by M. R. Hall
In memory of Sergeant Ronald Rex Hall,
9th Battalion Parachute Regiment
And limping death lashed on by fate
Comes up to shorten half our date.
This made not Daedalus beware,
With borrowed wings to sail in air;
To hell Alcides forced his way,
Plunged through the lake, and snatched the prey.
Nay scarce the gods, or heavenly climes
Are safe from our audacious crimes:
We reach at Jove’s imperial crown,
And pull the unwilling thunder down.
The third ode of the first book of Horace (23 BC)
(trans. John Dryden, 1685)
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
ONE
RANSOME AIRWAYS FLIGHT 189 to New York was one of 753 scheduled to depart from London’s Heathrow that Sunday in early January. During peak times at the world’s busiest international airport, one plane would take off and another land every minute. There was little room for error either human or mechanical, still less in the uncertain realm where the two connected.
At forty-six, Captain Dan Murray was one of the oldest pilots on the payroll. With a wife and three teenagers to support, he had chosen to sacrifice union representation and the perks he had enjoyed with his former company for the money in hand offered by Guy Ransome’s buccaneering airline. His basic salary barely covered the weekly groceries bill, and stopovers were spent in the cheapest airport hotels, but each transatlantic return trip earned him a little over £2,500. In a shrinking industry you had to make your money while you could.
Departure was scheduled for nine a.m. Murray hauled himself out of bed at five, slowly came to life in the shower, and minutes later was behind the wheel of his eight-year-old Ford. The persistent headache that had been bothering him lately had thankfully failed to take hold, and for once he didn’t have to spend his morning commute waiting for the painkillers to kick in.
It was an hour’s drive to Heathrow, and even at this ungodly hour of the day the motorway was filling up with angry traffic. He pulled into the car park of the Ransome building on the outer fringes of the airport at a little after six-thirty, collected his flight case from his locker and took a shuttle bus to Terminal Four. The short journey was shared with a dozen drowsy cabin crew dressed in Ransome’s trademark purple uniforms. Some would join him on the flight to New York; others were bound for Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Taipei. The younger hostesses discussed rumours of staff cuts on long-haul flights, but the older ones and Captain Murray kept their thoughts to themselves. Experience had taught them that Ransome Airways had little patience with gossips or trouble-makers.
First Officer Ed Stevens was already hard at work in the landside crew room when Murray joined him for breakfast. The twenty-eight-year-old had a newborn daughter and a wife who had been made redundant as soon as her pregnancy had started to show. He needed his job even more than his captain did and was keen to impress. After a few moments’ chat, Murray opened his company laptop, hooked into the firm’s intranet and listened while Stevens talked him through the flight plan.
The precise route they would follow from London to New York was contained in the electronic flight information pack, a series of files in an email issued in the early hours of the morning by Sky Route. The company’s sophisticated software was designed to get aircraft to their destinations as cheaply as possible, taking account of the weather, and passenger and cargo payload. 10 per cent of flight costs were incurred in landing fees and over-flight charges, 90 per cent in aviation fuel. A strong headwind could add 30 per cent to the cost of a flight and turn it into a loss-maker for the company; finding the cheapest route on a given day was critical.
Sky Route had taken account of all the satellite-generated weather data and decided on a southerly course to avoid strong winds in the north Atlantic. They would fly due west from Heathrow, level off at 31,000 feet over the Severn estuary and make their way towards the southern tip of Ireland. Midway across the Irish Sea they would climb to their cruising altitude of 39,000 feet and follow an almost direct line across the ocean. An estimated flight time of eight hours would have them on the ground at New York’s JFK at midday, Eastern Standard Time. Having talked his captain through the main points, Stevens drew his attention to several Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS) that warned of pockets of thunder cloud over the western British Isles and Irish Sea. It was unremarkable weather for the time of year and nothing to cause either pilot anxiety.
