude and computing distance flown and fuel burned. He became obsessed with trying to pinpoint what had gone wrong.

Following his thirty-day suspension, Balsey received word that the suspension was being extended. After that, he had less and less communication with the company. A friend in the maintenance department called to say that the maintenance log sheets for the DC-9 involved in the ditching had been destroyed, ostensibly to cover up information pertaining to improper work that had been done on the fuel probes. Balsey had been told that ONA had used unqualified mechanics on some of the work, and not all of the work was per the manufacturer's recommended procedures. The maintenance logs would have also shown numerous write-ups concerning the fuel totalizer giving erroneous indications.

Claims of the maintenance records being destroyed were never verified. Furthermore, destroying maintenance records to cover something up would have been totally uncharacteristic of ONA. In addition, one of the individuals handling maintenance records was Charlie Larmony, the son of passenger Jeannie Larmony. He certainly would
not have been involved in any kind of cover up and would have been aware of any efforts to destroy the records.