Chapter VII
The Landing
“Great job on the landing, Captain.”
Captain Brian Eckerson, sixty-one, stood in the cockpit doorway of the Boeing 757 and nodded acknowledgment of Edmunds’s comment. Edmunds had both hands filled with his luggage and garment bag as he left first-class and headed for the exit door located just behind the flight deck.
Eckerson was a pleasant-looking man. He stood five ten and was a trim one hundred and seventy-five pounds. His captain’s cap covered a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. His polite manner and quiet features belied his one-hundred-plus combat missions in an F-14 that had earned him the Silver Star. That kind of flying under fire, literally, made him one cool customer at the controls. Eckerson took decisions instantly. The general consensus among his peers was that he had ice water in his veins.
Edmunds had felt the huge jet slide in the moments before touchdown at Boston’s Logan Airport, a sensation his fellow passengers did not share and would not have recognized as the result of a dangerous wind shear if they had. Edmunds had immediately braced himself, anticipating the worst. Then he heard the engines spool as the pilot immediately advanced the throttles to counter the loss of lift resulting from the sudden loss of airspeed. The surge of power from two Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4B engines rated at 43,500 pounds of thrust apiece allowed 234,000 pounds of aircraft to touch down without so much as a bump. It wasn’t an easy maneuver, and a lot of pilots, good ones, would not have reacted quickly enough to have managed it successfully, especially in equipment as large as a Boeing 7-5. As far as Edmunds was concerned, someone on the flight deck had just won the airmanship of the year award, and it was unlikely that the recipient would be the twenty-something-looking first officer sitting in the right seat.
It was the way Edmunds looked directly into the captain’s eyes along with his tone of voice that made Eckerson realize it was not a perfunctory remark from an oblivious de-plaining passenger. It was a sincere compliment from someone who had realized what had happened and knew that only the pilot’s skilled response had prevented a “hard landing,” which most probably would have resulted in structural damage to the aircraft and passenger injuries. Eckerson returned Edmunds’s gaze. The ever-so-slight nod of his head and knowing look completed the understanding between the two men.
Chapter VIII
T-CAS and Mode C
Tuesday, September 20
“What did you find out?”
Deputy Administrator Evans’s tone made the remark sound more like an accusation than a question. It was ten o’clock, and the sixth-floor conference room was fast becoming the central meeting place for the FAA’s higher echelon.
Gary Dennison, Air Traffic System Effectiveness Director, answered.
“Our accident investigation team arrived at the New England TRACON early Monday afternoon. They’re still out there interviewing the controllers and supervisors. They made transcripts of the radio communications and copies of the voice tapes. The transcripts were emailed last night. Copies of the voice tapes were FedEx’d yesterday. We should receive them before noon today. I’ve placed a copy of the transcript on the table for everyone here. We also know from our C-D-R tape that the Brasilia’s Mode C altitude readout showed him at ten thousand, exactly where he was supposed to be. C-D-R stands for Continuous Data Readout. It allows us to reconstruct the flight paths of all the aircraft on the controller’s scope along with their altitudes provided those aircraft are equipped with transponders that have Mode C capability.” Dennison assumed Evans would not know what C-D-R meant, so he threw in the explanation. He was right. Evans had not known.
“Anything else?” Lawrence Evans still sounded like an inquisitor.
Dennison continued. “Seems the controller, her name’s Melissa Jason, was pretty busy, but she had things well under control—nothing out of the ordinary, really. A few of her words on the tape can’t be deciphered, but that’s all.”
“How the hell do you know that some words can’t be deciphered if we don’t have the tapes yet?” Evans was being his usual obnoxious self.
“The transcript has the word ‘unintelligible’ written on it in two places, which means the Quality Assurance Specialist transcribing the tape couldn’t understand what was being said.”
It was clear Evans was not happy. “What two places?”
Dennison placed his finger on the transcript in front of the Deputy Administrator and pointed. “Here at zero four four zero one six coordinated universal time and…”
“In real-life time, Gary.” Evans made no attempt to hide the sarcasm.
“Seven-forty and sixteen seconds pm eastern standard time, she’s talking to a Beech Baron being vectored around weather. The transcript shows that she said…” Dennison moved his finger over the words on Evans’s copy of the transcript as he read. “Six three pop ‘unintelligible’ weather twelve o’clock, six miles. The ‘unintelligible’ word doesn’t seem important. The Baron was nowhere near the Brasilia and Centurion.”
“Sounds okay,” remarked Evans.
Dennison shook his head from side to side as he spoke. “Actually it’s sloppy. She didn’t precede the numbers of the call sign with the word ‘November’ or the type of aircraft. The phonetic pronunciation for the letter p is ‘papa’, not ‘pop,’ and she’s supposed to use the phrase ‘precipitation returns’ or ‘cells,’ not the word ‘weather’ when issuing that kind of information. She made similar errors on her initial contact with the Centurion, including not identifying the station reporting the altimeter setting or advising him as to type of approach to expect.” Dennison hadn’t spent two years in the evaluations division for nothing, and he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to show the Deputy Administrator he knew his business.
“Did those phraseology errors cause or contribute to the crash?” Evans practically growled the question.
“Hardly.” Dennison suddenly wasn’t sure he should have said anything.
Evans continued the growl. “Make sure the on-site team we sent to New England briefs our Ms. Jason as to proper phraseology and make damn sure she doesn’t have an attitude. The last thing we need in a videotaped deposition or in a courtroom is a controller coming across as flippant or arrogant, especially in this situation.”
Evans scanned the transcript. “What the hell is this!?”
Dennison’s eyes went to the spot on the transcript indicated by Evan’s finger. “Oh, that. The Brasilia pilot thought he was on the PA system when he transmitted the welcome-aboard spiel to the passengers. Actually, he was on frequency. Jason, of course, heard it and decided to yank his chain a little by letting him know he had transmitted over the frequency instead of the PA system.”
“Great, just ‘fuckin’ great! The press is gonna love that. I can see the headline now, Controller Yanks Pilot’s Chain Then Runs Two Airplanes Together.” The Deputy Administrator was clearly irritated.
“There’s nothing to indicate she ran them together.” Dennison spoke quietly, trying to keep the conversation productive and civil.
Evans shook his head.