Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

REVERSAL
PROLOGUE

The silken sky was endless, the stars infinite, the breeze sweet with a thousand promises. On a night like this, the past is forgotten and the future is forever.

Tony Kingston loved flying at night, the huge aircraft slicing through the tar black sky like some tri-masted sailing vessel on a great adventure. Which is what Kingston thought when feeling poetic, when he let the drone of the three massive engines wash over him, playing their serene song.

Other times, burdened with the reality of a discount air carrier in the era of deregulation, he thought he was flying a bus, an over-crowded, undermaintained, ancient clunker of a bus. Now, as he acknowledged instructions from Miami Center and descended to eleven thousand feet he felt the big jet’s power under his hands. It was still a remarkable beast, four hundred thousand pounds of muscle, one million separate parts in all. Looking as if it shouldn’t be able to get off the ground at all, this huge aircraft was a testament to man’s genius, he thought, just as surely as man was a testament to God’s genius.

Hell, the fuselage of the DC-10 looks like one of those fat Cuban cigars-the Robustos-I bring back from Havana.

Tony Kingston looked through the V-shaped windshield and into the night. To the left was the vast darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. Below and to the right were the twinkling lights of Florida’s Gold Coast, Palm Beach merging with Ft. Lauderdale and farther south, Miami Beach. In less than twenty minutes, they should be pulling up at the gate at MIA. Listening to the soothing white noise of the slipstream, he took the measure of his own life, calculating credits and debits, figuring he was solidly in the plus column.

A former combat pilot, Kingston sometimes missed the action, the camaraderie of the flight squadron. But he overly romanticized it, he knew, and flying a fighter was a young man’s game. What he had now was a career: chief pilot for Atlantica Airlines. The title almost sounded military. So why did the job often leave him wanting more?

Because commercial aviation is to flying what elevator music is to Mozart.

But what had he expected? Surely not the same rush he got from his beloved A-6 Intruder rocketing off the deck of a carrier, a load of HARM missiles slung under its wings.

“Miami Center, this is Atlantica six-four-zero at eleven thousand,” said copilot Jim Ryder into the radio.

“Roger, six-four-zero. Maintain eleven thousand,” came the scratchy reply.

In a few moments, they’d be handed off to Miami Approach Control, which would guide them from the ocean to the airport for landing. With a steady easterly sea breeze, they would make a sweeping loop over the Everglades to the west of the city and come back again, landing into the wind. It was routine. Tony would line them up with the radio signals that indicate the descent profile and the runway center line, then ease the big bird to the ground. Copilot Ryder would keep up the chatter with Approach Control, and Larry Dozier, the flight engineer, would scan the myriad gauges, which assured that hundreds of mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic systems were performing as intended. Within minutes, the passengers would be heading to their hotels or homes or cruise ships.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, expect Harvest Three approach for runway nine left,” Kingston heard in his earphones. On his right, Ryder opened the approach chart.

“Confirm intercept altitude at fifteen hundred feet and decision height two hundred,” Kingston told his copilot.

“Roger that,” Ryder said, consulting the chart. “Final approach fix is Oscar.”

Kingston looked forward to the landing. Even with all the computerized help, it still took a warm body to bring the plane home. For all its drawbacks, being a commercial pilot still beat a suburban commute and a nine-to-five job.

So why did he miss the adrenaline jolts he remembered from the Gulf War? He could still feel the G forces on takeoff from the John F. Kennedy that sunny and windy January day, the heightened heartbeat as he approached the target. One of the “Sunday Punchers,” he dropped a missile down the smokestack of the Iraqi cargo ship Almutanabbi, docked at a Kuwaiti port. The American public watched the whole thing on CNN, including an interview afterward with Kingston on the deck of the carrier. He was unshaven, his dark hair tousled by the wind. Behind him, a navy seaman was painting a hash mark in the shape of a ship on the nose of his fighter. Kingston smiled and spoke comfortably into the camera, his crooked grin and pugnacious chin seeming to symbolize American fortitude.

When he watched the grainy, black-and-white videotape of the bombing, Kingston was riveted by something he couldn’t see from his fighter: two men walking on the products jetty alongside the Almutanabbi. They paused and looked up. So strange. They must have heard the jet or the whistling approach of the missile.

One man said something to the other and shrugged. Then they continued walking. Several seconds later, the blast rocked the freighter, and the two men disappeared in a fiery cloud.

Why hadn’t they dived for cover? Why hadn’t they run?

