Stars Fell on Trieste

by M. Alan Marr

  “That’s your call.”

  “I also think the next pilot we hire should be around Jen’s experience level. That way we have two captains and two first officers. I don’t want Jen to feel like she is perpetually the low man on the totem pole.”

  Dev doesn’t know what a totem pole is, but its meaning seems fairly obvious.

  As they enjoy their nightcap, the conversation switches from work to heartfelt words.

  “Dev . . . I don’t know exactly how to put this so it doesn’t sound insulting,” Steve says. “And I’m, in no way, trying to be insulting. But, given your financial position in the world, I’m not sure you can imagine exactly what it means to suddenly have your salary doubled. I mean, that’s huge. And what you did for me . . . ” Steve shakes his head in disbelief. “You changed my life. You changed all of our lives.”

  “I hope doing so doesn’t cause any unforeseen repercussions.”

  “I hope not,” Steve agrees. “But I think we’re all pretty responsible.”

  “Yes.”

  “They do have questions.”

  “About?”

  “About you, mostly. But some about Chaz.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, they’re surprised that Chaz has his own money. I mean, most wealthy people don’t take on everyday jobs.”

  “I wouldn’t consider piloting to be an everyday job.”

  “No, certainly not, but you know what I mean.”

  “What else?”

  “Mostly just questions about you. You’re somewhat of a mystery to them. They Googled your name, but didn’t come up with much.” He adds, “I think they expected to uncover your whole life story.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Dev says (a secret, not the secret). “Most people of means don’t want to be in the public spotlight. I know you see actors, musicians, political figures in the media all the time. But theirs is a life of desperation. Their entire world revolves around their popularity and ability to be recognized. When they eventually fall from public grace, no amount of money can restore what they’ve lost in self-aggrandizing. It is a gilded prison they craft for themselves, and one from which they can never escape.”

  Steve agrees. “I think you’re right. Some of the most well-known people were the most difficult to fly for. Their public personas are nothing like they are in person.”

  Over the next few minutes, Dev and Steve chat about various subjects, but invariably, it goes back to the business at hand.

  “When will we be able to get underway?”

  “Well, Harrison lives here. Jen lives in Van Nuys, and I know she needs to get home to get her place in order. She sort of parachuted into this with only an overnight bag. I had her go shopping and buy enough clothes for her time up here.”

  “I’ll be happy to cover her expense.”

  “I already did. It’s not a problem.”

  Dev wonders about Steve. “And what about you?”

  “Me? I’m a free agent. If everything goes to plan as far as training, we can fly ourselves out of here on Tuesday. Harrison and I can man the controls. Depending on how long the trip is, Jen will have to commercial out to catch up.”

  “Listen, I was thinking Chaz might like to pilot the maiden flight.”

  Steve smiles. “It isn’t every day a 767 pilot gets his very own 7-6. I’ll be happy to sit right seat for him.”

  “He hasn’t mentioned anything, this is just my idea.”

  “Don’t worry, Dev, first flight is rightfully his.”

  “Thanks. Let’s save it for a surprise.”

  “You got it.”

  “As far as our first destination,” Dev says, “we’re still working on it.”

  Steve then proffers up some advice: “It might be a good idea to fly at least one domestic leg, just to work out the kinks, before taking Oasis oceanic. Maybe drop Jen off at LAX first?”

  “Very well.”

  Steve checks his watch. “Dev, I would love to stay and have drinks with you, but I really have to get back to the books.”

  “Go on. And get some sleep.”

  “Sleep?” Steve says, while getting up, “What’s that?”

  Dev laughs. “I know what you mean.” As Steve starts to depart, Dev adds, “Oh, Steve.”

  “Yes?”

  “Listen, no matter where we go, I want you to always have a flight plan ready to get me back to Atlanta.”

  “Atlanta.”

  “Yes. I have business there that may require my urgent return. That in mind, and the crew doesn’t need to know this, but between you, me, and Chaz, I want you to always have a flight plan for Atlanta ready to execute at a moment’s notice.”

