Sojourners of the Sky (34 page)

Thirty Five

B
ill taxied the simulated B747-400 onto runway five at the Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport in Taipei, on the island of Taiwan, China. He’d flown to the tiny island hundreds of times in his career and knew exactly why Tacker chose that runway over the dozens of others he could have picked.

Just a few short miles northeast of the airport, a very high mountain juts out of the murky ocean and combines with other lofty hills that encircle the airport to the southeast. The sharply rising terrain, mostly covered by very plush, jungle-like greenery, is particularly hazardous to all aircraft taking off in that direction. With such a steep gradient of rocks located so close to the field, if an aircraft were to encounter a mechanical failure shortly after liftoff it could quite easily spell disaster for all those on board. It is for this reason that all aircraft departing from runway five are required to make a sharp left turn toward the ocean immediately after takeoff.

With the briefing and checklists complete, Bill looked at Don and asked, “All set?”

“I’m all set, Bill,” said Don.

Bill pushed the power levers to the pre-planned reduced power setting for takeoff, keeping his hand firmly on the thrust levers in the event he was forced to make a sudden stop. The captain would not move his hands until the airplane passed the point at which stopping on the remaining portion of the runway would be impossible.

As the big simulated Boeing slowly gained speed, Don called out each twenty knot milestone. The closer the heavy airplane got to the decision speed--where Bill would have to decide whether it was safe to continue or not--the tension in the cockpit grew. A split second before Don called “V-one,” Bill removed his right hand from the thrust levers and grasped his control yoke firmly. If a problem were to crop up now, they would have to continue the takeoff. There were no other options.

Seconds passed as the aircraft sped through no-man’s land. The airplane was traveling too fast to stop, but not nearly fast enough to fly. If an engine were to fail during this part of the takeoff roll, things could get tricky. And of course, that is exactly what happened.

“Engine failure on number four,” said Don in a matter-of-fact tone.

Bill instinctively pushed all four thrust levers to the forward limit.

“Rotate, eleven degrees,” said Don, advising his captain to gently pull the nose up to eleven degrees of pitch.

Bill slowly rotated the nose skyward, and as he did so his copilot sang out, “V-two.”

When an engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, there is very little guessing as to which one failed. The nose yaws sharply toward the dead engine. In the B747, however, the yaw is not quite as pronounced. Pilots new to the Whale often push the wrong rudder pedal while attempting to counteract the unwanted yaw, only to inadvertently roll the airplane upside down.

Bill quickly glanced at the skid indicator on his main flight display to confirm which engine had failed. Once verified, he pushed the left rudder pedal to the floor. He then activated an electric trim switch that helped hold the rudder in place, while struggling with the control yoke to keep the airspeed precisely at V-two. Neither pilot spoke while they waited for the aircraft to reach a safe altitude.

John Tacker had set the cloud height at two hundred feet so that, once the airplane lifted off, there would be nothing to see except for the inside of the simulated clouds.

As they watched the altimeter slowly inch toward one thousand feet, both pilots heard an unexpected loud “pop,” causing the aircraft to yaw sharply to the right.

“Forward cargo door is open,” said Don.

Bill looked at the ECAM display and saw “FWD CARGO” displayed in amber. This, he knew, was going to cause some serious problems. Though he couldn’t see outside, Bill was well-aware of the rapidly rising terrain ahead. He also knew that company policy dictated a climb to one thousand feet prior to initiating any turns with an engine out. Bill’s experience told him that the Boeing could safely be put into a shallow bank, but with the cargo door disrupting the air flow, he first wanted to build as much speed as possible in order to prevent a loss of control. At the same time, he realized that if he allowed the airplane to accelerate too much the open cargo door would undoubtedly lead to an even more serious control problem. Bill didn’t know exactly what speed he should target, but quickly decided to let the airplane tell him through his hands. He knew time was against him and that he was practically out of options.

Bill counted the seconds in his head, calculating how long he could remain on his current heading. He knew the terrain was rapidly approaching, but held off on turning away until he could feel the airplane was ready to bank without stalling.

As the airplane struggled to gain altitude, Old Man Time, who would not allow himself to be rushed by any mortal, smugly permitted the seconds to advance at an agonizingly slow pace.

The moment their altimeters indicated one thousand feet, Bill started a shallow turn to the left. Barely ten degrees into the turn, however, an engine fire alarm rang out. Bill glanced at Don and noticed that the red light from the fire handle was reflecting off of his copilot’s glasses.

“Fire on number three, captain,” said Don, in the same tone that one might use to say, “Have a nice day.”

“Number three thrust lever to idle,” ordered Bill.

Bill watched Don do as he’d been ordered and then momentarily smiled to himself. The old-salt captain knew that John Tacker had deliberately boxed him in, hoping to watch his prey squirm before busting him. Bill kept the airplane in a shallow bank to the left, manipulating the controls as gently as possible. “I have the airplane, Don. You run the checklist for an engine fire. And when you’re finished, keep going and run the Cargo Door Open in Flight checklist. I’ll work the radios and tell them we’re planning a return to Taipei.”

“Roger,” replied Don as he reached for the emergency checklist.

Bill glanced at his altimeter and was shocked to see that they’d lost two hundred feet during their shallow-banked turn. There was no way he could roll the wings level to help the airplane climb, there were mountains ahead!

The heavy airplane Bill held under his control, with two engines out and a wide-open cargo door on the right hand side, simply refused to climb or accelerate. Both the airspeed and altimeter indications appeared to be frozen in place. The captain knew he had to do something, but wasn’t quite sure what or how.