Now Kingston derived a tranquil satisfaction from flying the fat Robusto filled with tourists. With all the computers and automated gear, he knew he was no longer so much a pilot as an operations director, troubleshooter, and systems manager. But in an emergency, he carried the lives of three hundred people on his strong shoulders. He was good at his job and figured he had finally grown up. He no longer needed the rush of a catapult takeoff from the deck of a carrier. He no longer needed the Top Gun macho swagger, the envious looks from men, the adulation from women. He had been a womanizer, a fault common to combat and commercial pilots alike. Now he had a committed relationship with a wonderful, intelligent woman, and if she was also beautiful and twenty years his junior-so what, some things don’t change.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, good evening,” Miami Approach welcomed. “Turn right heading two-two-zero. Descend and maintain eight thousand.”

Ryder acknowledged the message, and Kingston turned the aircraft toward the west. In a few moments, they were over Miami heading toward the Everglades. Both men listened to conversations between Approach Control and other aircraft. At forty-four, Kingston was older than his first officer but in better physical shape. Jim Ryder had grown a paunch from too much hotel room service. Tony Kingston still had a military bearing and rock hard gut.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, you’re number thirteen for approach.”

“Jeez, we’ll be halfway to Naples before they bring us back,” Ryder said. He turned around in his seat to face the flight engineer. “Hey, Larry, you want to hit South Beach tonight?”

“Sure. Berlin Bar, maybe Bash, finish up at Amnesia,” Larry Doziev said. “How about you, Tony?”

“No thanks. I’ve got to finish my report for the union.”

“That’s what happens when you get married,” Ryder said.

Kingston laughed. “I’m not married. You’re married.”

“Yeah, but you’re acting married ever since you and the mystery woman got together. When you gonna show her off?”

“Maybe she’s married,” Dozier said.

Not yet. But I’m going to change that.

He had never before committed to one woman, always thinking the next one was the fantasy creature who would fulfill all his needs. Now, with the passage of time and more women-flight attendants, models, executives with one-night layovers-in his past than he could remember, he finally had someone whose needs he wanted to fill, a woman he loved more than he loved himself.

Lisa. Lisa Fremont.

The girl from down the hill in Bodega Bay who had traveled so far. He’d known her practically all her life, but he had been blind to the hell she had endured at home. Maybe if he hadn’t been stationed so far away, he could have done something. For starters, he would have thrashed Harry Fremont.

Lisa. How have you done it?

Abused child to teen runaway to underage stripper, then with the guidance of an older man-not him, damn it-a new path, summa cum laude at Berkeley and now law school at Stanford. He was awed by her inner strength, her accomplishments, and he loved her dearly.

I’ve found a soul mate, not a cell mate, and I’ll be faithful to her until the day I die.

“C’mon, Tony,” Dozier said. “Just one drink.”

Kingston scanned the airspeed and altimeter readings. “Sorry guys. Like I said, I’ve got work to do. Maintenance laid off another dozen workers last week. We’ve got twenty percent fewer mechanics and thirty percent more planes than we did-”

“I know, I know, but you’re pissing against the wind.”

Behind them, facing the starboard bulkhead, flight engineer Dozier swiveled his chair toward the front of the aircraft. “Hey, Tony, you might as well give up. Max Wanaker’s gonna cut costs till bodies pile up, and then he’ll make changes.”

“Tombstone technology,” Ryder said. “It’s an old story.”

“Or they’ll say the equipment was fine,” Dozier added, “so the accident must have been-”

“Pilot error!” Ryder shouted in mock glee.

“It’s one thing to drop the olive from the salad,” Kingston said, referring to a famous cost-cutting move of another airline several years earlier. “But laying off maintenance people, rushing inspections, and making us fly planes that ought to be in the shop or-”

“Scrapped!” Dozier interrupted, tapping his control panel. “This baby’s older than some of the girls Tony screws.”

“ Used to screw,” Kingston protested. There was so much he couldn’t tell them. Lisa’s relationship with Max Wanaker, president of Atlantica Airlines was one thing.

What could she have ever seen in him? But then, she was still a kid.

“Tony was a helluva lot more fun when he chased women instead of FAA inspectors,” Ryder said, getting in one last shot.

Kingston was thumbing through the flight manual, preparing to call out the landing checklist. “You guys want to land this plane or bust my balls?”

“We just want the old Tony back,” Ryder said.

Cowboys. All pilots begin as thrill-seeking cowboys. Late nights, high speeds, and fast women. I’m damned happy to have matured.

