“Two thousand six hundred,” Dallas replied.
“And airspeed?”
“One hundred sixty knots.”
“I’m … moving the flap lever one more notch. One of you confirm it’s at the twenty-five-degree position.”
“It is,” Sampson confirmed.
“And we’re not rolling left or right? We seem steady?” Dan asked.
“Steady as a rock,” Dallas confirmed. “We’re two thousand feet now, and I can see the runway straight ahead. We’re gonna nail this one, Baby!”
Dan fumbled behind the center pedestal for the interphone handset and pressed the buttons for the PA by memory. “Okay, folks, everyone into a brace position.”
“One thousand five hundred feet,” Dallas called out. “More lightning up there, Dan. Just to the left of the airport.”
Dan nodded, his left hand fumbling for one of the knobs on the glareshield. “Do I have the airspeed knob?”
“No! That’s altitude,” Geoffrey said. “Next one to your left. Yes, that’s it.”
“We’re at one thousand three hundred,” Dallas said.
“What does the speed show?” Dan asked.
“One hundred sixty,” Dallas replied.
“I want one hundred fifty. Am I going the right way?”
“Yes, keep coming. Two more clicks. One more. There! That’s one-fifty.”
“The throttles should come back a bit automatically,” Dan added.
“Yes, they are,” Geoffrey confirmed.
“One thousand one hundred feet,” Dallas said, watching the approach lights crawling steadily toward them. The amazing glow of light from Hong Kong formed the backdrop to the east. “The runway’s all lit up ahead.”
Dan fumbled on the forward panel for the landing light switches, assuring himself that they were on.
“Nine hundred feet,” Dallas said.
“Tell me instantly if anything goes off!” Dan said.
“Seven hundred feet. Runway’s right ahead,” Dallas added.
“Airspeed?” Dan asked.
“It’s one hundred and fifty,” Geoffrey replied.
“Six hundred feet,” Dallas called out.
“Okay,” Dan began, “at just under a hundred feet, the airplane will start to flare itself and the display will change like I told you.”
“Four hundred.”
“We should be about a mile out, and the runway directly ahead, right?”
“You got it, Baby!” Dallas said. “It looks beautiful! A row of jewels in the night, and we’re at three hundred feet.”
Robert MacCabe felt himself holding his breath as the huge jetliner floated toward what appeared to be a runway too short and narrow to accommodate such a huge machine.
“Two hundred …”
The intense flash of lightning ahead was followed by a sudden change on the forward panel as things snapped off and warning flags jumped into the display for the Instrument Landing System—all of them warnings that would have told a sighted pilot that the ILS transmitter had just been knocked off the air.
“Something’s happened, Dan!” Dallas said, her voice in control as she struggled to figure out what to say.
The Autopilot Disconnect Warning was going off, its import clearly understood by the copilot.
“Oh God!” Dan’s voice was an agonized croak.
“We’ve got little red warning things on the instruments,” Dallas said, “but hold her steady! Keep it coming down. The runway’s just ahead.”
“Talk me down, Dallas! Talk me down! Am I wings-level?”
“You’re rolling to the right a bit … and the nose is coming up too much. Down … down more … and roll her back left … NO, DAN! You’re still rolling too much right!”
“HOW HIGH?”
“Ah … one hundred, less than that, coming down now, but a bit too fast! Roll left! LEFT!”
Dan Wade snapped the yoke to the left, causing the 700,000 pound aircraft to roll sharply left with its wing hanging less than fifty feet off the ground. The huge airplane began to drift left toward the side of the runway.
Geoffrey Sampson’s voice rang out from the left seat. “We’re aimed too far left of the runway to land, Dan!”
“TOO MUCH LEFT! ROLL RIGHT, DAN, AND PULL!” Dallas bellowed.
The left wingtip struck the ground a glancing blow. The sudden left yaw was countered by the thundering impact of the sixteen tires of the main landing gear in the grass to the left of the runway. The nose began to come up in response to the blind copilot’s frantic pull on the yoke.
“Going … around!” Dan Wade managed to say as his left hand jammed the throttles all the way forward. Instinct caused him to counter the left-hand lurch with right rudder and right roll, which guided the big jet somehow back into the air, nose high, robbed of airspeed, and hanging ten feet over the surface on the pressurized cushion of air created by its passage. “TALK TO ME!”
Another bright series of lightning strikes, accompanied instantly by a sudden crack of thunder momentarily boggled both Dallas and Geoffrey. Dallas found her voice first, but decided there was no point mentioning something the copilot couldn’t see or do anything about anyway. “We’re … we’re holding … don’t let it down any more! We’re barely above the ground, but your wings are almost level. Runway’s to the right! Pull her up some.”
“AIRSPEED?”
“Jeez, Dan! One hundred … twenty!”
“Dan,” Geoffrey Sampson’s almost detached voice again, then, “DAN! THERE’S A TOWER AHEAD!”
Dan pulled sharply back on the yoke.
“OH LORD!” Dallas yelped, as the sight of a red-and-white checkered metal tower disappeared beneath the nose, followed by the sickening sound of a muffled metallic scraping noise. Another gigantic shudder rattled through the aircraft. The engines came to full power and the nose pitched up.