  “Well, all our flight planning is done on iPads now, so keeping a flight plan ready won’t be a problem. I’ll put on as much fuel as we can carry for each flight, and I’ll make sure the spare iPad in the Captain’s Quarters is loaded with an Atlanta flight plan ready wherever we go. All you’ll need to do is give the word.”

  “Thank you, Steve.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Steve did ‘sir’ him, but in this case, it was a professional response to a directive and seemed fitting.

  ***

  TRAINING DAY 14 - FAA CHECK RIDES

  BOEING FLIGHT TRAINING CENTER

  0800 HOURS

  The feverish pace of the last two weeks has been draining. It’s an awful lot of information to cram into a very short amount of time. But Steve and company are highly educated professionals. This is what they do. Were this an airline operation, the next two weeks would be spent in line-oriented operational training, learning airline-specific operations, and flying several live trips with an instructor captain before being signed off for passenger service. This is not an airline. The company-specific procedures, in this case, are outlined and set by Chief Pilot Steve. However, before his new flight department can go active, the pilots of Oasis must pass this next, and most important, final exam.

  Steve, Harrison, and Jen stand before a line of large Boeing 767 flight simulators. Each containing a full size cockpit and control station enclosed within a large white box standing atop tall hydraulic jacks bolted to the floor below. A retractable gangway connects each the simulator to the second-floor catwalk and briefing rooms to assigned to each unit. Many of the other simulators in the lineup are in use, bobbing up and down, tilting this way and that, using a combination of movement, sounds, and cockpit visuals that make the pilots inside feel as though they are flying the real thing. From the outside, the actions of the simulator don’t look like anything special. From the inside, it’s a very different situation. Once strapped into the pilot seats of the simulator, door is closed, and gangway retracted, the outside world completely disappears.

  The giant simulator bay is noisy with the echo of fans, hydraulic actuators, and even muffled jet engine sounds from within the flight simulators themselves.

  “All right,” Steve says over the noise. “This is it. In those briefing rooms behind us, FAA examiners are poring over our training records and logbooks. The next few hours will test us on everything we’ve ever learned, and all the new stuff. After that, we fly the sims. We’ll be on fire. We’ll have failures, weather, and wind shear. Your hydraulics are gonna quit, and you’ll be hand flying on one engine. At some point, we’ll have to simulate an emergency evacuation. Every possible scenario or system abnormality is fair game. Are we ready?”

  “Ready!” Jen and Harrison say with confident determination.

  Steve adds, “When the shit hits the fan, just fly the airplane. Aviate, navigate, communicate, in that order. When it gets down to brass tacks, just remember: whether it’s a BBJ, 747, or Jen’s old piece of shit, you’re a pilot and it’s an airplane. This is what we do for a living. Now let’s go show these guys how it’s done, Oasis style.”

  ***

  The rest of the day is pure, unadulterated hell. Rapid-fire questions on aircraft systems and limitations. Facts, figures, definitions, regulatio
ns, procedures, policy. Virtually every detail of the 767 is up for analysis and exploration by the FAA examiners who will make the final determination whether each of the Oasis pilots will be legally certified to fly the Boeing 767.

  Harrison’s challenge is to keep the 767 facts and figures separated from the 747 numbers he’s been dealing with for the last few years. For Jen, there is the specter of condescension, primarily from older men who see her as a petite girl first and a qualified aviator second. She not only has to be prepared, but by virtue of her sex, over prepared, to compensate for the machismo and double standard often shown to women in aviation. And the particular examiner assigned to her is exactly the type Jen hates to deal with; the kind who registers a slight patronizing expression of surprise when she answers a question correctly, as if being a woman automatically means she doesn’t understand how a fuel pump works.

  True to form, Harrison and Steve are finished with the oral part of the test first, but the examiner asking virtually the same battery of questions to Jen has to make sure she knows who is calling the shots. Douchebag, she thinks as she smiles and answers every question expertly.

  Jen’s examiner walks out of the room and heads toward the main part of the training center for the short break before the simulator session. Jen finally emerges from the briefing room and meets up with Steve and Harrison near the simulators.

  “What took so long?” Steve says.