“You know what I want?” Tony asked, then answered his own question. “Joe Drayton. He knows his people have been pencil-whipping inspections they never perform. He’s gonna sign my report.”

Ryder laughed. “No way. Drayton’s three years from a vested pension. If he goes public, he’ll be refueling DC-3’s in Addis Ababa.”

“You’re wrong,” Kingston said. “He’s already slipped me the paperwork.”

Now Dozier was chuckling. “Hey, Tony, you’re the one creating most of the paperwork. Every time an engine coughs, you do an occurrence write-up. Every time we’re hit by a microburst, you write a memo on inadequate training for windshear conditions.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Kingston said. “Three days ago at O’Hare, I spot an oil leak on my walk-around. Some rent-a-temp mechanic comes over and wipes it with a rag. I refuse to fly the ship and I get written up. A couple months ago, they forget to replace the j, O-rings after doing a master chip inspection on an L-1011. The plane t barely gets back to Atlanta after the captain sees the oil pressure gauge light up. Plus they’re covering up their mistakes. Did you read the bulletin on the 757 Tom Ganter flew out of Miami last week, the one where the instruments went haywire?”

“Yeah. It had a wasps’ nest in the static sensors,” Dozier said.

“Bull! That’s the cover story. Ganter took a look at the static ports after he got her back down. They were covered with duct tape for Christ’s sake! The maintenance crew had polished the plane and forgot to strip off the protective tape. I’m telling you guys it’s only a matter of time before we kill a shipload of people.”

It was a recurring nightmare, a plane falling from the sky, the panicked cries from the passenger cabin, the thunderous explosion and raging firestorm that would silence every scream. He was not afraid for himself. Tony Kingston had confidence he could handle any crisis, as long as the ship didn’t fail him.

“Lighten up, Tony,” Dozier said. “Atlantica’s never had a fatality. Not one.”

Jim Ryder took off his headset and turned toward the captain. “Larry’s right. You’re crying wolf so often no one pays attention. No one cares.”

“I care!” Kingston thundered.

Rita Zaslavskaya stood awkwardly to let the man to her right get out of his window seat and open the overhead compartment. He grabbed a weathered brown leather jacket and slipped it on, then crunched her right foot under his wing tips as he slid back into his seat. Rita had a fair complexion, dark, curly hair, and a strong face that was more handsome than beautiful. She was a large-boned woman in her midthirties who stood six feet one and played volleyball with other Russian immigrants on Sundays at a Jewish Community Center in Brooklyn. She’d asked for an aisle seat in an exit row because her bum knee did not take kindly to cramped quarters. One of these days, she’d have it scoped. It was on her list of to-do’s, along with getting contact lenses, having her hair straightened, and finding a husband. The last on the list was inexorably linked to the first two, she thought and would be considerably easier if she would refrain from spiking the ball off the heads of every eligible bachelor in Bensonhurst, including a handsome but frail cantor from Minsk who had flirted with her ten minutes before she deviated his septum with a particularly vicious kill.

Maybe it was for the best. He was such a shmendrick.

“Excuse me,” her seatmate said, lifting his foot from hers. He’d been in and out of the overhead ever since they had left LaGuardia. When he wasn’t popping up and down, he was staring out the window in grim silence.

“No problem,” Rita replied, glancing at the old leather jacket, which the man had zipped all the way up to his Adam’s apple. “Isn’t that a little warm for Miami?”

“I’ll take it off as soon as we’re inside.” He was a small, paunchy man in his thirties with wispy pale hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a wedding band, she noticed out of force of habit.

“Nice-looking jacket,” she allowed. “Good material.”

“It’s an authentic re-creation of the Army Air Force A-2 jacket from the Second World War, right down to the seal brown horsehide, the wool cuffs, and brass zippers,” he said, pointing to the sleeve patch with its winged logo boasting of the 9th Bomb Group. “Steve McQueen wore one in The Great Escape. ”

Rita didn’t know Steve McQueen from Butterfly McQueen, but her sense of logic was offended. “So why put it on now if you’re just going to take it off when you get inside the terminal?”

“The A-2 isn’t just for warmth. It’ll protect you in case of a crash or enemy attack.”

That made her smile. “I live in Brooklyn. Maybe I should get one.”

“I’m talking about fire. The danger is greatest on takeoff and landing, which is why I always bring this along, too.” He bent over and reached into his carry-on bag, drawing out what looked like a SCUBA mask. “My personal smoke hood. It’ll filter out the toxins.”

