Sojourners of the Sky (26 page)

Bill increased the Boeing’s rate of climb in hopes of flying above some of the clouds, but almost immediately after inputting the change he realized the futility of his effort.

A torrent of rain was suddenly unleashed upon the airplane, but the ride remained smooth. All four pilots in the cockpit held their breath, well aware that their turbulence-free situation was about to change. They knew there was no way the weather gods would allow such a thing. And they were right.

There was a sudden drop followed by a loud thump. The autopilot instantly disconnected, and with nothing there to stop it, the airplane quickly rolled into a fifty degree bank. At the same time, all six screens in front of them went blank. Their flight instruments were gone! A second later, bells and warning horns blared, coldly informing the men that they were in trouble.

“What do we do?” asked Doug.

“I, uh, wait, uh,” muttered Bill.

Rain struck the windshield with tremendous force, creating so much noise the pilots couldn’t hear themselves think. Bill reached up to activate the igniters inside the engines, hoping the hammering rain wouldn’t snuff out the fires inside. The turbulence that seemed to come out of nowhere increased exponentially with each passing second, causing the two hundred and thirty foot long airplane to buck and roll as if it were completely out of control.

Bill grasped the controls with all his might, but with no instruments to guide him he didn’t know what to do. He searched his brain looking for an answer--a way out.

The sudden rocking and rolling snapped John Tacker from his nap. He instantly knew that something was wrong. He waited a few seconds for the crew to right the airplane, and when they didn’t he knew he had to act. He leaped from his seat, yelling, “I’ll be damned if I’ll let them kill me!”

John flew into the cockpit and was met with silent stares. He could see terror in the pilots’ faces. He looked up and saw his arch enemy, Bill Pratt, sitting in the left seat, clearly overcome with fear. The pitiful sight prompted John to say, “No wonder.” He moved forward and yelled, “Get out of that seat, you old fool! Let me show you how this is done!”

John seized Bill by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the floor. He then took his rightful seat and quickly strapped himself in. Moving swiftly, the new captain scanned the panel and noticed that all the instruments had failed. He then brilliantly focused all of his attention on the small standby gauge in the center of the panel. John knew right away what had to be done.

Captain Tacker reduced the thrust on all four engines and began a descending turn to flee the storm as rapidly as possible. “I can’t believe you people tried to penetrate this!” he shouted.

“I’m glad you’re here, sir,” said Doug.

Two terrifying minutes passed before John was able to pilot the airplane into the clear. He glanced toward the rear of the cockpit and laughed. His grin was met with hoots and cheers. The pilots were truly pleased that he’d been there to save the day.

As he navigated the big Boeing back toward the Detroit airport, he could hear Bill Pratt’s voice. He looked into the face of his old enemy, but noticed his lips were not moving. He couldn’t understand what was happening. Was he losing his mind?

*

The hero’s eyes shot open. John Tacker glanced around and noticed right away that everything was normal, yet he could still hear Bill Pratt’s voice. He summoned one of the flight attendants over and asked, “Who is the captain on this airplane?”

The middle-aged woman replied with a smile, saying, “Captain Pratt will be our pilot for the first half of the flight, then Captain Hotchkiss will take over before we land. Captain Pratt is the one making the announcement now.”

John’s blood began to boil. As the flight attendant turned to walk away, he said, “Out of four thousand Northwest Orient pilots, I get the biggest back-stabber of them all? This is unreal!” He slid back into his seat, telling himself to calm down. He knew there was no way he’d be able to sleep for the remainder of the flight, not with his greatest adversary on the planet in command. He quickly concluded that he needed to stay sharp. There was a good chance he might be needed.

*

All four pilots were required to be in the cockpit for both takeoff and landing. Watching intently as their altitude inched ever higher, the moment the airplane climbed above eighteen thousand feet, both Steve and Mark departed the flight deck to begin their five-hour nap in a small bunkroom located aft of the cockpit. In the latter half of the flight, not long after passing abeam Anchorage, Alaska, both pilots would return to the flight deck and take over for the remainder of the leg.