“GOD, Dan, We HIT it!”
“DALLAS! Can you tell me my pitch angle? How nose-up am I?”
“I’m looking! I think maybe ten degrees!”
“Help me hold it there! Am I wings-level?”
The sound of a muffled explosion on the left side was followed by a warning bell and a red light on the panel directly before them as the 747 yawed left.
“What the hell is that?” Dallas yelped.
“There’s a red light in the handle up there!” Robert MacCabe chimed in. “It has the number ‘two’ on it.”
“That’s a fire in number-two engine,” Dan said, automatically pressing the right rudder pedal to oppose the unbalanced thrust from the right wing. “We lost number two. You gotta help me keep the wings level, everyone! Talk to me! TALK TO ME! Geoffrey, keep telling me the degrees of wing-left or wing-right!”
“Wings are level now, Dan,” Sampson replied, his eyes huge.
“You’re level and we’re climbing quickly!” Dallas said, her breathing coming in short staccato gasps as she tried to keep up.
“How high?” Dan asked.
“Ah … three hundred feet. Still climbing.”
Dan found the flap handle and snapped it to the fifteen-degree position. Gear! he thought. Should he dare? It might be damaged, but he needed less drag. It could wait a second, he decided.
His left hand released the throttles to find the engine fire levers.
“Altitude?”
“Five hundred and climbing. Airspeed one hundred forty now,” Dallas said.
“Dallas, this is vital. The fire handle I’m touching, is that the one with the red light in it?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, and it says two?”
“YES! You need to roll a little to the right. JUST A LITTLE!”
“Left wing down three degrees,” Geoffrey Sampson intoned. “Now down left two degrees.”
Dan yanked the number-two engine fire handle and twisted it to set off the fire extinguisher. “ALTITUDE?”
“Eight hundred … still climbing!” Dallas said.
“I’m going to pull th
e gear up,” Dan said, and his hand snapped the gear handle to the Up position. The sound of moving landing gear shuddered once more through the aircraft.
“Airspeed?”
“One hundred eighty … no, one-ninety,” Dallas replied. “We’re climbing through a thousand feet. Wings are still level, but we’ve lost lights in here, all but a few.”
“Are we above the hills on the other side?”
“Yes,” Dallas told him.
Dan moved the flap lever all the way up as he took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to talk to me constantly! We need to go to the west and climb to five thousand. Don’t let me get too nose-high or roll too far in either direction!”
“I can still see the instruments, but this side only,” Geoffrey said.
“TALK TO ME, DAMMIT!”
“Okay, Dan!” Dallas responded. “Right wing’s down a few degrees, your nose is about ten degrees up.”
“I’m going to touch a switch called APU, Dallas. The Auxiliary Power Unit. Would you verify it says APU?”
“Yes. APU.”
He snapped it on and pressed the Transmit button on the control yoke.
“Hong Kong Approach, Meridian Five. We may have taken out your ILS tower. I’ll need vectors to a safe altitude while we try to figure out what to do.”
There was no answer.
“Hong Kong Approach, Meridian Five, how do you hear?”
Dan Wade’s left hand had found the glareshield panel again and was punching the Autopilot Connect buttons, but there was no response.
“Dallas? Geoffrey? Is the Autopilot Connect indicator here lit up?”
“No. It’s dark,” Geoffrey replied. “What does that mean?”
“Oh Lord. It means I don’t have an autopilot. I’ll have to fly manually. You’ve got a friggin’ blind pilot flying manually!”
“Oh, no,” Geoffrey moaned.
“Hong Kong Approach, Meridian Five. Please respond!”
The radio remained silent, as did Dan for an extended period, before Robert MacCabe broke the silence.
“Why aren’t they responding, Dan?”
The copilot reached forward and put his finger on a small round compass dial containing two needles.
“Ah, are … there two red flags in here?”
Dallas Nielson leaned forward. “Yes. Two of them.”
Dan pointed back to the center pedestal to one of the navigation radio dials. “Make sure it’s on one-oh-nine-point-five, and then tell me if the flags are still there.”
The sound of clicking filled his ears as Dallas made the adjustment. There was silence for a few seconds.
“The flags are still there, Dan.”
She could see him slump. “Dan? You okay?” Dallas asked. “Roll right a bit, nose down a bit.”
Dan began shaking his head. “We’ve lost it,” he said quietly.
“Can’t we try again, Dan?” Robert MacCabe asked, his voice strained.
Dan was shaking his head. “If I can’t reconnect the autopilot, we can’t do an automatic approach. And if we can’t get the localizer …”
“I don’t understand,” Robert said.
“When we took out the ILS tower and our own ILS receiver back there,” Dan said, “I think we destroyed the only equipment we had that could get us home.”
chapter 12
HONG KONG APPROACH CONTROL,
CHEK LAP KOK/HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
NOVEMBER 13—DAY TWO
2:09 A.M. LOCAL/1809 ZULU
“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.
ABOARD MERIDIAN 5, IN FLIGHT
“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.
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