35 Miles from Shore (6 page)

Another problem that surfaced early on with the first dozen or so flights to St. Maarten was a problem with the fuel totalizer. The aircraft had four analog circular-type fuel gauges for the center tank, the forward auxiliary tank, and the two wing tanks, and a digital
fuel totalizer that indicated the total fuel remaining for all four tanks. The readout was in pounds of fuel. The amount shown on the fuel totalizer could change based on the density of the fuel. Fuel density was determined both by the type of fuel being used and the temperature of the fuel (colder fuel is denser and thus weighs more). Douglas Aircraft claimed that the fuel density error should be in the plus or minus 800-pound range for a fully loaded plane. ONA's DC-9s were getting errors plus or minus 2,000 pounds.

The problems with the fuel totalizer seemed to be more pronounced with the aircraft involved on the St. Maarten flights. It was determined that the problem was related to condensation forming on the fuel probes, especially the master probe. The aircraft was flying in very cold temperatures for up to three hours and then descending into a very warm and humid climate. The solution was to coat the probes with a plastic like covering in a procedure called plasticizing. The plasticizing didn't completely solve the problem, but it did reduce the occurrence of highly erroneous readings.
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In addition to the problems with the fuel totalizer, pilots were reporting discrepancies between the planned fuel burn and the actual fuel burn. All of ONA's DC-9s were burning more fuel than what the fuel planning charts indicated they should burn. Douglas Aircraft engineers were notified of the problem. Their response was to have ONA keep a fuel log for each of its DC-9s to help it more accurately determine the extent of the error.
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Steedman was made aware of the fuel problems during his weekly safety meetings. He wasn't too concerned. Minor problems like these could be expected with new aircraft. The erratic fuel totalizer readings and the higher-than-expected fuel burns did not pose a safety hazard as long as the discrepancies were accounted for in the flight planning. Steedman did, however, call the dispatch office to ask for a summary of the St. Maarten flights that had been flown to date. He wanted to know what the average fuel burn was for
each leg, and he wanted to know what the average loads had been. The summary he received showed that on average planes were landing with just under 6,700 pounds of fuel. The highest fuel burns, as expected, were on the return flights to New York. About a third of the return flights had to stop in Bermuda for fuel. The summary also indicated that the average load factor was 67%.
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The agreement Steedman had signed with ALM required him to have the extra fuel tank installed by April 1, 1970. Steedman wanted the tank installed as badly as anyone. The St. Maarten flight lost money every time the plane had to land in Bermuda for fuel. But Douglas Aircraft had informed him that it was going to take three to four weeks to install the tank. The same plane flew all of the St. Maarten flights. The only plane Steedman had to replace it with was an older model DC-9 with slightly less range.

Steedman phoned Octavio Irausquin to discuss the situation. He told Octavio that if they pulled N935F off the route to get the tank installed, the replacement aircraft would probably not be able to make the flight non-stop. If, on the other hand, they were to wait until spring or early summer when the loads dropped off, the replacement DC-9 could probably make the flight without having to stop for fuel. Octavio agreed. There were still several weeks left of the peak travel season. He didn't want to inconvenience passengers unnecessarily by adding an extra stop. He told Steedman to disregard the April 1 deadline. It was an oral agreement between the two men. No specific deadline for having the extra fuel tank installed was discussed.
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As the flights to St. Maarten continued into April, everyone was keeping a close eye on the fuel burns. Fuel logs for three aircraft were sent to Douglas Aircraft for evaluation. The results of the evaluation showed that all three aircraft were burning a few percent more than what the fuel planning charts indicated they should burn, with one of the three burning as much as 10.6% more. N935F, the plane used on the St. Maarten route, burned approximately 4.6% more fuel than charted.
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Another alarming trend that caught the attention of management was several St. Maarten flights that had landed with minimum fuel. One flight in particular, on April 15, 1970, landed with just 3,400 pounds of fuel.
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The captain on the flight was Balsey DeWitt. Also on the flight was Carl Morgan, an FAA examiner. Carl was giving the first officer a line check on the LORAN. The indicator for the LORAN was located on the co-pilot's center instrument panel. This particular flight occurred on the same day that air traffic controllers were on strike. Traffic delays caused by reduced controller staffing resulted in a much higher fuel burn than planned. A favorable weather report in St. Maarten convinced them to continue rather than stop for fuel in Bermuda.

