No one is perfect. I make mistakes all the time. Fortunately, there are many barriers that prevent little mistakes from becoming tragic mistakes. The mistakes you will witness in this animation go well beyond anything I have ever seen. Most accidents lead to changes in either training, …
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My screenplay Tailspin was a quarterfinalist in the Bluecat screenplay competition. To give you some idea of how difficult it is to place in some of these screenplay competitions, this year there were 3552 entries. Of those entries, only 351 screenplays were selected as quarterfinalists. Now, if …
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the ditching of ALM Flight 980. For some, this day will be remembered for the heroism of the rescuers and for gratitude for having survived. For others, this is a day of remembrance. For the past week, I've been going over audio from interviews I did nearly …
Margareth Abraham was just twenty-four years old when she lost her life aboard ALM Flight 980. No one knows exactly what happened to Margareth. Did she make it out of the plane? Was she knocked unconscious? What I can say with some degree of certainty is that Margareth was standing in the aisle at …
The very first person I interviewed for my book was Jim Rylee. Jim was the commander of a Navy SH-3A Sea King helicopter that rescued twenty-six survivors. I flew to Louisiana to do the interview. It just so happened that I interviewed Jim on the thirty-first anniversary of the ditching on May 2, …
I flew to St. Maarten in 2001 to interview three passengers who survived ALM Flight 980. All three had agreed to be interviewed before I made the trip. When I got there, however, things had changed. One passenger would only agree to an interview if I paid him. I guess he thought I was some famous …
