Airframe (2 page)

The plane went into another steep dive. An elderly Chinese woman slid down the aisle on her back, screaming. A teenage boy followed, tumbling head over heels. Emily looked at Tim, but her husband wasn’t in his seat any more. Yellow oxygen masks were dropping, one swinging in front of her face, but she could not reach for it because she was clutching her baby.

She was pressed back into her seat as the plane descended steeply, an incredibly loud whining dive. Shoes and purses
ricocheted across the cabin, clanging and banging; bodies thumped against seats, the floor.

Tim was gone. Emily turned, looking for him, and suddenly a heavy bag struck her in the head—a sudden jolt, pain, blackness, and stars. She felt dizzy and faint. The alarms continued to sound. The passengers continued to scream. The plane was still in a dive.

Emily lowered her head, clutched her infant daughter to her chest, and for the first time in her life, began to pray.

“Socal Approach, this is TransPacific 545. We have an emergency.”

In the darkened building that housed Southern California Air Traffic Approach Control, senior controller Dave Marshall heard the pilot’s call and glanced at his radar screen. TransPacific 545 was inbound from Hong Kong to Denver. The flight had been handed over to him from Oakland ARINC a few minutes earlier: a perfectly normal flight. Marshall touched the microphone at his cheek and said, “Go ahead, 545.”

“Request priority clearance for emergency landing in Los Angeles.”

The pilot sounded calm. Marshall stared at the shifting green data blocks that identified each aircraft in the air. TPA 545 was approaching the California coastline. Soon it would pass over Marina Del Rey. It was still half an hour out of LAX.

Marshall said, “Okay, 545, understand you request priority clearance to land. Say the nature of your emergency.”

“We have a passenger emergency,” the pilot said. “We need ambulances on the ground. I would say thirty or forty ambulances. Maybe more.”

Marshall was stunned. “TPA 545, say again. Are you asking for
forty
ambulances?”

“Affirmative. We encountered severe turbulence during flight. We have injuries of passengers and flight crew.”

Marshall thought, Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before? He spun in his chair, beckoned to his supervisor, Jane
Levine, who picked up the extra headset, punched in, and listened.

Marshall said, “TransPacific, I copy your ground request for forty ambulances.”

“Jesus,” Levine said, making a face.
“Forty?”

The pilot was still calm as he replied, “Ah, roger, Approach. Forty.”

“Do you need medical personnel, too? What is the nature of the injuries you are bringing in?”

“I am not sure.”

Levine made a spinning gesture: Keep the pilot talking. Marshall said, “Can you give us an estimate?”

“I am sorry, no. An estimate is not possible.”

“Is anyone unconscious?”

“No, I do not think so,” the pilot answered. “But two are dead.”

“Holy shit,” Jane Levine said. “Nice of him to tell us. Who is this guy?”

Marshall hit a key on his panel, opening a data block in the upper corner of the screen. It listed the manifest for TPA 545. “Captain’s John Chang. Senior pilot for TransPacific.”

“Let’s not have any more surprises,” Levine said. “Is the aircraft all right?”

Marshall said, “TPA 545, what is the condition of your aircraft?”

“We have damage to the passenger cabin,” the pilot said. “Minor damage only.”

“What is the condition of the flight deck?” Marshall said.

“Flight deck is operational. FDAU is nominal.” That was the Flight Data Acquisition Unit, which tracked faults within the aircraft. If it said the plane was okay, it probably was.

Marshall said, “I copy that, 545. What is the condition of your flight crew?”

“Captain and first officer in good condition.”

“Ah, 545, you said there were injuries to the crew.”

“Yes. Two stewardesses have been hurt.”

“Can you specify the nature of the injuries?”

“I am sorry, no. One is not conscious. The other one, I don’t know.”

Marshall was shaking his head. “He just told us nobody was unconscious.”

“I’m not buying any of this,” Levine said. She picked up the red phone. “Put a fire crew on level one alert. Get the ambulances. Order neuro and ortho teams to meet the plane and have Medical notify the Westside hospitals.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll call the LA FSDO. This’ll make his damn day.”