For the next two hours, flight twenty-one slowly made its way toward the Land of the Rising Sun. Their route of flight would initially take them far to the north, practically spitting distance from the North Pole. The sun would be in their faces most of the way, but they much preferred that over the all-night flight they would face on their return to the States.

Passing over Traverse City, Michigan, Doug looked out his side window and caught a glimpse of his huge house, sitting empty beside a large green, tree-lined meadow. He momentarily felt regret, which was an unusual emotion for Doug. He peered out his window for a minute or two, wishing he could be at home having some beers with his buds, rather than flying to Japan with people he didn’t care to be around.

First Officer Doug Fordham grew up as a Navy brat. He attended the only real academy on earth--that being the one located in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated number four in his class and, just as he’d planned, was granted a slot to fly fighters off the front of a ship. When his hitch was up, he joined the reserves and flew fighters on the weekends. His two ex-wives complained constantly about his time away from home, but their words fell on deaf ears. Airplanes were his life, especially the fast, sleek and deadly kind. If any of the women in his life didn’t get that, then he would find another woman: No problem.

Doug, whose Navy call sign was Furball, had no appreciation and darn little respect for anyone who hadn’t flown in the military. He preferred flying with other fighter jocks, but if he had to he could tolerate the other, lower form of military pilot. Though he considered them to be little more than gas station attendants, tanker pilots were somewhat acceptable in Doug’s eyes because they served to keep his fighter full of fuel. But if the airplane’s mission was to haul stuff around, or even worse, if it had a propeller, Doug considered it nothing more than a garbage truck and its pilots equally worthless. Of course, it went without saying that it was a monumental struggle for Doug to hide his utter disdain for the non-military aviators he sometimes had to work with, like Bill Pratt.

A pilot who learned to fly outside of the military is sometimes referred to as a “FLAP.” The term is generally used as a light-hearted joke, but to Doug, a Friggin Little Airplane Pilot was considered an apt description of all non-military trained airmen. To Doug’s way of thinking, FLAPS were nothing but a bunch of low-grade, limited talent low-lifes, whose only useful purpose was to serve as a seat warmer for the real pilots. Had Doug ever bothered to ask, he would have known that his captain had served in the military long before Doug could even spell airplane.

Bill Pratt had seen Korea up close as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Toward the end of his tour, he earned a Purple Heart while helping to defend a forward airbase. After the war, while attending college, Bill learned to fly courtesy of the GI bill. He rarely spoke of his military experience, preferring to keep it in his past.

But his captain’s non-aviation military background would be of no consequence to Doug. Such things were so far beneath him, it would not be worth discussing. As far as Doug was concerned, Bill Pratt was just another guy who was blocking his move to the left seat; the seat that he considered to be rightfully his.

Captain Steve Hotchkiss, having arrived at work dead tired, was already fast asleep in the upper bunk, located fifteen feet behind Bill and Doug. Like Doug, Steve was also an alumnus of the Naval Academy. But unlike Doug, Steve graduated number one in his class. Unfortunately for Steve, at six feet three inches in height, he was too tall to fly fighters. Of course, he knew that going in and had chosen ahead of time to fly a P3, a four-engine turboprop aircraft used for maritime patrol. He was well aware of Doug Fordham’s opinion of P3 drivers, and was relieved that he wouldn’t have to sit with him for hours on end while being regaled with the same old fighter-jock stories he and everyone else had heard a thousand times. As he drifted off into dreamland, Steve actually had a smile on his face, knowing the rest of his day would be Doug-free.

