Lockout

CHAPTER NINE

Shanwick Air Traffic Control Facility, Shannon, Ireland (9:15 p.m. local / 2115 Zulu)

“Pangia One Zero, Shannon on HF. Are you experiencing any difficulty, sir?”

Arthur O’ Brien had triggered the selective call code for the flight he’d been watching on their new extended radar, speaking on high frequency radio. There was no guarantee the crew of Pangia 10 would hear him, but they hadn’t responded to his satellite computer message and this was getting serious.

Arthur leaned in slightly as he studied the computer-generated displays of the air traffic under his control, most of them entering, leaving, or navigating the Nat Tracks–the North Atlantic Track System. He was dead tired, but his focus had snapped to the glowing symbol representing a Pangia Airways jumbo jet after it had made a completely unexpected U-turn at 38,000 feet.

He could feel his fatigue evaporating.

“Pangia One Zero, how do you hear Shannon Centre?” he repeated, his finger moving imperceptibly against the transmit switch.

Even in the subdued atmosphere of the radar room, the uptick in his voice had caught the attention of his shift supervisor, and Sean Smythe was beside him, glancing with rising concern at O’Brien’s display. The Tel Aviv-to-New York flight was boring eastbound, the huge Airbus A330 now challenging a sky full of westbound jetliners approaching their North Atlantic Track System entry points, including two 747s closing on their position at the same altitude.

“Bloody hell!” O’Brien muttered, his voice low and steady, his mind on full alert.

“He’s not talking to me, and he hasn’t responded to the CPDLC message, and I only caught this when he crawled back on to my scope.” O’Brien said to Smythe without looking up. He mashed the transmit button again, hard enough this time to feel his finger protest. “Pangia One Zero, Shannon, how do you hear us? We see you’ve made an unauthorized course reversal.”

O’Brien finally glanced up at his chief, and Smythe read the grave expression on the controller’s face. He had worked with Arthur O’Brien for a decade and had never seen him rattled, and while this was no exception, the rising tide of tension was washing over him as well.

“Better clear the way,” Smythe said, voicing O’Brien’s thoughts.

“Got it,” Arthur answered, his finger already triggering the transmitter as his mind shifted to the high-speed task of keeping a sky full of jetliners from colliding with the rogue Airbus. All of those westbound flights were closing in on their entry points to the North Atlantic Track System, after which they would be out of direct radio contact, passing position reports primarily through satellite-based computer messages. But for now he had to rearrange those jets approaching the coast, and it would all be done with numbers: compass headings, fired by voice into the headsets of a dozen airline pilots, shattering what had been a quiet, routine passage over western Ireland.

Turning a British Air 747 to a heading that wouldn’t conflict with the Pangia Airbus was his first urgent task. Using the traditional radio call sign of all British Air flights the order rolled easily off his tongue.

“Speedbird Two Three, turn immediately to vector heading three-zero-zero, acknowledge.”

The obviously puzzled voice of a pilot with an exceptionally cultured accent replied from the British Air cockpit. “Vector heading three-zero-zero, Speedbird Two Three, Roger.”

Very well… the Air France flight next, then Virgin Atlantic, then American.

The British Air pilot interrupted before Arthur could trigger the next command.

“Shannon, Speedbird Two Three. Have we lost our Nat Track clearance then?”

“For the moment, yes, Speedbird. Remain this frequency and standby.” The pace of his words was accelerating, the same motormouth tendency he had always complained about in other controllers who tried to stuff too many words down the finite “tube” of a push-to-talk radio in any given period of time. But there was no time to hesitate. Three oncoming flights had to be turned away quickly and in the form of a messy starburst maneuver there would be no time to explain.

“Air France Two Eighteen, Shannon. Turn right immediately, vector heading three-zero-five. Break, Virgin Four Four Six, immediate right turn, vector heading three-one-zero. Break, American Twelve, immediate right turn, vector heading three-two-zero.”

A cascade of acknowledgments flowed through his headset from each flight, each voice registering tension as the collective group of airmen perceived the alarm and urgency in their controller’s inflections. O’Brien saw the respective blips beginning to change course just as the voice of the British Air pilot cut through his consciousness again with a chilling message.

“Shannon, Speedbird Two Three. We’re responding to a resolution alert.”

Dammit! Arthur thought to himself. The TCAS—the onboard traffic collision avoidance system—in the British Air 747 had electronically detected the oncoming Pangia Airbus A330 and was now commanding the pilots to make an emergency climb or descent to avoid a collision.

But which was it? Up or down? The TCAS had essentially yanked control of the 747 out of his hands, and he was prohibited by regulations from trying to interfere.

The image of a second rogue jumbo jet now climbing or diving through a traffic jam of airplanes stacked at 1,000-foot intervals above and below gripped him like a blast of arctic air. It was a game of instant contingency planning, with deadly stakes.

Arthur forced a breath and waited for the next sweep of the radar to make its way through the computers and onto the datablock on his screen, each sweep a new brush stroke in an ever changing work of electronic art. The numbers changed suddenly, showing the British Air jumbo in an emergency climb.

He could deal with that.

Arthur snapped out two more commands, ordering heading changes for the eastbound jetliners whose altitude the British Air flight was about to invade as he struggled to climb above the oncoming Pangia A330. The routine radar “picture” had suddenly become a deadly video game of changing vectors, and he watched the British Air 747’s blip close on another 747 just above him as the second jet began to turn out of the way. British Air was leveling nearly 2,000 feet above his original altitude, safely clear. He knew they couldn’t collide with anyone now, but Arthur’s stomach had already condensed to the size of a pea watching the small computer-generated blocks of data representing each airborne aircraft merge together, then crawl apart intact with agonizing slowness.

He looked at the Pangia datablock again, wondering what else was wrong. Something had snagged his attention, and all too slowly the recognition dawned: While British Air had responded to the resolution alert, Pangia had not. Why? The TCAS system in both airplanes were supposed to be communicating at light speed with each other, mutually agreeing that one flight would climb while the other would descend to avoid a potential collision. British Air had gone up. Pangia had remained at flight Level 380!

O’Brien looked up and locked eyes briefly with Sean, an unspoken sentence wordlessly communicated in the fleeting glance: What the hell is Pangia doing?