A Song for the River

by Philip Connors

  Patrice typed up and printed a permission slip in her office at Western New Mexico University, where she worked as a biology lab director. Ella Jaz rode her bike across town to pick it up. The two of them talked about the flight and the possibility it might not happen.

  “I’m concerned that the weather could deteriorate,” Patrice said.

  “Don’t project your fears,” Ella Jaz said. “I’m not afraid to fly.”

  “Well, I’m not afraid of flying, but if the weather gets bad, you are not going to fly.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ella Jaz said, “everything’s going to be okay.”

  LESS THAN TWO HOURS LATER, Patrice sat in her office looking at real-time radar and a lightning-map indicator that showed the first ground strikes of the day in the vicinity of Signal Peak. As an educator and experienced group leader for outdoor adventure trips involving children, her unease had increased in the time since Ella Jaz pedaled off with her permission slip. She didn’t like the look of the weather—it was a repeat of the day before, when there had been erratic winds and dry lightning, followed by a brief hard rain.

  She left her office and went outside to look at the sky. She sent a text message to Blake: Radar. Lightning just north. Rain just west. Feeling drops now.

  Thanks, he wrote in response. We haven’t left for airport yet.

  Check radar, she replied.

  Will do and show Peter if he hasn’t already.

  AT THE VA CLINIC, Dr. Hochla learned he had a patient in need of an emergency consultation, so the meeting time for the flight got pushed back to 3:15.

  The students used the extra time to finalize their YCC grant application for the coming year, which would fund their eco-monitor efforts as a paid internship. They chose the fellow students they would mentor on their soil, water, and forest projects, once classes resumed in the fall. They filled every inch of the whiteboard in Blake’s classroom with their ideas. They felt pleased to be tying up their last loose ends for the school year and giddy about the flight to come. Just after 3:00 they climbed into Michael Mahl’s truck in the school parking lot and headed for the airport along Highway 180, a drive of four and a half miles. Ella Jaz called her mother on the way.

  “We’re headed to the airport, Mom,” she said.

  “You’re probably not going to fly,” Patrice said, “so don’t be disappointed if you get out there and you don’t fly.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Ella Jaz said.

  “Maybe you’ll just meet the pilot and you’ll find another day,” Patrice said. “So call me if you are going to get on the plane.”

  “Okay, Mom. Love you.”

  WHEN EVERYONE INVOLVED met at the airport—the kids arriving in Michael Mahl’s pickup truck, Steve Blake in his own vehicle, Dr. Hochla and Denise Blake in hers—Steve Blake introduced the kids to Dr. Hochla. “Thanks a lot for offering to do this,” Blake said. “It’s very nice of you.”

  Blake raised the subject of the weather. He mentioned the link to local radar he had received from Patrice, but Dr. Hochla waved him off. “The radar that you get on your apps is not the radar that matters to me,” Dr. Hochla said. Like many pilots, he used a program that offered 3-D displays of icing, turbulence, winds, temperature, and humidity, both in horizontal and vertical views, at specific flight elevations.

  Blake pointed out storm cells visible to the south and west and asked if they were a concern. “We’ll be there and back before that’s a problem,” Dr. Hochla said. It was a trip of less than ten miles one way, a simple out and back that would have them on the ground again in fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Dr. Hochla put his briefcase and landing-gear chock blocks in Denise Blake’s car. While he went through his preflight safety checklist, the students posed for pictures next to the plane. Ella Jaz took several of the shiny propeller and nose cone, to show her mother how clean and well-maintained the Beechcraft Bonanza was.

  When it came time to climb aboard, the students bantered over who ought to get the front passenger’s seat. Michael and Ella Jaz teased each other—Michael insisted they flip a coin for the privilege. Ella Jaz beat Michael Mahl on the first flip. Ella Myers won her flip with Ella Jaz. Michael pointed out that for the game to be fair and square, Ella Myers had to beat him too, so they flipped again. Ella Myers won. To Blake, standing there watching his prize students—the best he had ever had in more than two decades of teaching, he thought—the result had a certain satisfaction to it. Ella Myers led the group’s forestry work. She ought to be the one to sit up front.

