Blackout

CHAPTER 12

“Where is he going?” The facility chief was leaning over the duty controller, watching the faint return from Meridian Flight 5 crawl away from Hong Kong.

“He’s heading approximately zero-eight-zero,” the controller said. “But his transponder is not working. All we have is the raw radar return.”

The chief nodded. “I’m not surprised. He had to have lost equipment when he took out the Runway Seven-right ILS tower. I am surprised he’s still in the air.”

“Meridian Five, Hong Kong Approach. How do you copy?” The controller looked up at the chief. “I’ve been calling him constantly. He either can’t hear us, or he can’t talk.”

“Maybe both,” the chief replied. “Keep trying him, though.”

“Meridian Five, do you hear Hong Kong Approach?” Still no response. “I’ve asked an outbound Cathay Pacific flight to look for him out there, but there’s a thunderstorm cell to the east that may make it more difficult. Is there anything else we can do to help him?”

The chief thought for a long time before shaking his head again. “If he is truly blind, and if there are no other pilots on board to help him fly that airplane, his only chance is an automatic landing. The other ILS system is working for Seven-left, but he’ll have to find the beam on his own. Make sure that ILS is up and monitored!”

“Yes, Sir.”

The chief straightened up. “Keep calling him. Ask him to make turns even if he isn’t responding, just on the chance that he might be able to hear us. If not — if you lose his radar return — note carefully his last position and call me upstairs.”

The possibility that faulty airport equipment had almost caused a crash was politically intolerable — as intolerable as the idea that a brand-new, state-of-the-art ILS system could fail. The ILS had been hit by lightning. That was not their fault.

The thought of the hapless blinded pilot and his crew and passengers losing what might have been their only chance for a safe landing sickened the chief.

Maybe, he thought, maybe there’s another pilot on board after all.

“What’s our altitude now?” Dan asked.

“Climbing through five thousand steadily,” Geoffrey answered.

“Your left wing is dropping again, Dan,” Dallas said.

He rolled right in response as the interphone call chime rang. “How’s that?”

“Good. Wings are almost level again. Now they’re level.”

Dan reached for a switch on the overhead panel, feeling it latch into place.

“Hey! That helped. The cockpit lights are back,” Dallas said.

“Robert?” Dan said. “Grab that handset from the back of the center pedestal and see who’s calling.”

“You bet.” Robert MacCabe pulled the handset from its cradle to hear the shaking voice of a flight attendant from somewhere below. “Captain? I think we hit something. There’s a terrible roaring under our feet.”

Robert shielded the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hang on. He knows.”

Dan reached to the center pedestal behind the throttles and changed his radio settings before calling Hong Kong again, but there was still only silence.

“Dan, the left wing is down five degrees,” Geoffrey told him.

“Roll right a little, Dan,” Dallas echoed, “and bring your nose down a bit. You’re what I’d call about ten degrees up.”

“Airspeed?” Dan’s voice was little more than a hoarse croak.

“Two hundred sixty, no, two-seventy,” Dallas shot back.

Dan Wade throttled back, listening to the distant whine of the engines. “Altitude?”

“Ah,” Dallas began, “coming up to seven thousand feet.”

“Help me level off, Dallas. I’m going to start pushing over now. Give me degrees of nose up.”

“Okay, you’re about ten nose up, now eight… five… three.”

Dan pulsed the yoke back about an inch. “How about now?”

“Nose up about three degrees. You’re dropping a little.”

He pulled back slightly and triggered the elevator trim, which repositioned the horizontal tail up or down to reduce the need for back pressure or forward pressure on the controls.

Once more he called Hong Kong Approach.

And once more there was utter silence from the radios.

“That’s… what I was afraid of,” he said quietly.

“Get your nose up a little, Dan, and roll right a bit,” Dallas added. “What were you afraid of? What does that tell you?”

Another long, ragged sigh from the right seat. “It… tells me we have no radios, no navigation radios, no autopilot. It tells me we crammed something into the electronics bay and my popping ears tell me we’re depressurized.”