Daniel Greene was the duty officer at the FAA Flight Standards District Office on Imperial Highway, half a mile from LAX. The local FSDOs—or Fizdos, as they were called—supervised the flight operations of commercial carriers, checking everything from aircraft maintenance to pilot training. Greene had come in early to clear the paper off his desk; his secretary had quit the week before, and the office manager refused to replace her, citing orders from Washington to absorb attrition. So now Greene went to work, muttering. Congress was slashing the FAA budget, telling them to do more with less, pretending the problem was productivity and not workload. But passenger traffic was up four percent a year, and the commercial fleet wasn’t getting younger. The combination made for a lot more work on the ground. Of course, the FSDOs weren’t the only ones who were strapped. Even the NTSB was broke; the Safety Board only got a million dollars a year for aircraft accidents, and—

The red phone on his desk rang, the emergency line. He picked it up; it was a woman at traffic control.

“We’ve just been informed of an incident on an inbound foreign carrier,” she said.

“Uh-huh.” Greene reached for a notepad. “Incident” had a specific meaning to the FAA, referring to the lower category of flight problems that carriers were required to report. “Accidents” involved deaths or structural damage to the aircraft and
were always serious, but with incidents, you never knew. “Go ahead.”

“It’s TransPacific Flight 545, incoming from Hong Kong to Denver. Pilot’s requested emergency landing at LAX. Says they encountered turbulence during flight.”

“Is the plane airworthy?”

“They say it is,” Levine said. “They’ve got injuries, and they’ve requested forty ambulances.”

“Forty?”

“They’ve also got two stiffs.”

“Great.” Greene got up from his desk. “When’s it due in?”

“Eighteen minutes.”

“Eighteen minutes—Jeez, why am I getting this so late?”

“Hey, the captain just told us, we’re telling you. I’ve notified EMS and alerted the fire crews.”

“Fire crews? I thought you said the plane’s okay.”

“Who knows?” the woman said. “The pilot is not making much sense. Sounds like he might be in shock. We hand off to the tower in seven minutes.”

“Okay,” Greene said. “I’m on my way.”

He grabbed his badge and his cell phone and went out the door. As he passed Karen, the receptionist, he said, “Have we got anybody at the international terminal?”

“Kevin’s there.”

“Beep him,” Greene said. “Tell him to get on TPA 545, inbound Hong Kong, landing in fifteen. Tell him to stay at the gate—and
don’t let the flight crew leave.”

“Got it,” she said, reaching for the phone.

Greene roared down Sepulveda Boulevard toward the airport. Just before the highway ran beneath the runway, he looked up and saw the big TransPacific Airlines widebody, identifiable by its bright yellow tail insignia, taxiing toward the gate. TransPacific was a Hong Kong—based charter carrier. Most of the problems the FAA had with foreign airlines occurred with charters. Many were low-budget operators that didn’t match
the rigorous safety standards of the scheduled carriers. But TransPacific had an excellent reputation.

At least the bird was on the ground, Greene thought. And he couldn’t see any structural damage to the widebody. The plane was an N-22, built by Norton Aircraft in Burbank. The plane had been in revenue service five years, with an enviable dispatch and safety record.

Greene stepped on the gas and rushed into the tunnel, passing beneath the giant aircraft.

He sprinted through the international building. Through the windows, he saw the TransPacific jet pulled up to the gate, and the ambulances lined up on the concrete below. The first of them was already driving out, its siren whining.

Greene came to the gate, flashed his badge, and ran down the ramp. Passengers were disembarking, pale and frightened. Many limped, their clothes torn and bloody. On each side of the ramp, paramedics clustered around the injured.

As he neared the plane, the nauseating odor of vomit grew stronger. A frightened TransPac stewardess pushed him back at the door, chattering at him rapidly in Chinese. He showed her his badge and said, “FAA! Official business! FAA!” The stewardess stepped back, and Greene slid past a mother clutching an infant and stepped into the plane.

He looked at the interior, and stopped. “Oh my God,” he said softly. “
What happened to this plane?
”

“Mom? Who do you like better, Mickey Mouse or Minnie Mouse?”

Standing in the kitchen of her bungalow, still wearing her jogging shorts from her five-mile morning run, Casey Singleton finished making a tuna sandwich and put it in her daughter’s lunch box. Singleton was thirty-six years old, a vice-president at Norton Aircraft in Burbank. Her daughter sat at the breakfast table, eating cereal.