Bill knew that banking the airplane reduced the wing’s ability to generate lift. In addition, with all the flaps hanging out he was quite certain the airplane would never go any faster. After mulling it over for far longer than he should have, Bill decided that there was only one thing left to try. But first, he had to shed some weight.

Bill reached up and turned the fuel dump switch to position “A,” and then pushed both dump valve push buttons to open. His actions caused all the fuel jettison fuel pumps to activate and the overboard jettison valves to open. The airplane immediately began dumping fuel at the maximum rate. Eventually, as the airplane cast off the extra weight, they would be able to climb and accelerate. In the meantime, however, the threats facing Bill were increasing with each passing second.

Flames continued to billow from the number three engine. At the same time, hundreds of pounds of jet fuel spewed from a dump nozzle on the aft part of each wing. Bill fidgeted in his seat because he knew that with just one flick of God’s, or in this case, John Tacker’s little finger, the highly volatile spray could easily ignite. The anxious captain could almost see the spectacular explosion in his mind. But he calmly reasoned that there was no other choice. To allow the airplane to descend unchecked, or to continue flying straight ahead, were not viable options. He simply had to keep turning and do what he could to get the massive machine to climb.

“Watch your speed, Bill,” advised Don, noticing their speed had dropped below the small amber hook on his airspeed display.

The amber hook visually warned the pilots that a stall was imminent if they didn’t act quickly. To stall a B747 with two engines out on one side would likely put the airplane in an unrecoverable situation. And with practically no altitude in which to maneuver, such a condition virtually guaranteed the flight would end in catastrophe.

Bill knew the airplane was decelerating, but since it had been refusing to climb he was gently trying to convince the big fellow to humor him. It wasn’t working. They were slowly sinking toward the ground and there was nothing Bill could do about it!

Twenty-five knots below the recommended airspeed for initiating flap retraction, Bill reached over and selected the flaps to ten degrees.

“What the heck are you doing!?” asked Don in a surprised, yet clearly angry tone.

“We’re sinking and she won’t accelerate. If I roll the wings level, we’ll hit the mountains. And since I’m now inside the amber hook, the only thing left is to get the flaps up,” Bill said in a calm, deep voice.

“Are you nuts? That is completely outside established procedures! This is totally unacceptable!” stated Don in a very loud voice. “All you’ve managed to do is raise our stall speed.”

“Don, you’ve been hiding in the training department for far too long,” said Bill. “You need to get out in the real world. What would you have me do, crash? Are you telling me that it would be OK to crash the airplane, just as long as I hit the ground with the flaps set properly and the speed where it’s supposed to be? I’m doing what I have to in order to get us safely back on the runway.”

When he didn’t get a reply, Bill quickly glanced over to his copilot and noticed that Don was looking at the FAA inspector, who was sitting in the back of the simulator with a smug smile on his face.

John Tacker knew there was no way a fully-loaded B747 could fly on two engines. And just to make sure, he threw in an open cargo door to guarantee the outcome. What he hadn’t counted on was what forty years of experience had taught the old man in the left seat.

Don swung around when he heard Bill retract the flaps to five degrees. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. The senior instructor was momentarily stunned, knowing his student had just sealed his own fate. He was about to explode into a fit of anger toward the rogue captain regarding his use of what he considered to be an unsafe and unproven procedure, as well as demonstrating incredibly poor airmanship. But just as Don was about to let himself go, he noticed that their speed had begun to increase. The instructor, whose mouth was hanging wide open, looked on as something that he considered to be completely impossible was happening before his very eyes.

It didn’t take long for their speed to fly past the amber hook. And even more remarkably, the heavy airplane gradually began to climb. Don was speechless.

“Don, have you run the checklist for the cargo door?” asked Bill.

“Uh, no, uh, Bill, I’m uh, I’m going to do it now,” said Don, still unable to comprehend what he was witnessing. He simply could not believe that some old line pilot could teach him something he didn’t already know. After all, he was a B747 instructor. He didn’t think anyone knew more about the airplane than he did. As Don ran the remaining checklists, he repeatedly glanced at the speed and altimeter displays, shaking his head in disbelief.

When Bill banked the airplane onto a downwind for runway five, level at two thousand feet, no one was more surprised than John Tacker. The angry Fed was forced to watch in awe as the old salt brought the massive airplane back to the airport in one piece. He’d knowingly placed Bill Pratt into a no-win scenario, one that he himself had been given during his training years earlier. Of course, John, who’d been given three attempts to fly the exact same departure, crashed on each try. Bill Pratt’s unexpected performance left John Tacker feeling completely flabbergasted.

Bill unassumingly called for each checklist in turn as he piloted his red-tailed Whale around the traffic pattern. It was as though the skilled airman had practiced that very scenario a hundred times.

Captain Pratt lined the enormous wounded bird up on final with seemingly no effort whatsoever. He carried some extra speed, unsure of what Tacker might try next. He half expected a windshear moments before touchdown or a truck pulling out on the runway, but neither happened.

The touchdown was so smooth it took a few seconds for the airplane to indicate that it was on the ground. The Boeing’s confusion subsequently caused a delay in the deployment of the ground spoilers, which is very much a rarity for B747 pilots to witness.

John briefly considered having one of the main landing gears collapse after touchdown, but gave up on the idea after watching how his longtime enemy seemed to become part of the machine he was flying. He concluded that there was very little Captain Pratt couldn’t handle.

After Bill had safely parked the aircraft at the gate, Don looked at his captain and said, “I’d love to go over that scenario with you again sometime. I had no idea the airplane would do that. I think we should incorporate that into our training program.”