  “Steve, you’re getting on the plane, aren’t you?” Ella Jaz said.

  “No. There’s no room.”

  “Well, just come on,” she teased. “There’s room in the back.”

  “You don’t want an extra 185 pounds weighing you down,” he said.

  He told them not to worry about taking good pictures of the burn scar. “The most important thing is to get Aldo Leopold’s view,” he said, “the big-picture view.”

  Dr. Hochla climbed aboard through the right-side door, into the left-side pilot’s seat. Ella Myers climbed aboard after him—but not before giving Blake a goodbye hug.

  “Have a great time,” he told her.

  MEANWHILE, IN HER OFFICE AT WNMU, Patrice felt increasingly fidgety and scared. The weather had continued to deteriorate. The wind had picked up noticeably. Sailors speak of rogue waves on the open ocean, but in Silver City that day, in places all over town, people later remembered the rogue winds. They seemed to come out of nowhere, blowing down signs, slamming car doors, creating dust devils.

  Patrice hadn’t heard back from Ella Jaz or Steve Blake about the status of the flight. She sent Blake a text message.

  I’m anxious, she wrote. Please pick better flying weather.

  He did not respond.

  ELLA, ELLA JAZ, AND MICHAEL donned headsets and secured their seat belts. Dr. Hochla gave them final instructions, then taxied from the ramp onto the runway. The airport wind sock showed a breeze out of the west at ten to fifteen knots, with an occasional gust at twenty. The plane hesitated for a minute while the Blakes watched. Then it accelerated into the wind and rose into the sky. It was 3:36 p.m.

  Around 3:40 or a little after, still having heard nothing from either Steve Blake or Ella Jaz, Patrice dialed Blake’s number.

  “Steve, what the hell is going on?” she asked.

  “They’re on their way back,” he said.

  “What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean?” She had expected a call from Ella Jaz if the flight was still on.

  “Well, they took off a little while ago. They’re on their way back.”

  “Why aren’t you on the plane?”

  He explained that although he had planned to join the kids on the flight, it turned out there wasn’t room for four passengers, only three, so he had stayed behind. Patrice couldn’t believe he hadn’t gone along as their mentor and chaperone. She expressed her displeasure in no uncertain terms.

  During their conversation, Blake’s phone registered the arrival of a text message.

  It was the one Patrice had sent fifteen minutes earlier, delayed somehow en route.

  I’m anxious. Please pick better flying weather.

  DR. HOCHLA FLEW NORTH toward Signal Peak, approached the mountain from the west, and did a clockwise loop around the north slope, during which the kids took video and photos of the burn scar. It was a fantastic view out the window over the right wing, the whole fire visible below them in black, their vantage like that of a bird’s.

  From his tower, John heard the plane approaching. He grabbed his binoculars, stepped onto the catwalk, sighted in, and reported to dispatch the presence of the single-engine aircraft, in keeping with lookout protocol. All of us did the same when low-flying planes came within earshot, our reports a courtesy and safety precaution aimed at our own agency aircraft, so there would be no surprises in their airspace.

  The dispatcher acknowledged his report and thanked him, as was also custom
ary.

  The plane turned south, headed back to Whiskey Creek.

  ON THE PHONE, Blake told Patrice the kids should be back any minute. “I’ll call you as soon as I see the plane,” he said.

  When he hung up, unnerved by Patrice’s agitation at his not having gone along on the flight—not to mention her late-arriving text—he began shaking with fear.

  “Call Peter and tell him to come back,” he told his wife, “because Patrice is not happy.”

  Denise Blake dialed Dr. Hochla’s cell phone.

  Busy piloting the plane, he did not answer.

  TOO AGITATED TO WAIT for a call back, Patrice got in her car and drove toward the high school, intending to meet Ella Jaz when she returned from Whiskey Creek. At the last moment before the turn to the school, gripped by a disturbing premonition—“a horribly scary feeling” as she later described it—she chose instead to continue on the highway to the airport.

