Excerpt 1

At the Charles Harwood Memorial Hospital in Christianstead, the passengers began to mingle in the halls of the hospital, comparing notes on their experiences and trying to make arrangements for flying back to New York. Emerson Ussery, who had had such a hard time convincing local authorities and hospital staff that he had been a passenger on the flight, handed out money to a number of distressed passengers. He then called his family physician who scheduled him for x-rays. The x-rays indicated that he had several crushed discs in his back. Later that day, he was fitted with a full body brace that he would end up wearing for nearly three months.

Bill Bohlke and his wife Tuddy arrived at the hospital early that morning. It didn�t take long after Tuddy was admitted for word to get out that a pilot of one of the aircraft that had been circling the accident scene was at the hospital. Bill was soon swarmed by survivors with questions about what he had seen. They described what their husbands or wives had been wearing and asked if he had seen them. They were still holding out hope that there might be more survivors. Bill tried to explain that it was difficult to make out details from the air. In Bill�s mind, everyone who had made it out of the aircraft had been picked up. He grew increasingly uncomfortable as more passengers approached him with specific questions about missing loved ones. Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, and nervous over the prospect of becoming a father, Bill told his wife that he was going to the airport and to call if there was any news. Tamara Ann Bohlke was born a little after 4:00 in the afternoon on May 3, 1970. Bill arrived back at the hospital within minutes of the delivery.

Excerpt 2

On Tuesday, additional ONA managers arrived in St. Croix, including Ed Starkloff, Milt Marshall, and Ed Leiser, the Superintendent of Maintenance. That morning they met with the NTSB investigators and were assigned to different investigative groups. Ed Veronelli was assigned to the human factors group. The primary focus of the human factors group is crash survival analysis. One of Ed�s tasks was to interview survivors at the hospital in Christianstead. This was Ed�s first experience with an accident investigation, and he found the job unsettling. One passenger they interviewed was Gloria Caldwell, the woman who had lost her husband and two little girls. When Gloria learned that Ed was with ONA, she asked him to leave the room and refused to answer any questions until he did. From that point on, Ed identified himself only if asked.

Ed listened carefully as passengers described seats being ripped from the floor and seatbelts failing. He heard complaints about passengers not having adequate warning prior to impact. He heard about difficulties with finding, opening, and donning life vests. Several passengers reported that the life vests were inadequate for the conditions that existed, claiming that the vests rode too high around their necks, restricting their breathing and funneling water into their faces. Some stated that the life vests failed to keep their heads above the water.

Excerpt 3

The most recent ditching of a commercial aircraft, as of this writing, occurred on August 6, 2005. The plane was a Tuninter ATR-72 turboprop en route from the Adriatic port of Bari to the Tunisian resort of Djerba. The plane ran out of fuel and was forced to ditch in the Mediterranean off Sicily's northern coast. The plane broke apart on impact, but a large section of fuselage remained floating long enough for survivors to cling to it until rescued. Twenty-three of the thirty-nine people on board survived. Investigators determined that mechanics had inadvertently replaced the fuel gauge on the plane with one from an ATR-42, which is a smaller version of the ATR-72.

Statistics show that there are approximately twelve to fifteen aircraft ditchings a year, almost exclusively involving light aircraft. Examples include general aviation aircraft, banner pilots, fish spotters, ferry flights, and smaller commuter aircraft. There are 171 airports in the U.S. located within five miles of a body of water of at least one-quarter square mile in surface area. The number worldwide is manyfold that of the U.S.

Today, passengers traverse the world�s oceans giving scarcely a thought to the vast expanse of open water beneath them. Yet if history is any indication, it is only a matter of time before another commercial airliner finds itself at the end of an error chain that leads to another ditching. It�s hoped that when that time comes, the lessons learned here will make a difference in the final outcome.