“So what do we do?” Geoffrey Sampson asked.

“I can tell you this, folks,” Dan said, his voice breaking. “I… cannot fly this way for very long.”

Robert leaned forward and grabbed his right shoulder. “Dan, hang on. And this isn’t a Leslie Nielsen speech. We’re going to do this together. We’re going to find a way to talk you through it, okay?”

Dan was shaking his head with increasing violence. “No! NO, NO, NO!” There was a sharp intake of breath and a sob from the right seat. “Don’t you understand? I can’t do this! We have no autopilot and now we have no contact. We’re all alone up here. We can’t talk to anyone, we can’t navigate, and we’ve got no way to land! I couldn’t even keep it flying straight through the last hundred feet.”

“There’s got to be a solution,” Dallas said, her voice low and tense. “And Robert’s right. You’ve got to hang on.”

“GOD! Don’t you think I know that?” Dan turned his bandaged head to the left. “Geoffrey, thank you for the help. Please get out of that seat and let Ms. Nielson in it. Dallas? You’re going to have to fly.”

“Not on your life, Honey!”

“Britta said you were a flight engineer on seven-forty-sevens!”

“No. I’m a broadcast engineer who’s logged hundreds of hours flying Microsoft simulators using a keyboard. ’Course, I might have forgotten to mention the broadcast part, but your flight attendant wasn’t going to let me up here otherwise.”

“Microsoft?” Dan asked incredulously. “Microsoft?”

“That’s right,” Dallas said. “It’s an airplane computer simulation program you run on your home computer. They even have a seven-forty-seven cockpit, but since it was an office computer, all I had for a control yoke was the keyboard.”

“Which is why you can read the basic instruments, right?” Dan asked.

“That’s it,” she replied. “And right now I read your left wing down. Roll right a little, nose back up a degree or two.”

“Lord, if you hadn’t been such a help, I’d throw you out of here. But if you can read the instruments, Dallas, you can fly the plane,” Dan said.

“Not only no, but hell no! I don’t want to die that fast. I’d probably have us upside down before you could scream.”

Geoffrey Sampson had quietly placed his hands on the control yoke. “Let me give this a go, Dan.”

“You mean, try to fly it?” Dan asked.

“Indeed. Ms. Nielson? Would you assist me with the readings?”

“You bet your British backside I’ll help you,” she said, as Dan took his hands off the yoke and retrieved the interphone handset, punching up the PA.

When something had crunched through the forward fuselage, Britta had jumped to her feet and raced downstairs from nose to tail, but other than terrified passengers, there was no visible damage. She’d turned at the rear galley to head back toward the front when a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.

“What?” she said none too gently as she turned. Oh. The smart-mouthed kid with the radio. Britta adopted a stern expression and looked him in the eye. “What can I do for you?”

“That guy’s losin’ it!” the boy said as he pointed to the approximate position of the PA speaker. His accent was clearly American.

Britta frowned at him. “He’s doing the best he can.”

“Look, Ma’am, we’re in deep shit if he’s blind without an autopilot.”

“Watch your language, young man! I don’t have time for this.”

“Do you need another pilot up there or don’t you?”

Britta hesitated. Someone so young couldn’t be of any help. Or could he? “Are you saying that you are a pilot?”

He nodded hesitantly. “This is a seven-forty-seven four hundred, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can make it fly.”

Make it fly? Britta thought. That’s not the way a pilot would talk. She leaned over and dropped to her knee, speaking directly to him. “Listen, I don’t mean to put you down, but I have a hard time believing that someone your age has been trained in something this big. Explain how that could be.”

“Look, we almost crashed back there and the pilot says he can’t see. I know enough to do a better job than a blind pilot!”

“How did you learn to fly? How? I need specifics.”

“My dad manages a pilot training simulator company. I can fly all of them. I don’t have a license, but I can fly the seven-forty-seven four hundred simulator.”

“Can you land?”

“Ah… sometimes.”

“‘Sometimes’ isn’t good enough.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see any other pilots running to the cockpit.”