He pulled the mask down over his face, tested his breathing, then slid it onto his forehead, as if he were about to explore some exotic tropical reef. “Some people might regard my safety consciousness as…”

Meshugeh, she thought. Crazy.

“Excessive,” he said, placing a pillow between his bulging belly and the seat belt, then cinching the buckle hard. “Do you know the correct bracing position in the event of a crash landing?”

Before she could answer, the man bowed forward, as if in prayer.

Tony Kingston guided the aircraft on the downwind leg, occasionally looking out the windshield at the pitch black Everglades, a prehistoric creeping river of sawgrass, alligators, and marshy hammocks. Thethree men in the cockpit reviewed the landing checklist and waited for instructions to turn left and begin looping back to the airport.

Suddenly, an explosion reverberated behind them, a booming rumble accompanied by the discordant shriek of shearing metal.

“Jesus, what was that!” Ryder shouted, instinctively looking back toward the cabin.

Kingston tightened his hands on the yoke as the airframe shuddered. “Larry, what do you see?”

The flight engineer scanned his gauges. “Pressure on engine two has gone to zero. Fuel flow is zero. Shit, we must have blown the aft engine.”

“Perform engine shutdown checklist,” Kingston ordered. As Ryder ran through the items, turning off the fuel to the tail engine, idling the throttle, the aircraft rolled slightly to the right. Kingston fought the yoke to level the plane. “Ailerons not responding.”

Dozier checked the gauges. “Double shit! Hydraulic pressure zero. Hydraulic quantity zero.”

“Can’t be,” Ryder said. “We’ve got three redundant systems. You can’t lose them all just blowing one engine.”

Kingston struggled with the yoke, which trembled under his hands but wouldn’t turn. He locked his hands on the wheel, took a breath, and threw his shoulders into it. Nothing. The aircraft continued to tremble.

Ryder’s fingers danced over half-a-dozen switches as he scanned his gauges. “Elevators, ailerons, and rudder all inoperative,” he said, his voice strained.

“It can’t be,” Dozier repeated. “How the hell are we gonna turn? How are we gonna control our descent?”

We’re not, Kingston thought, rapidly analyzing the situation. Without flight controls, it’ll be virtually impossible to land. He tried to activate the speed brakes. “Spoilers not responding either,” he said after a futile try. He increased thrust on the left engine and the wings leveled off, but the aircraft continued vibrating, and a few seconds later, the nose pitched up and the airframe shuddered.

“We’re gonna stall!” Ryder warned, his voice breaking.

Kingston gave it more power, hitting the right engine harder. The nose came down, but the aircraft rolled slightly left.

“Miami Approach, this is Atlantica six-four-zero,” Kingston said into his mike, while fighting the roll. His voice was calm, but the words were clipped with urgency. “We’ve lost the two engine and all three hydraulic systems. We declare an emergency six-four-zero.”

The voice in his headset was equally composed. “Roger six-four-zero. We’ll vector everyone else out of there. Descend to fifteen hundred. Turn left to two-seven-zero and prepare for final approach.”

“That’s a problem,” Kingston responded. “Gonna have to use asymmetrical thrust from number one and three to try and turn.”

His matter-of-fact tone masked the tension building inside him. Inconceivable as it seemed, they simply had no control over the aircraft.

How the hell are we going to land this big fat bus?

“Copy that, six-four-zero. Advise when you’re ready to turn into final.”

“When and if,” Ryder muttered.

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Larry Dozier opened it. Senior Flight Attendant Marcia Snyder, a divorcee who had just put her third child through college, rushed in and slammed the door. Her face was pale, and her words came rapidly. “I was in the aft galley. The explosion was right over my head.”

“Did you see anything?” Kingston asked.

“No. At first, I thought we’d hit a small plane. There was a puff of smoke, but no fire I could see. I think part of the tail is gone.”

“Prepare the passengers for emergency landing,” Kingston ordered. “Short briefing procedure. We don’t have much time. And get me a souls-on-board count.”

“Already did,” she said. “Two hundred seventy-five passengers, thirteen crew.”

Kingston nodded his thanks. Marcia was already out the door, heading back into the first-class compartment, when Kingston turned to his first officer. “Jim, deploy the ADG. See if we can get some power out of it.”

The copilot yanked a lever, and a small propellor-driven generator dropped a few feet out of the aircraft into the jetstream. Dozier kept his eyes on his control panels. After a moment, he said, “We’re getting power. But without the hydraulics, it’s not going anywhere.”

“We have to do it manually,” Kingston said.