On the lower bunk, Mark stared into the darkness of the unlit room. There were many things on his mind--things he simply couldn’t discuss. There was no way he would be able to sleep. Instead, he tried to organize his thoughts. Mark’s schedule indicated that he would be away from home for twelve days. He was to fly south to Shanghai, back to Tokyo, and then on to Bangkok, before returning home via Tokyo. It was indeed a difficult schedule to fly, but Mark had no intention of actually doing any of that. No, the junior copilot had made other arrangements. It took quite a bit of advance planning, but all of the ducks were finally in a row. His life was about to change and there would be no turning back.

Twenty Seven

T
wo hundred and fifty miles northeast of Yellowknife, Canada, Captain Pratt knew something was amiss. While his copilot sat silently staring out his side window at the vast nothingness of northern Canada, Bill studied the fuel system page on his secondary EICAS (Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System) display. This screen is used in flight by the pilots to monitor the fuel burn from each of the airplane’s eight fuel tanks.

The fuel system on the B747-400 is not fully automated; pilot monitoring and interaction is required. Left unattended, an imbalanced fuel burn caused by any one of the four engines could place the aircraft in a dangerous out of balance situation, and could quite possibly cause serious internal structural damage to the wings. On an airplane with four very hungry jet engines, fuel is a precious commodity and keeping it all in balance is an all-important task.

After a few minutes of monitoring, Bill’s suspicions were confirmed. Two yellow caution lights illuminated, accompanied by a quick four second warning beeper. A potentially serious problem was definitely brewing.

The unexpected beeping sound immediately brought Doug’s mind back into the cockpit.

“Looks like we have a stabilizer tank problem,” observed Bill.

Doug studied the EICAS and fuel displays and quickly reached the same conclusion.

“You have the airplane, Doug. I’ll run the checklist,” said Bill.

“I have the airplane,” said Doug.

Fuel was trapped in the tail tank, located over two hundred feet behind them in the horizontal stabilizer. If they couldn’t get it to transfer forward, all of that fuel would become unusable. In addition, if left uncorrected it would eventually put the aircraft into a severely aft center of gravity situation, making the aircraft difficult, if not impossible, to control.

Bill reached for the emergency checklist and began to read it aloud. After Bill read each line in the checklist, he performed the required task with his copilot watching his every move.

Doug may have only been a copilot, but he’d flown with enough of the old-timers to know that he sometimes had to watch them like a hawk. And if Doug wasn’t so completely self-absorbed, he would have noticed that he too had been slowly losing it to age. The fiftyish copilot had developed a slowly expanding gut and suffered from occasional mental lapses, all of which went unnoticed by him, but not by those who flew with the closed-minded has-been.

Captain Pratt had been around a lot longer than his copilot and had seen it all before. Whereas a younger captain might get annoyed when flying with a copilot with hawk-like eyes, Bill welcomed the backup.

After disabling a number of fuel pumps and transfer valves, Bill said, “The stabilizer and center wing fuel tanks are not available. There is also a warning. It says that we are not to jettison fuel.”

“Looks like we’ll be landing in Anchorage then,” said Doug.

“I agree. Why don’t you keep flying and I’ll call dispatch,” said Bill. “Maybe we can figure something else out.”

Doug nodded an affirmative, but thought otherwise. It never ceased to amaze him that some of the old captains seemed to have trouble with the obvious.
Why
, he wondered,
do these old guys, especially the FLAPS, always want to come up with something different?
It annoyed Doug that his FLAP captain couldn’t simply accept what the checklist told him and land in Anchorage for repairs. Doug asked himself under his breath, “What does he think some mechanic sitting at a desk is going to do? Does this aging idiot think he knows more than the engineer who wrote the checklist?” He shook his head, not realizing he was doing it, or that his captain noticed.

During Bill’s conversation with dispatch and maintenance control back in Eagan, Minnesota, Penny Simons, their lead flight attendant, called on the intercom. Bill glanced at Doug, telling his copilot with his eyes to handle it.

Doug answered the interphone, wondering what was so important. They’d been airborne for a few hours and hadn’t heard a peep from the flight attendants.
For all they know
, he thought,
we could have been dead up here for hours while they all sat back there divvying up the leftover meals amongst themselves.