  Jen answers quietly and glances in the examiner’s direction. “Last plane he flew had a wooden propeller. He just had to make sure the poor dumb girl was really a pilot and not some slutty stripper-gram the boys at the office sent in to give him a lap dance.”

  “Did you give him a lap dance?” Harrison says with a smirk.

  “Small one,” Jen jokes.

  “Well, I understand your pain.” Harrison says.

  “Oh, you know what it’s like to be a girl in aviation?”

  “No, but try being a black man getting a cab in New York.”

  Jen shrugs, “Try a lap dance.”

  ***

  The simulator sessions for each of the Oasis pilots is four hours of utter torture peppered with demonic overtones. The first takeoff and landing are the only ones that happened with both engines operating and all systems functional. A battery of procedures and maneuvers are required; the rest are at the discretion of the FAA examiners sitting sideways at the simulator control station behind the pilot seats. Each Oasis pilot mans the captain seat. The first officer seat is filled by a 767-qualified staffer none of them have met before today. But this isn’t about the first officers, this is about captains. How they fly, how they command, and how they manage their aircraft, particularly in high-risk crisis situations.

  Engine failures from fire, catastrophic structural failure, damage from birdstrikes, contaminated fuel, overheats, explosions, compressor stalls, burst hydraulic lines, failed brakes, electrical failures, are all just a flick of a switch away. Likewise for weather, ranging from clear skies to thick fog, driving rain, turbulence, and lightning. Daytime, nighttime, any airport in the world and its associated terrain and topography can all be modulated at will by the examiners. Wind shear scenarios taken from actual disaster case files are flown by all.

  The trial by fire, if successful, will mean adding a brand-new aircraft type rating to their pilots’ licenses. A rating with no expiration. Whether they work for Dev or move on to another employer, their 767 type ratings (and by virtue of its commonality, the 757) will be theirs forever.

  Jen’s final landing in the simulator involves an uncontainable number-one engine fire and stiff crosswinds. The extinguisher system fails to put out the raging fire. She orders her first officer to activate the second extinguisher system as she lines up on final approach. No effect. Jen knows she has only minutes to get the burning plane on the ground and evacuate. She grits her teeth, adding rudder to compensate for the drag of the dead engine. “Declare an emergency, roll the trucks, and advise tower we’ll be evacuating on the runway.” Jen adds power to the operating engine and lowers the nose slightly. As she expertly touches down on the centerline of the runway, the examiner presses one of his demonic buttons of death, causing the left main landing gear to collapse, sending Jen’s aircraft careening off the pavement into the dirt. As the simulator shakes to a halt, canted over, as it would be after a failed landing gear, Jen orders the evacuation and executes the procedure, releasing cabin pressure so the doors will operate, shutting down any live engine or power unit, and running the evac checklist. Conversely, Steve’s and Harrison’s evacuation procedures were each the result of a simple cargo fire after landing. Jen rolls her eyes—of course this guy would do this to her.

  ***

  W Hotel Seattle

  Chaz paces anxiously around the suite. Dev sits at the dining room table patiently waiting, watching as Chaz makes his circuits back and forth.

  “They should have finished by now,” Chaz says nervously, after checking his watch. “This waiting around is killing me.”

  “I’m sure they’re doing fine.”

  “I always thought being in the simulator was bad, but this is worse.”

  “Think four hours is bad, try being checked out for long-range on a Recon ship.”

  Chaz stops pacing. “How long is that?”

  “Ninety-three hours,” Dev says. “Three Tertian days in the simulator. Trieste to Hercules and back. For combat officers, it’s Trieste to some unknown point in space.”

  “Jesus, three days locked in a sim? Can I assume there are . . . obstacles to overcome?”

  “Yes, there are,” Dev says, then adds, “Of the universal variety.”

  “Good grief.”

  Franz, Milo, and Annette, meanwhile, spent the last two weeks working just as hard. The first week involved 767-specific flight attendant safety and operational training. The second week was spent working with the Boeing personalization team to outfit the aircraft with supplies and provisions for their upcoming journey, which they now know initially involves LAX and Hawaii.