The low fuel landing in St. Maarten alarmed Carl Morgan enough that he felt that ONA needed to set minimum fuel guidelines for the route over and above the FAA minimums. ONA agreed and subsequently issued the following pilot bulletin two weeks later:

The following minimum fuel requirements will be strictly adhered to:
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A. New York—St.
Marten direct requires planned EFA of 7,000 pounds.

B. St. Marten—San Juan segment requires minimum take-off fuel of 10,000 pounds.

C. San Juan—New York segment requires planned EFA of 7,000 pounds.

The memo did not define what EFA meant. The intention was to require pilots to have at least 7,000 pounds of fuel on arrival over the airport, with EFA defined as expected fuel on arrival. To account for the higher-than-charted fuel burn, the memo imposed an additional requirement:

Until revised fuel consumption charts are delivered by Douglas Aircraft Company, ONA is imposing an additional 10% added to flight fuel burn off to all DC-9-33 aircraft.
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When Balsey showed up for work Saturday morning, he found the memo in his mailbox. Balsey read the first line under the heading Minimum Fuel Requirements. “The following minimum fuel requirements will be strictly adhered to: New York—St. Marten direct requires planned EFA of 7,000 pounds.” Balsey had no idea what “planned EFA” meant. He assumed it meant expected fuel on arrival. But arrival where? At the airport? Over the airport? Over the beacon? When Balsey read further and noted that an additional 10% fuel burn was being imposed over and above the minimum FAA fuel requirements, he concluded that it could not have meant on arrival at the airport. None of the flights he had flown had landed with that
much fuel. He decided that the 7,000 pound figure was a planning figure to be used in determining whether the flight could be flown non-stop.

The navigator normally computed the fuel burn. Hugh Hart, the navigator on this flight, didn't have any flight planning charts for the DC-9. He lamented that he hadn't been given any documents related to the DC-9, nor had he received any training on the aircraft, which was a good indication of how management perceived the navigator's role on the flights. Balsey gave Hugh the cruise charts from his manual. He told Hugh that the DC-9 burned approximately 100 pounds of fuel per minute. It was a useful number to remember because it allowed for quick fuel burn calculations. If you had 6,000 pounds of fuel on board, you had roughly one hour of flying time remaining. The 100 pounds per minute rule was useful for performing quick mental fuel calculations, but long-range flights required more careful planning. After reviewing the fuel planning charts, Hugh and Balsey computed a fuel burn of 19,100 pounds for the three hour and twenty-six minute flight. Adding the 10% additional burn off imposed in the bulletin they computed a total fuel burn of 21,000 pounds (19,100 + 1,900). The minimum fuel required by the FAA was for an additional 6,400 pounds of fuel reserves over and above the planned fuel burn.
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Since the 6,400 pound figure was less than the 7,000 pounds required by the memo, Balsey used a final fuel figure of 28,000 pounds (21,000 + 7,000). The plane fully loaded held just over 28,500 pounds of fuel, giving them a safety cushion of 500 pounds.
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The last item to be completed on the flight plan was the time to fuel exhaustion. Hugh spent a few minutes with the charts and came up with a time of four hours and thirty-six minutes. It was a figure that would later prove to be uncannily accurate.