“Yes,” queried Doug in a very matter-of-fact tone.

“We have a couple back here in first class that are a little upset about their meal,” said Penny, with an ever-so-slight southern drawl. She lived in Memphis, Tennessee and could best be described as being on the pudgy side of slim with a mountain of brown hair atop her head.

“What about it?” snapped Doug.

“This man and his wife both asked for chicken, but we didn’t have enough,” said Penny.

Rolling his eyes, Doug asked, “What is it you want me to do?”

Sensing Doug’s condescending attitude, the southern belle replied, “I don’t want you to do anything about the food. It’s just that her husband is getting belligerent. He started yelling at me and demands to speak with the captain.”

“Hang on,” said Doug with an angry sigh. He looked briefly at his captain and then said to Penny, “Bill’s a little busy with a fuel problem right now so he can’t talk. Besides, judging by what our checklist is telling us it may not make much difference what that guy gets to eat.”

She didn’t know what Doug was talking about, but felt a momentary stab of fear pass through her. Penny wondered if the copilot was suggesting that the airplane had developed some kind of serious malfunction. She’d been flying long enough to know that pilots often downplay serious problems when discussing them with non-pilots. Deep down she knew they probably weren’t going to crash, but the “fuel problem” comment left her with a feeling of unease. Penny told herself to remain calm until she had a chance to talk with Bill.

It’s quite likely that Doug’s attitude would have been a lot friendlier toward Penny had her figure been a little more, in his opinion, under control. Doug turned toward Bill, and speaking in a whisper, he quickly filled the captain in on what was going on while desperately trying to hide his total lack of concern for their lead flight attendant’s problem.

“Tell Penny to give them my meal,” said Bill. “I ordered the chicken, but I’m not hungry. I don’t think I’m going to eat.”

“Bill said to give them his meal. He’s not going to eat,” said Doug, before clicking off the interphone without waiting for a reply.

The conversation with maintenance and dispatch took the better part of twenty minutes, and concluded with a decision to divert to Anchorage, Alaska. Doug smiled to himself when he heard the news, but Bill was troubled.

The old salt wore a forlorn expression on his face because he felt a diversion was unnecessary. He’d been flying B747s for a long time and had one trick up his sleeve that he wanted to try before stranding four hundred people in an Anchorage hotel room for the night. Bill knew such a diversion would cost the company a small fortune. He’d run his thoughts by the maintenance controller, but his idea was met with skepticism. After some back and forth, Bill was advised not to attempt any work-arounds.

While Bill considered how best to proceed, Doug was already planning where he would go for dinner later that evening in downtown Anchorage. He still had a couple of buds on active duty and wondered if they’d be up for some dinner and a few laughs.

“Doug, I’m going to try something. I suspect we might be able to get one of the stab tank pumps to run if we momentarily activate the jettison system,” suggested Bill.

An annoyed Doug glared at his captain. “Are you nuts?! Isn’t there a warning in the checklist in large print about not jettisoning fuel?”

“Yes, but…” said Bill before being cut off.

“If just one of those jettison pumps or valves gets stuck, we could inadvertently pump most of our fuel overboard,” said Doug in a loud, clearly annoyed tone. “And you know as well as I do, if that were to happen, we could end up being so far out of center of gravity the airplane might become uncontrollable.”

“I know what you’re saying, but my intention is to activate the system for only a second,” said Bill. “It may just be a loose connection. By activating one of the pumps through the jettison system and not the normal system, it might be just enough to kick it into action.”

“And what makes you think that?” asked Doug in a condescending tone.

“The pumps, when they’re activated via the jettison switch, receive power from a different source. I’m thinking that the loose connection might be from the main electrical supply only. If we jumpstart it, then it might be just enough to get it to operate normally,” said Bill. “I’m talking about a one or two second run-time.”

Shaking his head in irritation, Doug said, “No, that’s not a good idea. Too many things could go wrong. What do you have against following established procedures?”