  DR. HOCHLA MADE HIS APPROACH for landing on the north-south runway from the west. The wind had picked up since his takeoff fifteen minutes earlier, steady at fifteen knots, with gusts to twenty-five, out of the west. The tailwind caused him to come in at a high rate of speed. He carried past the runway centerline as he banked left on final turn for landing. The plane required sixty degrees of bank, the left wing tipped low, to realign with the runway. Dr. Hochla now had to battle a crosswind and still hadn’t touched down with more than half the runway already behind him. A man in one of the hangars who heard the approach and stepped outside to watch shouted, “Go around, go around!”—urging the plane to abort the landing, stay aloft, and circle back for another attempt.

  A few seconds later the wheels touched down.

  GPS DATA SHOWED that landing occurred at 3:52 p.m. and 53 seconds. The plane’s speed was 120 knots. The high speed and angle of approach caused the plane to bounce. It remained aloft for three seconds before the wheels touched down again. Its speed was now 100 knots. Roughly 1,800 feet of runway remained, or slightly more than one-third of its total length of just under a mile. The plane remained on the runway for approximately 750 feet. Its speed decreased to 87 knots. With a little more than 1,000 feet of runway remaining, Dr. Hochla must have seen that the plane would not stop before the end. It would be a bumpy ride on the overrun, and his tires would likely be damaged.

  Instead of applying the brakes and enduring the white-knuckle ride off the runway, he chose to apply power and attempt a go-around.

  THE SHOUT OF “GO AROUND, GO AROUND!” caught the attention of a pilot working on a hundred-hour inspection of his own aircraft inside the Whiskey Creek maintenance hangar. He later wrote of what he witnessed:

  I was only a few feet from the door so I stepped outside to see what was going on. I saw the Doc’s plane having a real time of it trying to get back onto the runway. At this point he had used up 75% of the runway. The aircraft was finally down on all three wheels… My thought was that he would really be burning up the tires trying to stop at that point, but might make it by the end with a high possibility of over-run.

  There was an approximate three-second hesitation, and then a go-around power was applied at that time. With less than 20% of runway left, I saw no way for that to work. I ran to the center of my ramp to see him rotate at the end of the runway, with no real climb rate. The aircraft went straight ahead for approximately 1/4 mile and sank out of sight, then rose again to original rotation altitude. I said out loud, “I think he might make it.” The landing gear was never raised to the up-position that I could see. Then he turned to the east at approximately 20 degree bank, into approximately 15 knots, gusting to 20 knot tail wind. At that point, I told my nephew to call 911.

  FROM HIS VANTAGE on Signal Peak, John reported a new smoke near the landing strip at Whiskey Creek, aware of what it meant from the moment he spotted it. Aircraft down in Silver City, I copied in my logbook, recording John’s report to the dispatcher. Township 17 South, Range 13 West, Section 32. Has started a fire in residential area off Flury Lane.

  PATRICE CRESTED THE HILL on the highway next to the Walmart superstore, where the view opened out to the east over the area surrounding the airport. Below her, about three miles distant, she saw a plume of smoke.

  She knew what it meant.

  AT THE TRACTOR SUPPLY STORE next to the Walmart, Ella Myers’ mother, Jennifer Douglass, and Ella’s sister, Raven, emerged from an errand into the parking lot. They looked east and saw smoke.

  They feared what it meant.

  AT HIS FAMILY’S SIGN-MAKING BUSINESS, two miles from the airport, John Mahl heard siren after siren pass by on the highway. He logged onto social media to ask if anyone knew what had happened to cause the commotion. The first response: a plane had crashed near Whiskey Creek.

  He had no doubt what it meant.

  IN MY TOWER, unable to see the smoke due to storm clouds, I copied into my logbook the radio chatter I overheard in the next hour.

  15:59 — Air Attack 96 Golf over scene of crash

  16:05 — One structure on fire, active ground fire in the grass at crash site

  16:30 — Fire at crash site under control

  At 18:00 I logged out of service, went for an evening walk, and thought no more of it.

