Airframe (21 page)

"I'm calling from Newsline" she said.

"Oh." A pause. "Just a minute, please."

She smiled. It never failed.

Gordon came on, and she asked him about the JAA certification, and the Norton sale to the People's Republic. "Is it true the sale is in jeopardy?"

"Every airplane sale is in jeopardy until it's concluded, Ms. Malone," Gordon said. "But as far as I know, the China sale is in good standing. I did hear a rumor that Norton is having trouble with JAA certification for Europe."

"What's the trouble there?"

"Well," Gordon said, "I'm not really an aircraft expert, but the company's had an awful lot of problems."

—Norton has problems.

Gordon said, "There was that thing in Miami yesterday. And of course you heard about that 115

incident in Dallas."

"What's that?"

"Last year, they had an engine flameout on the runway. And everybody jumped off the plane.

A bunch of people broke their legs jumping off the wings."

—Dallas incident—engine/broken legs. Tape?

She said, "Uh-huh..."

"I don't know about you," Gordon said, "but I don't like to fly very much, and uh, Jesus Christ, people are jumping off the airplane, that's not a plane I'd want to be on."

She wrote:

—jumping off plane YOW!

—unsafe aircraft.

And beneath it, in large block letters, she wrote:

DEATHTRAP.

She called Norton Aircraft for their version of the story. She got a PR guy named Benson. He sounded like one of those drawling, half-asleep corporate guys. She decided to hit him right between the eyes. "I want to ask you about the Dallas incident."

"Dallas?" His voice sounded startled.

Good.

"Last year," she said. "You had a flameout of the engine, and people jumped off the plane.

Broke their legs."

"Oh, right. That incident involved a 737," Benson said.

—incident w/737.

"Uh-huh. Well, what can you tell me about it?"

"Nothing," Benson said. "That wasn't our plane."

"Oh, come on," she said. "Look, I already know about the incident."

"That's a Boeing plane."

She sighed. "Jesus. Give me a break." It was so tedious, the way these PR types stonewalled.

As if a good investigative reporter would never find out the truth. They seemed to think if they didn't tell her, no one would.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Malone, but we don't make that plane."

"Well, if that's really true," she said, her tone openly sarcastic, "I suppose you can tell me how I can confirm it?"

"Yes ma'am," Benson said. "You dial area code 206 and ask for Boeing. They'll help you."

Click.

Jesus! What a prick! How could these companies treat the media this way? You piss off a reporter, you'll always get paid back. Didn't they understand that?

She called Boeing, asked for the PR department. She got an answering machine, some bitch 116

reciting a fax number and saying questions should be faxed, and they would get back to her.

Unbelievable, Jennifer thought. A major American corporation, and they didn't even answer the phone.

Irritably, she hung up. There was no point in waiting. If the Dallas incident involved a Boeing plane, she had no story.

No damn story.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, trying to decide what to do.

She called Norton back, saying she wanted to talk to someone in management, not PR. She was put through to the president's office, then was transferred to some woman named Singleton. "How can I help you?" the woman said. "I understand there's been a delay in European certification of the N-22. What's the problem with the plane?" Jennifer asked.

"No problem at all," Singleton said. "We've been flying the N-22 in this country for five years."

"Well, I've been hearing from sources that this is an unsafe aircraft," Jennifer said. "You had an engine flameout on the runway at Miami yesterday ..."

"Actually, we had a rotor burst. That's being investigated now." The woman was speaking smoothly, calmly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for an engine to blow up.

—"rotor burst"!

"Uh-huh," Jennifer said. "I see. But if it's true your plane has no problems, why is the JAA withholding certification?"

The woman at the other end paused. "I can only give you background on this," she said. "Off the record."

She sounded unsettled, tense.

Good. Getting somewhere.

"There is no problem with the aircraft, Ms. Malone. The issue concerns powerplant. In this country, the plane flies with Pratt and Whitney engines. But the JAA is telling us that if we want to sell the plane in Europe, we're going to have to equip it with IAE engines."

