The flight crew was experienced but stretched thin. Captain Balsey DeWitt, 37, had logged 12,000 flight hours, including 1,700 on the DC-9. His co-pilot, 25-year-old First Officer Harry Evans II, had 3,500 hours, 600 on the type. Navigator Hugh Hart, 35, carried 7,000 hours of experience but only 17 on the DC-9. The aircraft itself was a twin-engine DC-9-33CF operated by Overseas National Airways on behalf of ALM Antillean Airlines -- a wet-lease arrangement that split the crew between two carriers, with ONA providing the aircraft and flight crew while ALM staffed the cabin. As the flight descended toward St. Maarten, air traffic control reported that weather was below landing minimums. Captain DeWitt diverted toward San Juan, Puerto Rico. Then St. Maarten's tower radioed that conditions had improved. The captain turned back. The weather closed in again.

With fuel critically low after the back-and-forth diversions, the crew flashed the seatbelt signs multiple times -- three times in rapid succession just before the ditching. But without the PA system, confusion filled the cabin. Were they landing? Circling? Some passengers and at least one flight attendant were standing or unbuckled when the aircraft struck the water. Navigator Hart, recognizing what was coming, left the cockpit door open so the cabin crew could hear what was happening. He, the purser, and a flight attendant tried to prepare the life raft, but it inflated inside the cabin on impact and went down with the fuselage. The engines flamed out at about 100 feet, according to Captain DeWitt. Then the ocean hit.

The DC-9 remained relatively intact after the water landing, but the deceleration was massive -- the aircraft stopped in a distance shorter than its own length. An emergency slide, likely from the R1 door, detached and became the survivors' primary life raft. Captain DeWitt escaped through the cockpit window, then re-entered the sinking cabin through the L2 door to help passengers out through the R1, R2, and R3 exits. He was the last to leave, exiting through the R3 door. The plane sank nose-first in approximately 5,000 feet of water. It was never recovered. Twenty-three of the 63 people aboard died. Thirty-seven of the 40 survivors were injured. Those who made it out found themselves bobbing in rough, shark-inhabited seas in life jackets, waiting.

A Pan American Airways pilot flying overhead witnessed the ditching, reported it by radio, and circled the scene to guide rescuers to the exact location. Recovery by helicopter began roughly ninety minutes after impact. The U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps all contributed to the effort. First Officer Evans, the last survivor pulled from the water, was recovered about an hour after the first helicopters arrived. The NTSB investigation laid the cause squarely on fuel management failures compounded by crew distraction. The weather situation and multiple diversions had overwhelmed the crew's ability to track their dwindling fuel supply. Specific failures included miscalculation of fuel consumption rates, misread fuel gauges, and incorrect computation of fuel remaining at landing time. The broken PA system, the split-carrier crew arrangement, the weather seesawing between landable and impossible -- each factor alone was manageable. Together, they were fatal for twenty-three people whose flight to the Caribbean ended in the sea itself.