“I don’t have anything against following established procedures. But I saw something similar to this once, back when I was a copilot on the 747-200, and it worked. I understand the potential dangers, but our fuel is sufficient to make Anchorage and we’ll still have options if we can’t get the jettison system to stop.”

“Have you ever heard of a fuel tank explosion?” asked Doug. “Of course you haven’t, but we had a couple of them in the military. What if this little plan of yours puts juice into a short circuit and then ignites the fuel? If you want to blow the tail off of this airplane, do it when I’m at home.”

“There’s no reason to believe that we have a short circuit. You know it gets extremely cold in the aft tank and it might just be that the fuel pumps, or perhaps one of the valves, are frozen,” said Bill.

“There are two fuel pumps back there, Bill. Are you telling me that they both froze up? Come on! I’ve been flying this airplane for five years and I’ve never even heard of such a thing,” argued Doug.

“I wouldn’t attempt this if I thought it was the least bit dangerous.”

“If you reach for that jettison switch, I’ll break your arm!”

Bill stared at his copilot for a long moment and weighed the options. He knew Doug was right, but at the same time he felt there was minimal risk. Bill had always considered himself to be a mission-oriented pilot. He didn’t like the idea of landing short without first exploring all of the options. Neither did he like being threatened by a guy who was living in his past, especially knowing how the man felt about everyone that hadn’t shared a similar past. Bill was also keenly aware that Doug instantly disliked anyone that didn’t agree with his views, political or otherwise, and was more than willing to be vocal about it. It was no surprise to Bill that his copilot thought little of him, but he didn’t care. Copilots, he knew, could rant and rave all they wanted, but the only real responsibility they have is to show up for work on time. The one person who is accountable and liable for the lives of everyone on board was the captain, whether Doug liked it or not.

After thinking about it far longer than he wanted, Bill reached up and activated the fuel jettison system. He turned the knob to system “A,” and then pushed the left nozzle valve to open.

Doug tried to block him, but he was too late. He then glared at his captain with fury in his eyes. Doug wanted to scream at the old fool for putting everyone’s life in jeopardy, but he was so angry he couldn’t find the words. The enraged copilot felt his face grow hot. He turned away, telling himself to calm down. He wanted to beat the old man to a pulp, but knew he might soon be forced to deal with a very serious situation and needed to get a grip on his emotions beforehand.

Three anxiety-filled seconds passed before Bill reached up and deactivated the fuel jettison system.

Seeing his captain’s arm move, Doug looked over to make sure the old man wasn’t trying to open the right nozzle valve, too.

Tension hung in the air as both pilots watched the fuel system page waiting to see the result. Doug clenched his teeth, ready to lash out at the lunatic in the left seat.

Bill’s heart raced, knowing his career may have just ended. Much was riding on his unauthorized “work-around.”

Fuel continued to be pumped overboard even though the system had been disabled. Bill watched the pink outline on the fuel display, willing it in his mind to go away.

The pink outline on the fuel tank display denotes fuel dumping in progress. It is the only thing on the airplane systems display that utilizes that color, highlighting the seriousness of the procedure. Without pilot intervention, the fuel would continue to be jettisoned overboard until there was about one hour of fuel remaining in the tanks, leaving the pilots with very few options.

Doug sighed. He turned and reached for his book containing the approach charts for Yellowknife, Canada. The thought of missing out on some good times in Anchorage bothered him far more than the emergency landing that he just knew was in the offing.

Bill momentarily considered activating system “B,” but thought better of it. He wasn’t much looking forward to sitting before the review board, but he was more concerned with all the lives his reckless actions had just disrupted.

A minute later, pink turned to green: the plan worked. The momentary electrical charge, originating from a different circuit than the normal system, caused one of the stabilizer pumps to come to life. Thirty seconds later, both pumps were operating normally and the fuel jettison system was shut down. The crisis was, for the moment anyway, averted.