A
TIME CHECK AT
L
ANDRY INTERSECTION, A POINT
approximately six hundred miles southeast of New York, indicated that the flight was on schedule. A few minutes later, ALM 980 passed over Bermuda. It's doubtful that the passengers were even aware they had flown over the tiny island
.
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Having reached the halfway point in the flight, Balsey slowed from .78 mach (78% the speed of sound) to .76 mach. He had decided early on to fly the first half of the flight at a higher cruise speed and then reduce to a slower long-range cruise speed during the second half of the flight, where he was expecting a slight tail wind. He also elected to remain at 29,000 feet rather than climb to a higher, more fuel-efficient altitude. Jet aircraft burn less fuel the higher they fly. There was nothing preventing him from climbing to a higher cruising altitude. Balsey, however, rarely flew at the maximum operating altitude, an aversion he most likely acquired during training in the Air Force, where high-altitude dangers such as rapid decompression and time of useful consciousness are drilled into the minds of new cadets
.
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Regardless of the reason for his decision to fly at a lower altitude, the end result was a higher fuel burn. His choice of a high initial cruise speed also contributed to a higher fuel burn. While technically correct—the fuel burn entered on the flight plan was calculated using the lower altitude and the higher cruise speed–both decisions would later come under scrutiny, especially when considering that Balsey had made a low fuel landing in St. Maarten only two weeks earlier
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That Balsey's flight planning acumen would be called into question was no surprise to some. He wasn't the type of pilot to go digging through performance charts looking for ways to save a few hundred pounds of fuel. Fellow pilots described him as a good stick and rudder man. He was known to hand-fly an entire flight just to keep his flying skills sharp. Autopilots can make you lazy, he'd say.

Balsey's father was a gas maker for Central Hudson Gas and Electric. It was a blue-collar job that he hung onto for some thirty years. When he retired, his position was retired along with him. His mother was a homemaker who kept busy taking care of Balsey and his five brothers and sisters.

When he was six years old, Balsey lost a younger brother to leukemia. A year later the family was dealt another blow when Balsey's six-month-old sister Joan died from a blood disorder. Such were the realities of life growing up during the Depression years in rural upstate New York. Balsey himself was born in a house located on his grandfather's farm. The small farm, nestled in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, was an unlikely place for a young boy to grow up with aspirations of becoming a pilot. But two events in Balsey's childhood led him along that path.

The first of these two pivotal events took place at the county fair in Walton, New York in the summer of 1941. Balsey was a few weeks
shy of his ninth birthday. A barnstormer had landed in a grass field adjacent to the fairgrounds and was offering rides for five dollars a person. Balsey spent the day going from relative to relative scrounging up the money he needed for the plane ride, saying instead that he wanted it for games and ride tickets. As soon as he had the five dollars, he made his way to the edge of the fairgrounds where an open cockpit Stearman biplane awaited. It was a two-seater with the passenger seat in front and the pilot's seat in back. To make room for more passengers, the pilot had removed the front seat and had replaced it with two wooden planks. Balsey handed the pilot the five dollars and eagerly took his seat. Minutes later, they were flying above the tents and carnival rides and rows of parked cars, dodging puffy cumulus clouds that sprouted up like popcorn. The ride couldn't have lasted for more than fifteen minutes, but by the time the plane touched back down on the bumpy grass field Balsey was hooked.

A few months after Balsey took his first airplane ride, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Like other kids his age, Balsey read everything he could get his hands on about the attack and the war that followed. He was especially drawn to stories about American fighter pilots. He and his friends built models of military aircraft like the B-17 and the P-51 Mustang. Balsey had no way to pay for flying lessons, so he read books on the subject and set his sights on joining the Air Force.

Balsey enlisted in the Air Force after completing the equivalent of three years of college credit at New York University, where he was working towards a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. His first assignment was with the 44th Air Transport Group at Grenier Air Force Base in Manchester, New Hampshire. Balsey bought his first car at Grenier. He drove the car directly from the dealer's lot to the driver's license testing center. He was licensed to fly, but at twenty-two he still didn't have a driver's license. Balsey was transferred from
Grenier to McGuire Air Force base in New Jersey in November 1955. His primary mission was to fly troops and their families across the Atlantic. He accumulated a lot of flight time very quickly on those long flights across the Atlantic. A typical route would take him from McGuire to Ernest Harmon Air Force base in Newfoundland to Prestwick, Scotland and from there on to Frankfurt or Paris or other European destinations. It was fifteen or more hours of flying with no backup crew.