“What’s your name again?” Britta asked, suppressing her dislike of him.

“Steve Delaney,” he shot back with an acidic tone. “What’s yours?”

She ignored the retort. “I’ll tell the pilot of your offer, Mr. Delaney.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Britta stood up and leaned over him. “Young man, when I say I’m going to do something, you may stake your life on it. I will brief the pilot and see if he thinks your expertise can help. If so, I’ll be back to get you quickly.”

She turned and moved rapidly up the aisle, working to stay upright as the aircraft began shuddering through turbulence.

“We’ve got a lot of lightning ahead, Dan,” Dallas reported, her eyes flicking back and forth between the instruments and the clouds they were entering.

“Oh, God,” Dan said, “I forgot the thunderstorms. Is the radar working?”

Dallas looked at the display screen and shook her head. “No, it’s not.”

“Then we could be in for a rough ride.” He reached up to the overhead panel and fumbled for the switch that controlled the seat belt sign, flipping it off and on twice before reaching for the PA handset and ordering everyone to stay strapped in.

“Are we going back to Hong Kong, Dan?” Robert asked quietly from the jump seat behind the copilot.

“I, ah, don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s… been no time to think about a plan.” Dan turned toward the left seat. “Geoffrey, I need you to keep us level and slowly turn us back to the west. And I need all of you strapped in.”

Geoffrey Sampson was fighting the airplane, overcontrolling on the upside, then on the downside, but slowly getting the hang of it, with Dallas’s help.

“I’m trying, Dan. This is very hard. I seem to be out of phase.”

“I can feel what you’re doing. Hold that input, Geoff! Don’t push down yet. Let it stabilize… there. Now push down. You’re chasing it and getting too tense.” Dan could feel the yoke being pumped first backward, then forward, then backward again, as the 747’s pitch-up, pitch-down response became more pronounced with each circuit.

“I can’t bloody well imagine why I’m tense. Can you?” Geoffrey snapped.

“I’ve got it, Geoff. Please let go for a few seconds,” Dan said.

“Very well.”

Dan took the yoke, instinctively dampening the porpoising effect. “Dallas, am I zero rate of climb and in a right turn?”

“Close,” Dallas replied, noticing the lead flight attendant in the doorway of the cockpit. “Bring the nose down just a hair, and roll a bit left.”

Britta had moved into the cockpit. “Dan, this is Britta.”

He slumped a bit in the seat. “We… were almost there, Britta. Is everyone okay downstairs?”

“I heard your PA. Everyone’s very scared, but no one was hurt. No internal cabin damage.”

He nodded without comment. She could see his right hand holding the control yoke as Robert gave her a quick synopsis. Her eyes grew wider. “How can you fly by hand? I mean, can’t… Mr. Sampson fly for you?”

“He’s trying, but he has no experience.”

“But how about the lady here? She has some experience.”

Dallas Nielson held up her hand. “No! I told you I can read the instruments, but I can’t fly this mother.”

“Geoff, take it back now,” Dan ordered. “Take it and just stay calm with your corrections.”

Geoffrey Sampson’s hands closed around the yoke as he swallowed hard. “Very well.”

“So—” Britta’s eyes were wide with fear as she looked around the cockpit and at the featureless black of night beyond the windscreen, punctuated every few seconds by lightning. The big ship shuddered through a small patch of turbulence, then steadied. “What, ah, what are we going to do?”

Dan sighed. “Britta, we’re in desperate trouble. All our radios are out. We’re deaf, dumb, and blind. We can’t talk to anyone down there, and without the autoflight system, I couldn’t set us up for another approach even if I could find an airport. There’s another ILS at Hong Kong, but we can’t use it even if I could find it. We may… have to ditch. If I can’t do anything else, I… guess we could descend slowly into the water off a coastline somewhere. But we’d have to wait until daylight.”

“But… can you… can we… oh, God!”

Dallas reached out and took Britta’s hand.