"IAE?"

"A European consortium that makes engines. Like Airbus. A consortium."

"Uh-huh," Jennifer said

—IAE = consortium Europe

"Now allegedly," Singleton continued, "the JAA wants us to equip the aircraft with the IAE

engine to meet European noise and emission standards, which are more stringent than those in the U.S. But the reality is we make airframes, not engines, and we believe the engine decision should be left up to the customer. We install the engine the customer asks for. If they want an IAE, we put an IAE on. If they want a Pratt and Whitney, we put Pratt and Whitney on. They want GE, we put GE on. That's the way it's always been in this business. The customer picks the engine. So we consider this an unwarranted regulatory intrusion by the JAA. We're happy to 117

put on IAE engines, if Lufthansa or Sabena tells us to do it. But we don't think JAA should dictate the terms of market entry. In other words, the issue has nothing to do with airworthiness."

Listening, Jennifer frowned. "You're saying it's a regulatory dispute?"

"Exactly. This is a trading bloc issue. The JAA is trying to force us to use European engines.

But if that's their goal, we think they should force it on the European airlines, not us."

—regulatory dispute!!!

"And why haven't they forced it on the Europeans?"

"You'd have to ask JAA. But frankly, I imagine they've already tried, and been told to go to hell. Aircraft are custom built to the carrier's specs. The operators choose the engines, the electronics packages, the interior configuration. It's their choice."

Jennifer was now doodling. She was listening to the tone of the woman's voice at the other end of the line, trying to sense the emotion. This woman sounded slightly bored, like a schoolteacher at the end of the day. Jennifer detected no tension, no hesitation, no hidden secrets.

Fuck, she thought No story.

She made one last try: she called the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington.

She got put through to a man named Kenner in public affairs. "I'm calling about the JAA certification of the N-22." Kenner sounded surprised. "Well, you know, that's really not our area.

You probably want to talk to someone at the FAA."

"Can you give me anything on background?" "Well, FAA aircraft certification is extremely rigorous and has served as the model for foreign regulatory bureaucracies. As long as I can remember, foreign agencies around the world have accepted FAA certification as sufficient.

Now the JAA has broken that tradition, and I don't think it's any secret why. It's politics, Ms.

Malone. The JAA wants the Americans to use European engines, so they're threatening to withhold certification. And, of course, Norton's about to make a sale of N-22s to China, and Airbus wants that sale."

"So the JAA is trashing the plane?"

"Well. They're certainly raising doubts."

"Legitimate doubts?"

"Not as far as I'm concerned. The N-22's a good plane. A proven plane. Airbus says they have a brand-new plane; Norton says they have a proven plane. The Chinese are probably going to take the proven product. It's also somewhat less expensive."

"But is the plane safe?"

"Oh, absolutely."

—NTSB says plane is safe.

Jennifer thanked him, and hung up. She sat back in her chair, and sighed. No story.

118

Nothing.

Period.

The end.

"Shit," she said.

She punched the intercom. "Deborah," she said. "About this aircraft thing—"

"Are you watching?" Deborah said, squealing.

"Watching what?"

"CNN. It's un-fucking-believable."

Jennifer grabbed her remote.

EL TORITO RESTAURANT

12:05 P.M.

The El Torito offered acceptable food at a reasonable price, and fifty-two kinds of beer; it was a local favorite of the engineers. The IRT members were all sitting at a center table in the main room, right off the bar. The waitress had taken their order and was leaving, when Kenny Burne said, "So, I hear Edgarton's got a few problems."

"Don't we all," Doug Doherty said, reaching for the chips and salsa.

"Marder hates him."

"So what?" Ron Smith said. "Marder hates everybody."

"Yeah but the thing is," Kenny said, "I keep hearing Marder is not going to—"

"Oh Jesus! Look!" Doug Doherty pointed across the room, toward the bar.