  Franz, Milo, and Annette spent most of the day driving all over Seattle for fresh meats, fish, flowers, and herbs. They visited shops for champagne, wines, and spirits. Artisan cheeses, gourmet butter, and even half a pound of truffles are stocked aboard the aircraft. They also take on dozens of pounds of Starbucks coffee and espresso beans, upgrading for Chaz. While the pilots were being tortured in the simulators, the flight attendants were on the actual aircraft completing final cabin prep. A special delivery from the Boeing reps arrives at the plane: personalized china, glassware, and a set of forty Constellation Oasis coffee mugs, each with the stars arranged just like the ones by the aircraft door. A separate box addressed to the crew contains larger, crew-versions of the Oasis coffee mugs with tapered base, designed to fit in the cockpit beverage holders. The crew mugs are even personalized. Two mugs each, plus several spares that simply read crew.

  As far as the flight attendants are concerned, the 767 is scheduled to depart Seattle tomorrow morning, fully able to provide for owner-passengers and as many guests as may join them. Virtually every cabinet, refrigerator, and freezer is stocked with grass-fed beef, organic chicken and free-range eggs, fresh local fruit and vegetables, snacks, treats, chocolate, liquor, spices, beverages, and baking needs. Likewise for the upper deck, where high-end grooming products, soaps, linens, and supplies await. Everything was personally inspected by Franz. At least from the galley and cabin standpoint, the aircraft is fully ready to fly anywhere on Earth the boys may want to go and, hopefully, provide them with anything they could possibly ask for in the air.

  During the training process, Franz outlined (and Steve signed off on) a placement system for storing galley items that typically must be discarded when transiting international borders. The memory device Franz told the crew is “Left Aboard, Right Away.” In other words, the left-hand chillers and freezers are for the stuff that can be left aboard. Right-hand chillers and freezers are for items that can’
t transit borders and have to be thrown out right away. And as long as there is electrical power supplied to the aircraft, either internal power or via external power cable, the chillers, freezers, and ice machines will be operational.

  Franz looks around one last time before closing the aircraft door for the night. He, Milo, and Annette have done all they can do. If all goes to plan, they will return to the aircraft tomorrow for the maiden voyage, ready to fly. Franz checks his watch and advises Milo and Annette it is time to get back.

  Chaz continues to pace and is about to complain about the time, when his Ti-Phone signals an inbound text from Steve. Three simple lines:

  Steve - pass

  Harrison - pass

  Jen - pass

  “All three of them passed,” Chaz says to Dev, with relief.

  Dev nods with satisfaction. “Commander Chaz, we are operational.”

  When Dev includes Chaz’s rank, he is imparting a higher level of seriousness than usual.

  Chaz takes a deep, cleansing breath. “This is terrible to say, because I know they did all the work, but I kind of feel like we’ve accomplished something here.”

  “We are at the beginning of a new adventure.”

  “No, they’re at the beginning. I’m in the middle of one.”

  Dev smiles and capitulates. “Yes, sir, you are.”

  Three weary pilots return to the hotel after their successful, albeit exhausting, final training day. The concierge meets the group in the lobby and hands an envelope to Steve. Inside, he finds a note and a keycard. Steve silently reads the message. “Guys, Dev and Chaz said to go to their suite.”

  “Honeymoon’s over,” Jen says cynically.

  The pilots arrive at the top floor and ring the doorbell to the suite. No answer.

  “They sent you a key,” Harrison says. “Maybe they left something for us.”

  “Yeah,” Jen says, “their luggage.”

  “I guess we should we go in, then,” Steve says, ignoring Jen, and placing the proximity keycard near the lock. As he opens the door, a chorus of “Surprise!” is shouted by Dev, Chaz, and all three flight attendants. A hearty round of applause follows. “Come Fly With Me” plays over the sound system. The suite is decorated for celebration. Little airplanes hang from the ceiling. A fog machine makes the floor of the suite look like they are among the clouds. There are streamers and confetti, and lots of champagne. The large dining room table is set with a feast. There is a decadent sky blue cake with white spun sugar clouds and a little 767 perched in the frosting. Three of the hotel’s waitstaff and one bartender are on hand and serve filled champagne flutes to everyone.