The sudden impact of the 747 with a wall of hailstones was preceded by only a few seconds of rough turbulence as the jumbo flew blindly into the side of a thunderstorm cell. Britta and Robert were thrown into each other, and then partially into the air as the entire structure of the big Boeing flexed and lurched through the angry updrafts and downdrafts. Sheets of lightning played out in front of them, accompanied by real thunder audible through the skin of the ship. Dallas grabbed her armrests, then reached out to grab on to Britta. Beads of perspiration showed on Geoffrey Sampson’s forehead as he fought to control the 747, his body straining hard against the seat belt with each lurch.

“Hang on to it, Geoff!” Dan called from the right seat. “Aim for three degrees nose up and wings level, and don’t even worry about altitude or rate of climb.”

“I’m trying!” Geoffrey managed, his voice strained and thin.

“Britta, Dallas, Robert? Are y’all okay?”

“We’re hanging on,” Robert MacCabe answered. Another thunderous impact of hail blotted out all other noises. The bouncing was too severe to read the instruments.

“What… is… the heading?” Dan asked, his voice nearly drowned.

“WHAT?” someone bellowed.

“THE HEADING. WHAT’S… OUR HEADING?”

“TWO HUNDRED FORTY DEGREES!” Dallas yelled back.

The hail ended as suddenly as it began, leaving a wall of rain in its place. Dallas could see Dan flailing around the overhead panel, feeling for a certain switch.

“WHAT DO YOU NEED, DAN?” She could hear his rapid breathing.

“ANTI–ICE. THERE!” He clicked on the wing and engine anti-ice systems, his hand repeatedly bouncing off the overhead surface as they lurched through air currents that seemed sure to tear the jumbo apart.

“Geoff! Roll back to the right,” Dallas barked in his ear.

There was no reply, just a nod, but the 747 responded, the roll to the right throwing all of them slightly to the left.

Again a wall of hail and rain and lightning and turbulence engulfed them, and the altitude decreased as Geoff struggled to keep the attitude and bank angle under control. The impacts of flying into shifting air currents at over 200 knots of airspeed bounced them too much to permit reading the instruments at times, and moment by moment the passenger flying in the left seat had to cope with recovering from a severe roll to the left or right, or a severe nose up or down attitude.

“GEOFF! WE’RE DESCENDING. WE’RE GOING DOWN THROUGH THREE THOUSAND!” Dallas shouted. “GEOFF! PULL IT UP!”

“I’M TRYING!” Geoff cried.

“THIS FEELS LIKE A DOWNDRAFT!” Dan yelled. “ALTITUDE?”

“TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED. DESCENDING FAST.”

“PULL IT UP, GEOFF! NOW!” Dan ordered.

“WE’RE BELOW TWO THOUSAND!” Dallas yelled in Geoff’s ear, watching him haul back on the yoke timidly. The nose came up to ten degrees as the altitude continued to wind down.

“WHAT’S HAPPENING? TALK TO ME, DALLAS!” Dan demanded, his hands holding on to the yoke and trying to follow what was going on. “WHAT’S OUR PITCH ATTITUDE?”

“TWELVE DEGREES UP!” Dallas yelled back. “AIRSPEED DECREASING, NOW TWO HUNDRED TWENTY.”

Dan grabbed the control yoke and yanked hard without warning. “TELL ME WHEN WE’RE THIRTY DEGREES NOSE UP OR LESS THAN ONE HUNDRED FIFTY KNOTS!” he commanded.

“WE’RE DROPPING THROUGH ONE THOUSAND FEET, DAN!” Dallas yelled. “OH, LORD! WE’RE GONNA HIT!” Anguish was creeping into her voice as the 747 continued to descend, the remaining three engines at maximum power, the nose pitched up to a frightening deck angle. To her right, Robert MacCabe and Britta Franz hung on to the seat backs and watched the altimeter unwinding in detached silence.

“WE’RE THIRTY DEGREES NOSE UP. SPEED’S ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY.”

“ALTITUDE?”

“COMING THROUGH FIVE HUNDRED FEET… FOUR HUNDRED… DAN, IT’S SLOWING, BUT WE’RE STILL DESCENDING!”