​On January 25, 1990, at approximately 2134 eastern standard time, Avianca Airlines flight 052, a Boeing 707-321B with Colombian registration HK 2016, crashed in a wooded residential area in Cove Neck, Long Island, New York.  AVA052 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Bogota, Colombia, to John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, with an intermediate stop at Jose Maria Cordova Airport, nearl Madellin, Colombia. Of the 158 persons aboard, 73 were fatally injured. 

Because of poor weather conditions in the northereastern part of the United States, the flightcrew was placed in holding three times by air traffic control for a total of about one hour and 17 minutes. During the third period of holding, the flightcrew reported that the airplane could not hold longer than 5 minutes, that it was running out of fuel, and that it could not reach its alternate airport, Boston-Logan International. Subsequently, the flightcrew executed a missed approach to John F. Kennedy International airport. While trying to return to the airport, the airplane experienced a loss of power to all four engines and crashed approximately 16 miles from the airport. 

​We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew to adqueately manage the airplane's fuel load, and their failure to communicate an emergency fuel situation to air traffic control before fuel exhaustion occurred. 

Contributing to the accident was the flightcrew's failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system to assist them duringthe international flight into a high-desnsity airport in poor weather.

Also contributing to the accident was inadequate traffic flow managment by the Federal Aviation Administratino and the lack of standardized understandable terminology for pilots and controllers for minum and emergency fuel states.

​Recommendations were made to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Director, Departmento Administrativo de Aeronautico Civil (DAAC), Columbia,