Captain Murray had always preferred flying the Atlantic to complex routes over a patchwork of countries. Beyond Irish airspace there would be no air traffic controllers to deal with until they skirted southern Canada. And once aloft the Airbus virtually flew itself; in fact, if correctly programmed, it would even land and come to a halt on the JFK runway without human intervention.
Satisfied with their proposed course, Murray ordered a second cup of coffee and set about checking the fuel-load calculations. Operating on the tightest of margins, Ransome Airways insisted its captains take on only the regulation minimum 3 per cent of total fuel load as a contingency, which amounted to approximately thirty extra minutes in the air. If a captain chose to take on more and didn’t use it, he would be fined according to a sliding scale: every two litres of fuel taken on board required another litre just to keep it airborne. Satisfied that there were no weather systems reported over the Atlantic likely to require a significant deviation, Murray confirmed Sky Route’s suggested order for 105 tonnes of kerosene and hit the send button, filing his flight plan with the company dispatcher.
It was ninety minutes before take-off.
Greg Patterson was having a bad weekend. His ten-year-old daughter, Amy, was in tears, people were staring, and nothing he said would console her. To make matters worse, he could feel his wife’s disapproval across the three thousand miles of ocean that separated them. Taking the vice-president’s post in London had seemed to him just the sort of fillip his tired marriage had needed, but Michelle had refused to leave Connecticut. A professor in applied mathematics at Hartford University, she had been offered a visiting lectureship at King’s College, London, but when departure day loomed she claimed she couldn’t bring herself to desert her elderly mother. Greg knew full well there was more to it than that, but for the sake of his daughter he had agreed to go alone, and to suffer a monthly intercontinental commute.
Michelle had brought Amy over for Christmas but had had to fly home four days early to look after her mother, who, with impeccable timing, had broken a hip during her absence. Greg had persuaded Michelle to let Amy stay on with the promise that he would fly to New York with her en route to a business meeting to Washington. He had seen very little of his daughter during the previous eight months and relished the prospect of a few days alone with her. All had been well until the previous Friday morning, when, in typically autocratic fashion, Greg’s CEO cancelled his Washington trip, dictating that he had more pressing business to attend to in
London. Greg had briefly toyed with the crazy idea of flying to New York with Amy on Saturday and back to London twenty-four hours later, but his plan was skewered when late on Friday evening the airline bumped them onto a Sunday flight, claiming that their Saturday departure had been unwittingly overbooked. Michelle had failed to be understanding. As far as she was concerned, Greg’s intention to fly their daughter home as an unaccompanied minor was tantamount to child abuse.
Amy clung on to him and wept at the desk in the departure hall as he completed the forms entrusting her to the airline. The Ransome hostess tried her best to soothe the child, promising movies, video games and an endless supply of treats until she met her mother at the other end, but Amy wouldn’t be mollified. Greg attempted and failed on three separate attempts to get her to put on the purple tabard that singled her out as a child travelling alone, and it was the hostess who finally insisted that he just go and leave them to it. With a lump in his throat he disappeared into the crush of travellers with his daughter’s tearful pleas ringing in his ears.
One aspect of service on which Ransome didn’t skimp was its VIP lounge. Cattle-class tickets barely covered costs; the airline’s profit was made in business and first class. Attracting wealthy customers was the chief priority. One such was Jimmy Han – a name the young entrepreneur had adopted for the benefit of his Western business associates – who had clocked up more miles with Ransome Airways than any other customer. Once every two weeks he travelled from his company’s manufacturing plant in Taipei to its offices in Frankfurt and London. This week, for good measure, he was adding a three-day hop across the Atlantic to his schedule. He had spent the previous night at the Savoy, but its luxurious spa had felt a little tired compared with the one he was currently enjoying in the newly overhauled Ransome lounge: lying face-down on a massage couch, he drifted into a doze as a beautiful young woman kneaded his back with scented oils.
