ALM Flight 980
Overseas National Airways on behalf of ALM Douglas DC-9 · Water landing after fuel exhaustion due to pilot error
From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 23 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 63
- Survivors
- 40
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 37
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Douglas DC-9
- Flight
- LM980
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N935F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)To Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled international passenger service)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Engine failure or malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Fuel exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Improper in-flight decisions or planning
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Saint Croix, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
ALM Flight 980 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight that originated in John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, to Princess Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, on May 2, 1970. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the aircraft's fuel was exhausted, and it made a forced water landing in the Caribbean Sea 48 km off St. Croix, with 23 fatalities and 40 survivors.
The accident is one of a small number of intentional water ditchings of jet airliners.
Flight and ditching
Flight 980 made a normal departure from Kennedy Airport, and had an uneventful flight to the Caribbean, although the flight did need to descend to a lower altitude south of Bermuda to avoid thunderstorms, increasing the fuel consumption rate. After the flight was given descent clearance to 10000 ft, regional air traffic control (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, but shortly thereafter, the tower at St. Maarten advised them that the weather had improved sufficiently for landing.
Investigation and cause
Investigation and aftermath
The accident was investigated by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (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 system, and phasing out a metal to fabric design of seat belt then in use in favor of a more modern metal to metal design.
Captain DeWitt was fired six weeks after the ditching; he never piloted a plane again.
The only fatality among the crew, 24 year old flight attendant Margareth Abraham, was posthumously honored for her attempting to ensure all passengers were seated and secured before the impact. In 1990 the Government of the Netherlands Antilles officially named Curaçao International Airport's plaza, Margareth Abraham Plasa. In addition, during a special ceremony on May 2, 2024, commemorating the 54th anniversary of Margareth's passing, Curaçao Airport Partners (CAP) unveiled a mural honoring her.
Text from the Wikipedia article “ALM Flight 980” (revision 1359309649, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
CONTD UNSUCCESSFUL ATMTS LND ST.MAARTEN UNTIL INSUF FUEL RMND TO REACH ALTPT.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: ALM Flight 980
- Article
- ALM Flight 980
- Revision
- 1359309649 · 2026-06-14 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4652401
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19700502P038541
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "ALM Flight 980" (page 9223202, revision 1359309649); merged with NTSB case NTSB19700502P038541 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17); country from NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled intl passg service)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19700502P038541: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "ALM Flight 980" and NTSB case NTSB19700502P038541, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Unreviewed: it failed the site's consistency check (see the summary). Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.