Free Fall

Seven

Queens, New York

The next morning a vacuum cleaner hummed down the hall from a meeting room in LaGuardia’s central terminal.

Outside the room’s closed doors, Captain Raymond Matson waited alone to be interviewed by NTSB investigators. Nervous tension had dried his throat and he’d grown thirsty.

He hadn’t slept well.

He thought of his passengers and crew-they’d suffered fractures and concussions. Rosalita Ortiz, one of the flight attendants, had broken her back.

Matson clenched his eyes tight.

He’d already given a verbal report to an FAA inspector who’d met him and the first officer yesterday at the gate, and he’d provided a blood sample for analysis.

After several seconds, Matson opened his eyes. He resumed reviewing his notes when his phone vibrated with a text from his lawyer.

Papers are ready to sign whenever you can drop by. That’ll be it.

Matson stared at the message. With his signature, his sixteen-year marriage would be over. For a brief instant, he remembered a time when they’d been happy. He stared at a mural on the wall of Manhattan’s skyline and his wife’s accusations played through his thoughts:

You’re never home. You’ve become a ghost to us and I’m so tired of being a single parent to three children.

She’d already taken the kids and moved back to Portland. She’d let him take care of the house in Westfield; a for-sale sign was on the front lawn. She’d get 60 percent when it sold, according to the settlement. It was true. He’d missed birthdays, Little League games, recitals and graduations. He was married to his job and now it was hanging by a thread. The doors opened.

“Captain Matson, we’re ready to see you.”

A woman invited him inside to an empty chair at one end of a large boardroom table. The woman, dressed in a burgundy jacket, white top and matching pants, took her seat at the opposite end.

“Thank you for coming in so early this morning, Captain. I’m Irene Zimm with NTSB. I’ll be leading this session. To my right is Bill Cashill and Jake Hooper with the NTSB, then we have…”

She introduced the half dozen other officials who were seated at the table with notepads and pens poised. Small microphones rose from the table before each of them, as well as Matson himself. All eyes and a video camera were on him as Zimm proceeded.

“As we begin, you understand that this interview is being recorded, and anything you say will inform our investigation?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And you understand the rules and policies of the board, your airline and union, about talking to the media or public?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Very well, we’ll go over some preliminary matters. We have a summary of your verbal report. You’ve been in contact with Gus Vitalley from the pilots’ union, seated to your left.”

“Yes, we spoke yesterday.”

“And we have your blood sample.”

“Yes.”

Zimm tapped her pen on an open file folder she had before her and consulted a laptop next to it. “We’ll confirm your personal background with you. You’ve been with EastCloud for approximately thirteen years, and have been a captain for six of those years, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“You have over twelve thousand total flight hours, of which you were pilot-in-command for seven thousand flight hours.”

“Yes.”

“I see that you have no incidents and no failed check rides.”

“Correct.”

“As for the new Richlon-TitanRT-86, you have approximately eight hundred flight hours as the pilot-in-command.”

“Yes.”

“Prior to this trip, you and the first officer, Roger Anderson, had flown together twice before?”

“Yes. Chicago to San Diego and Phoenix to Atlanta, both in RTs.”

“Thank you. The aircraft has been taken out of service and moved to a maintenance hangar. The flight data recorder and the voice cockpit recorder have been removed and sent to our lab in Washington for analysis. We’ll also be examining air traffic control radar and weather. Now, leading up to the incident, you reported the trip as routine with no weather issues.”

“That’s correct.”

“Approximately twenty-five minutes into the flight, your course was one hundred fifteen degrees southeast, speed was four hundred ninety-one knots and your altitude was twenty-seven thousand feet, when you experienced a sudden, unintended series of roll oscillations, ninety degrees to the right then ninety degrees to the left, then a banked, unintended descent of seven thousand feet before you, Captain, regained control of the plane and alerted New York Center, then LaGuardia.”

“That’s correct.”

Zimm looked to the experts around the table as a cue to begin questioning Matson.

“The autopilot was engaged prior to the incident?” Bill Cashill asked.

“It was.”

“Did you at any time encounter turbulence?”

“No. And there was nothing of note on radar, and no reports of turbulence from earlier flights.”

“Clear-air turbulence doesn’t appear on radar, and the autopilot could make any needed adjustments for it,” Cashill said.

“I’m aware of the characteristics of clear-air turbulence. We didn’t encounter it.”

“Captain Matson,” Cashill said, “the Richlon-TitanRT-86 is a fly-by-wire model with an array of auto-detect safety systems to address any anomalies or problems that arise. The new design also has a provision that allows the pilot to disable those safety features so that in an emergency he or she can make control inputs that would not otherwise be permitted.”

“I am absolutely aware of the features of the RT-86.”

“Speaking strictly from a preliminary perspective, a strong theory would be that you encountered clear-air turbulence and did not feel the aircraft was responding to it, leading you to take the extreme step of disabling the safety features. In the process you overcontrolled the aircraft, causing the severe rolling, before you regained control.”

“I’m telling you there was no turbulence and I’m telling you that I did not disable the safety features. For a time the aircraft just went crazy and when I intervened, it refused to respond to our inputs. After we got tossed around, the plane inexplicably allowed me to take control again. This was a flight control computer malfunction, not pilot error.”

“No one said it was pilot error, Captain,” Cashill said.

“That’s what you’re implying, from a preliminary perspective.”

A few long, tense seconds passed before Jake Hooper spoke.

“Our analysis is not complete. We still need to download the data and conduct a full examination of the aircraft, along with other aspects.”

Another moment passed as Irene Zimm flipped through pages of a file folder then looked over her glasses at Matson.

“Captain, I’m looking at the results of your blood analysis.”

Matson met her gaze and braced himself.

“It shows traces of antidepressants.”

“Yes, I’m taking medication prescribed by my doctor.”

“Yes,” Zimm said. “I see that, and in keeping with airline policy you’ve reported the prescription and that it arises from therapy you’re undergoing as a result of divorce proceedings.”

Matson cleared his throat and swallowed hard at having his life exposed to the painful core.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s my job to be familiar with the impact of substances,” Zimm said, “and I’m familiar with the adverse side effects of some antidepressants. Did your doctor tell you that the medication you’re taking can, and I’m not saying this happened in your case, but can, in some instances, cause you to become agitated, emotional, suffer insomnia and confusion?”

“Yes, she did. But she indicated-and it should be in the file-that in my case, the medicine and dosage put me at a very low risk of exposure to those adverse effects and she green-lighted me to fly.”

“Yes, I see that in your file.”

Zimm tapped her pen and went around the table for follow-up questions.

Half an hour later, Matson was free to leave.

Since he was pulled from EastCloud’s roster to fly for at least a week, he went to Manhattan and walked through Central Park until early afternoon. Amid the splendor of the trees, the ponds, the lawns and the gardens, he felt the walls of his world closing in on him.

He knew what was coming.

Matson went to Saddle River, ended his marriage and asked his divorce lawyer to recommend a criminal defense attorney.