The Plane that Ran Out of Fuel

In November 1990, I heard engines struggling as a plane passed closely overhead on a foggy night in the Tri-State. It sounded as if clanging parts were spinning in the engine housing, and when I ran to see what I could see, I found a plane that was flying directly over and slightly to the left of my apartment, so low that I could see shadows of faces peering out the windows through the lifting fog. Shortly thereafter, all of the lights on the plane went out, and I couldn't get a visual fix on it any longer.

Soon there were TV broadcasts about Avianca flight 52, from Medlin, Columbia, crashing on the North Shore of Long Island. The plane had run out of fuel before it could land at JFK Airport. All four engines of flight 52 had been in fine working order, but they shut down one by one due to a lack of fuel. The clanging I heard represented the sound of an engine struggling to remain working--and then failing.

Earlier in the evening, Flight 52's landing at JFK was delayed due to bad weather and fog, and the one real opportunity the Avianca flight crew had to land was aborted due to the pilot's inability to find an open runway at JFK in the fog.

Now here's the kicker: Despite indications on board that fuel was dangerously low, the Avianca crew failed to notify air traffic controllers of a "fuel emergency." Such a declaration would have enabled the crew to land on a priority basis at one of New York's three metropolitan airports. Instead, the crew only referred to their flight as one in need of a "priority landing." By never using the actual words "fuel emergency" or simply "emergency," air traffic controllers didn't recognize or act on the extreme seriousness of the situation and gave other flights priority to land before flight 52.

As the airplane circled back toward the airport after its failed attempt to land, it passed over New York City itself, the lower Hudson River, northern New Jersey (highly populated Bergen County), and then back over the Hudson. It crossed over the Bronx before it crashed into a wooded hillside on the North Shore of Long Island with its 157 passengers and crew. 84 passengers died; 73 survived. If the plane had crashed in any of the areas over which it flew just before its final descent, hundreds more, perhaps thousands more, would have died that night.

It should have been enough for the pilots to say that they needed to land on a priority basis--whether or not they used the actual word "emergency."

Eighty-four people shouldn't have died due to a communication failure between the crew and air traffic controllers. Shouldn't the sound of fear in the pilot and copilot's voices have been enough to bring about an order for a priority landing?

There were shadows of faces in those windows when I looked out from my apartment that night due to the clanging of flight 52's engines, faces of many who died minutes later, all because of a big-time communication failure. Makes me so sad every time I think of it.