  IN OUR LINE OF WORK, it is forbidden to discuss injuries or fatalities in any detail over government radios, for the sake of the privacy of those involved. Lacking access to the social grapevine of friends and neighbors, or even to a local newspaper, I would go another six days before learning the identities of the crash victims. During that time, alone on my mountain, it never occurred to me I might know them—in part because the only pilot of my acquaintance was John.

  As he would have known, landing an airplane is a long, unfolding process that begins many miles before the runway. The main goal is what is known in the flying world as a “stabilized approach.” Several factors comprise the choreography of landing. Airspeed must be controlled, rate of descent calibrated, power setting managed, wind corrected for. Each influences the others, and together they must be integrated to achieve touchdown in the proper landing zone of the runway.

  The National Transportation Safety Board report on the crash would make clear that Dr. Hochla failed to manage this choreography. His base approach—the penultimate leg of the flight, conducted at a right angle to the runway—occurred at too high a rate of speed. He struggled in his efforts to correct for the gusty tailwind, which became a crosswind once he made his final turn. A bank angle of thirty degrees or less meets the Federal Aviation Administration’s criteria for a stabilized approach on final turn for landing. Dr. Hochla banked at twice that in an effort to align over the runway. Wind of more than seventeen knots exceeds the maximum crosswind limit for the Beechcraft Bonanza, as published in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook. Multiple reports from eyewitnesses, as well as measured gusts nearby, noted wind at twenty-five knots at the time of landing.

  His excess speed, his struggles with wind, his extreme bank angle—each and every one of these, never mind all of them together, called for a go-around, just as the witness in the hangar urged, in a shout Dr. Hochla could not hear.

  By going around—in other words, aborting the landing and staying airborne to circle back for another attempt—Dr. Hochla would have increased his options for a safe touchdown. He could have chosen to fly his base approach over a greater distance the second time, giving himself more room to make adjustments for wind, more time to manage his speed. Or he could have chosen to skip landing at Whiskey Creek and instead fly less than ten miles south to Grant County Airport, where the runway was situated on an east-west axis instead of a north-south one. That would have offered a more desirable final approach into a headwind.

  Dr. Hochla had accrued more than 3,600 hours of flight time. His pilot log showed that he had made the decision to abort a landing and go around more than once in the past, when conditions dictated that as the safer alternative. It is a routine act, performed eventually by any pilot who flies long enough, and
a mandatory part of flight training. Why he didn’t do it this time, we can only speculate.

  The most convincing argument I would encounter came a year and a half later, when I read a report on the crash by a man named Don Lewis. A commercial airline pilot with more than 20,000 hours of flight experience, he studied all the available evidence to hazard some theories about the crucial last seconds of the flight, at the behest of the students’ families and their lawyers. For him, two theories of human behavior provided a conceptual framework for explaining the crash: “normalization of deviance” and “mission completion bias.”

  Normalization of deviance proposes that, in Lewis’s words, it worked out in the past so it will work out again, in spite of being incorrect. He went on: I believe that [Dr. Hochla] had become comfortable with the Bonanza and was accustomed to it stopping when he finally touched down. But the problem is, if the landing zone is not the goal then what is? The last time it stopped after landing halfway down the runway. Surely it will stop if I go a little beyond that, or a little beyond that; and so on and so forth. Eventually such a normalization of deviance leads to an incident unless it is recognized and stopped…

  Lewis studied Dr. Hochla’s pilot logbook and found mention of more than one anomalous landing. On 25 February 2004 there is a note about having a propeller strike during a crosswind landing, Lewis wrote. Having a propeller strike on landing is the result of approaching the runway at excessive speed and trying to force the aircraft onto the runway. After this event the incident pilot seemed very diligent to highlight flights that included crosswind landings or strong winds in the remarks section of his logbook… In 2006 on 15 March and 9 May the pilot commented on diverting to alternate airports due to high crosswinds at the airport of intended landing. There were also mentions of go-arounds both during training and non-training flights. All examples of good aeronautical decision-making and judgment.