“How?” his copilot asked.

Kingston didn’t know. There was no procedure for this. He’d have to make it up as he went along. “Grab your yoke. We’ll work them together. Larry, get up here and handle the throttles. Let’s try to turn left. Ease off on number one and give some power to number three. Jim and I will pull like hell on our yokes. Let’s go!”

As the pilot and copilot tried turning their two-hundred-ton aircraft with the power in their forearms and wrists, the flight engineer crouched behind them, one hand on each of the working throttles.

The aircraft yawed shakily to the left, and the right wing tilted upward. “Too much!” Kingston warned, his voice rising for the first time. Excessive roll and the plane could flip over. One thing the DC-10 was not was an acrobatic aircraft.

Dozier eased back on the right engine and gave more power to the left. The aircraft rolled in the other direction, leveling off, but the nose pitched upward.

“Miami Control, this is six-four-zero,” Kingston said, forcing himself to calm down. “We can’t control the aircraft. When we correct pitch, we start to roll and vice versa, and we’re yawing like a son of a bitch. Don’t know how we’ll line it up with the runway.”

“Copy that six-four-zero. Got you on radar, forty miles west of the airport. We’ll have equipment waiting.”

Again, the big aircraft yawed to the right, this time the left wing tilting upward.

Equipment.

The controller meant fire-rescue, paramedics, and enough foam to float a battleship. But without the ability to turn, without a way to control the pitching, rolling, and yawing, they would not so much land as cartwheel across the runway. In that case, the only equipment they would need would be hearses.

“We can’t turn your way and we don’t have any brakes,” Kingston replied, “so I don’t know how we’d stop this thing even if we get it there.” He pictured the crammed apartment buildings and condos west of the Palmetto Expressway. “We don’t want to drop it into a neighborhood.” He glanced at his two crewmates and pointed down toward the ground. They both nodded. “We’re going to have to ditch.” He sighed audibly and signed off, “Six-four-zero.”

Below them, in the darkness, was the primordial slough. Kingston hoped for a soft, level spot, not a strand of mahogany or live oak trees. It wasn’t the ideal terrain for ditching but better than the side of a mountain.

Dozier was hurriedly thumbing through the flight manual. “Nothing here. Nothing for loss of all hydraulics.”

“It’s not supposed to happen,” Kingston said softly.

He said his name was Howard Laubach. Rita Zaslavskaya said she was glad to meet him, but she wasn’t glad at all. She had heard the explosion and felt the plane shudder. Now, the right wing kept dipping and the nose of the plane was sliding back and forth. She’d asked a flight attendant what happened, but the woman hurried past her and headed toward the cockpit, the color drained from her face.

“It could have been anything,” Howard Laubach said, a hopeful note in his voice. “A flock of birds could have been sucked into the engine. Heck, that’s brought down planes before. But the captain seems like he has this one under control.”

It didn’t seem under control to Rita. It seemed as if the plane would veer to one side, then overcorrect and swerve to the other side like a wobbly drunk attempting to walk a straight line. Other passengers were chattering nervously or praying or simply grasping their armrests with bloodless hands. Rita felt queasy, as if she’d eaten piroshki made with spoiled meat, and the look on the flight attendant’s face had frightened her. Something was very wrong.

She turned to her seatmate. “You’re pretty calm for someone who brings his own oxygen aboard.” She was annoyed that the man could be so oblivious to the situation.

“It isn’t oxygen,” Laubach said, testily. “I’m just prepared. If there’s a fire, you’d wish you were, too.” He clutched his smoke hood, as if she might steal it.

“What’s that noise?” Rita asked, jerking around in her seat.

“Landing gear,” Laubach said. “He’s setting her down.”

“Where? Here?” She leaned past him and peered out into the blackness. All she could see was the startled face of an insane woman. It took her a moment to figure out that she was staring into her own reflection.

Suddenly, a horn blared on the Ground Proximity Warning System. The nose angled up again, and both pilot and copilot pushed forward on the yoke. Tony Kingston already had given the tower his count: 288 souls on board. It helped the authorities when it was time to count bodies.

“Six-four-zero, please advise,” Miami Control said through the headset.

“We’re about to put the world’s largest tricycle down in the swamp,” Kingston said.

“Roger that, six-four-zero. We’ve got you on radar and we’re dispatching rescue vehicles.”

“Tony, I can’t keep the nose down,” Ryder said. “I’m having a real nose-up moment here.” His voice was cracking.

“More power, Larry.”