They all turned to stare at the television set mounted above the bar. The sound was down, but the image was unmistakable: the interior of a Norton widebody jet, as seen by a badly shaking video camera. Passengers were literally flying through the air, bouncing off luggage racks and wall panels, tumbling over the seats.

"Holy shit" Kenny said.

They got up from the table, ran into the bar shouting, "Sound! Turn up the sound!" The horrifying images continued.

By the time Casey got into the bar, the video segment had ended. The television now showed a thin man with a moustache, wearing a carefully cut blue suit which somehow suggested a uniform. She recognized Bradley King, an attorney who specialized in airline accidents.

"Well that figures," Burne said, "it's Sky King."

"I think this footage speaks for itself," Bradley King was saying. "My client, Mr. Song, provided it to us, and it vividly portrays the terrible ordeal passengers were subjected to on this doomed flight. This aircraft went into an unprovoked and uncontrolled dive—it came within five hundred feet of crashing in the Pacific Ocean!"

"What?" Kenny Burne said. "It did what!"

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"As you know, I'm a pilot myself, and I can say with absolute conviction that what occurred is a result of well-known design flaws on the N-22 jet. Norton has known about these design flaws for years and has done nothing. Pilots, operators, and FAA specialists have all complained bitterly about the aircraft. I personally know pilots who refuse to fly the N-22

because it is so unsafe."

"Especially the ones on your payroll," Burne said.

On the television, King was saying, "Yet the Norton Aircraft Company has done nothing substantive to address these safety concerns. It's inexplicable, really, that they could know about these problems and do nothing. Given their criminal negligence, it was only a matter of time until a tragedy like this occurred. Now three people are dead, two passengers paralyzed, the copilot in a coma as we speak. All together, fifty-seven passengers required hospitalization.

That's a disgrace to aviation."

"That sleazebag," Kenny Burne said. "He knows it's not true!"

But the television was showing the CNN tape again, this time in slow motion, the bodies spiraling through the air, alternately blurred and sharp. Watching it, Casey started to sweat. She felt dizzy and cold, her chest tight. The restaurant around her became dim, pale green. She dropped quickly to a bar stool, took a deep breath. Now the television showed a bearded man with a scholarly air, standing near one of the runways at LAX. Aircraft were taxiing in the background. She couldn't hear what the man was saying because the engineers around her were screaming at the image.

"You asshole!"

"Fuckface!"

"Weenyprick!"

"Lying dipshit!"

"Will you guys shut up?" she said. The bearded man on the screen was Frederick Barker, a former FAA official, no longer with the agency. Barker had testified in court against the company several times in recent years. The engineers all hated him.

Barker was saying, "Oh yes, I'm afraid there's no question about the problem." About what problem? she thought, but now the television cut back to the CNN studio in Atlanta, the female anchor in front of a photograph of the N-22. Beneath the photograph it said, UNSAFE? in huge red letters.

"Christ, do you believe that shit," Burne said. "Sky King and then that scumbag Barker. Don't they know Barker works for King?"

The television now showed a bombed-out building in the Middle East. Casey turned away, got off the bar stool, took a deep breath.

"Goddamn, I want a beer," Kenny Burne said. He headed back to the table. The others followed him, muttering about Fred Barker.

120

Casey picked up her purse, got her cell phone out, and called the office. "Norma," she said,

"call CNN and get a copy of the tape they just ran on the N-22."

"I was just going out to—"

"Now," Casey said. "Do it right now."

NEWSLINE

3:06 P.M.

"Deborah!" Jennifer screamed, watching the tape. "Call CNN and get a copy of that Norton tape!" Jennifer watched, transfixed. Now they were running it again, this time in slow motion, six frames a second. And it held up! Fantastic!

She saw one poor bastard tumble through the air like a diver out of control, arms and legs flailing in all directions. The guy smashed into a seat, and his neck snapped, the body twisting, before he bounced up in the air again and hit the ceiling ... Incredible! His neck being broken, right on tape!