“Well?” Allison said. “Who do you like better, Mickey Mouse or Minnie Mouse?” She was seven, and she ranked everything.

“I like them both,” Casey said.

“I know, Mom,” Allison said, exasperated. “But who do you like
better
?”

“Minnie.”

“Me, too,” she said, pushing the carton away.

Casey put a banana and a thermos of juice in the lunch box, closed the lid. “Finish eating, Allison, we have to get ready.”

“What’s quart?”

“Quart? It’s a measure of liquid.”

“No, Mom,
Qua-urt
,” she said.

Casey looked over and saw that her daughter had picked up her new laminated plant ID badge, which had Casey’s picture, and beneath that C. SINGLETON and then in large blue letters, QA/IRT.

“What’s
Qua-urt
?”

“It’s my new job at the plant. I’m the Quality Assurance rep on the Incident Review Team.”

“Are you still making airplanes?” Ever since the divorce Allison had been extremely attentive to change. Even a minor alteration in Casey’s hairstyle prompted repeated discussions, the subject brought up again and again, over many days. So it wasn’t surprising she had noticed the new badge.

“Yes, Allie,” she said, “I’m still making airplanes. Everything’s the same. I just got a promotion.”

“Are you still a BUM?” she said.

Allison had been delighted, the year before, to learn that Casey was a Business Unit Manager, a BUM. “Mom’s a bum,” she’d tell her friends’ parents, to great effect.

“No, Allie. Now get your shoes on. Your dad’ll be picking you up any minute.”

“No, he won’t,” Allison said. “Dad’s always late. What’s your promotion?”

Casey bent over and began pulling on her daughter’s sneakers. “Well,” she said, “I still work at QA, but I don’t check the planes in the factory any more. I check them after they leave the plant.”

“To make sure they fly?”

“Yes, honey. We check them and fix any problems.”

“They better fly,” Allison said, “or else they’ll crash!” She began to laugh. “They’ll all fall out of the sky! And hit everybody in their houses, right while they’re eating their cereal! That wouldn’t be too good, would it, Mom?”

Casey laughed with her. “No, that wouldn’t be good at all. The people at the plant would be
very
upset.” She finished tying the laces, swung her daughter’s feet away. “Now where’s your sweatshirt?”

“I don’t need it.”

“Allison—”

“Mom, it’s not even cold!”

“It may be cold later in the week. Get your sweatshirt, please.”

She heard a horn honk on the street outside, saw Jim’s black Lexus in front of the house. Jim was behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a jacket and tie. Perhaps he had a job interview, she thought.

Allison stomped around her room, banging drawers. She came back looking unhappy, the sweatshirt hanging from the corner of her backpack. “How come you’re always so tense when Dad picks me up?”

Casey opened the door, and they walked to the car in the hazy morning sunshine. Allison cried, “Hi, Daddy!” and broke into a run. Jim waved back, with a boozy grin.

Casey walked over to Jim’s window. “No smoking with Allison in the car, right?”

Jim stared at her sullenly. “Good morning to you, too.” His voice was raspy. He looked hung over, his face puffy and sallow.

“We had an agreement about smoking around our daughter, Jim.”

“Do you see me smoking?”

“I’m just saying.”

“And you’ve said it before, Katherine,” he said. “I’ve heard it a million times. For Christ’s sake.”

Casey sighed. She was determined not to fight in front of Allison. The therapist had said that was the reason Allison had begun stuttering. The stuttering was better now, and Casey always made an effort not to argue with Jim, even though he didn’t reciprocate. On the contrary: he seemed to take special pleasure in making every contact as difficult as possible.

“Okay,” Casey said, forcing a smile. “See you Sunday.”

Their arrangement was that Allison stayed with her father one week a month, leaving Monday and returning the following Sunday.

“Sunday.” Jim nodded curtly. “Same as always.”

“Sunday at six.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“I’m just checking, Jim.”

“No, you’re not. You’re controlling, the way you always do—”

“Jim,” she said. “Please. Let’s not.”

“Fine with me,” he snapped.

She bent over. “Bye, Allie.”

Allison said, “Bye, Mom,” but her eyes were already distant, her voice cool; she had transferred her allegiance to her father, even before her seat belt was fastened. Then Jim stepped on the gas, and the Lexus drove away, leaving her standing there on the sidewalk. The car rounded the corner, and was gone.