Dozier pulled both throttles back. “C’mon baby,” he coaxed her. “Level, level, level.”

The aircraft picked up speed and the nose came down.

“You’re gonna have to back off some more,” Kingston said. “We’re going too fast.”

“Without flaps or slats, I can’t slow it down without stalling,” Dozier said, sounding desperate.

It’s not hopeless, Kingston told himself, but he knew the odds were against them. At over two hundred knots, they’d likely break up on impact.

Dozier eased up on both throttles.

Too much.

A puff of smoke, a sputter, a cough.

“Oh, shit!” Ryder shouted. “Number one quit.”

They were flying on one engine. Dozier immediately increased the power, but it was too late. The number three engine smoked, choked, and stalled. They coasted in total silence, the huge aircraft a glider.

“Okay, fellows,” Tony Kingston said. “We’re taking her in.”

For several seconds there was nothing but the sweet, sad rush of the slipstream past the windshield. Then the left wing dipped, and the plane rolled hard, the wings virtually perpendicular to the ground. Loose papers flew across the cockpit. Without the lift from the wings, they had only a few seconds before they would plunge nose down into the ground.

Tony Kingston fought the yoke, his cramped arms futilely trying to right the plane. He heard screams from the cabin, just as in his nightmares. Next to him, his copilot whispered a prayer.

Kingston wanted to draw out the last moments, to arrange his thoughts, pull up memories from the recesses of his mind. But there was no time. He saw her then, her face flashing by, beautiful but heartbroken, and for the briefest moment, he felt a stabbing pain, knowing of her anguish when she heard the news. He said it then, knowing the cockpit voice recorder would pick it up, and she would hear him or at least read the words. He told her he loved her.

A few jumbled images raced through his senses: his father, long buried; a cold Minnesota lake where he swam as a child with his sister; and then the black-and-white grainy videotape of the two men walking along the jetty in Kuwait just before the bomb hit.

What did they say to each other? Why didn’t they run?

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE ELEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA CASE NO: 96-00136 CA 04 (11) GLORIA LAUBACH,

individually and as Personal

Representative of the Estate of HOWARD J. LAUBACH, deceased,

Plaintiff, vs. ATLANTICA AIRLINES, a Delaware corporation,

Defendant.

COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES FOR WRONGFUL DEATH

Plaintiff GLORIA LAUBACH, individually and as personal representative of the estate of Howard J. Laubach, deceased, sues Defendant ATLANTICA AIRLINES (hereinafter “ATLANTICA”), a Delaware corporation, and alleges:

1. This is an action for wrongful death brought pursuant to the Florida Wrongful Death Act.

2. ATLANTICA is a common carrier engaged in the business of transporting fare-paying passengers on regularly scheduled flights in aircraft owned, leased, operated, man aged, maintained, and/or controlled by ATLANTICA and its agents and/or employees. As a common carrier, ATLANTICA is obliged to provide the highest degree of care to its passengers.

14. At all times material hereto, ATLANTICA was the owner, lessee, and/or operator in control of a certain DC-10 aircraft, a dangerous instrumentality, bearing registration number N1809U, which was used to transport passengers as a common carrier.

15. Plaintiffs decedent was a paying passenger on board the subject aircraft, a flight in domestic transportation between New York City and Miami, Florida, and was one of 288 persons killed when the aircraft crashed in the Florida Everglades on December 27, 1995.

16. ATLANTICA, through its agents and employees, breached the duty of care owed to decedent by negligently failing: a. To furnish an airworthy aircraft; b. To properly navigate and operate the aircraft; c. To properly train its flight crew as to the procedures in the event of loss of flight controls; d. To properly inspect, overhaul, and replace worn-out and unsuitable components; e. To provide sufficient security to prevent the placement of bombs or other explosive devices on the subject aircraft; f. To operate the aircraft in a safe and competent manner, thereby resulting in the fatal crash in question.

27. As a proximate result of the crash, ATLANTICA is liable to PLAINTIFF for damages as follows: a. Pain and suffering of the decedent prior to death; b. Pain and suffering of the survivors, beneficiaries, and heirs; c. Loss of society, companionship, guidance, and services of the decedent; d. Loss of support; e. Lost net accumulations, lost value of life, and funeral expenses.

WHEREFORE, PLAINTIFF demands judgment against ATLANTICA AIRLINES, INC. for compensatory damages, plus interest and costs in an amount in excess of two million dollars ($2,000,000.00), and further demands trial by jury.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert M. Goldman, Esquire