The semi-educated boy from Shanghai had come a long way in twenty years. He had worked hard, been lucky and grown exceedingly rich. There was much he intended to give back in return for his success, but that was no reason not to enjoy his wealth. When an interviewer had once asked him if he ever tired of the high life, Han had replied that those who came from nothing appreciated luxury like no one else, for at the back of their minds was always the thought that it might all be suddenly snatched away.
The Airbus A380 was the world’s largest commercial airliner. 73 yards long, 24 yards high and with a wingspan the length of a football pitch, it dwarfed the 747s that stood alongside it. Designed to carry 525 passengers in a normal three-class configuration, Ransome Airways bunched things up a little more tightly in economy to squeeze in closer to six hundred.
Pre-flight preparations were in full swing. Outside in the freezing drizzle a pumping truck transferred fuel from underground containers into the tanks in the aircraft’s wings, while the ground engineers carried out their final inspections. Inside a team of cleaners was working against the clock as the eighteen cabin crew checked that the galleys had been correctly loaded and searched the passenger manifests for those with special requirements: the ‘problems’. There were unusually few: three in wheelchairs and a smattering of fussy eaters. Amy Patterson was the only unaccompanied minor. The words ‘Will need attention!’ had been entered next to her name. The crew unanimously decided that she would be the responsibility of Kathy Flood, the newest and youngest of their number, whether Kathy liked it or not.
After twenty years flying US-made Boeings, Captain Murray had found retraining to fly the Airbus a challenge. But having conquered his initial scepticism at the aircraft’s semi-robotic flight control systems, he was now a fully committed convert. It wasn’t perfect – he would have preferred a conventional centre stick to the arcade-style electronic joystick positioned at his right side, and a nostalgic part of him would have liked at least a few mechanical analogue instruments for use in the last resort – but he accepted that he was flying an incomparably safe machine. Fly-by-wire technology meant that all the vital systems were controlled by a highly sophisticated network of computers and electronics. Rather than the rudder, spoilers and tail elevators being moved by cables and hydraulics operated manually from the cockpit, the pilot’s controls transmitted only electronic signals to the various moving parts.
Instead of conventional instruments, the Airbus captain and first officer each sat before a console containing a number of LCD screens. Directly in front of each of them was an identical primary flight display, which showed the aircraft’s attitude in the air in relation to an artificial horizon and its flight mode. Each also had a navigation display providing a constant visual of the aircraft’s position, the weather up ahead and constant readings of ground speed and true airspeed. An onboard information terminal contained the electronic tech logs and manuals that in older aircraft were contained in thick and unwieldy paper files. In the middle of the centre console that ran between the pilots’ seats were the engine/warning and system displays, and beneath them the four thrust levers. On either side of the levers was a multi-function display – the pilots’ main interface with the aircraft’s computers. Using a keyboard and tracker ball, each pilot could flip between pages relaying the status of various on-board systems or send and receive messages to and from air traffic control and the airline’s home base.
The intention behind this bewildering array of technology was simple: insofar as it was possible, to remove pilot error. If a pilot made a mistake, the computers would detect and correct it. And the Airbus’s computers would make constant minor automatic adjustments to the roll and pitch of the aircraft. Whether the pilot wished it or not, his commands were constantly being modified or overridden. By far the most controversial of the Airbus’s fail-safe features was its refusal to allow the pilot any more than thirty degrees of pitch up, fifteen degrees down and sixty-seven degrees of bank. This was intended to prevent a potentially catastrophic stall by keeping the plane within the safe limits of speed, attitude and altitude, but left some pilots feeling that in an emergency they would have one hand tied behind their backs. The aircraft’s designers took a dispassionate view based on many years’ worth of hard evidence: in a crisis, a computer flies better than a human. A computer is rational. It has no desire to be a hero.
The chief ground engineer, Mick Dalton, arrived in the cockpit thirty minutes before take-off to brief Murray and Stevens on the few defects he had found. He advised them that an intermittent fault with an actuator operating one of the spoilers on the starboard wing had failed to recur, but warned them to keep an eye out for it and scheduled a precautionary repair to take place on the aircraft’s return. There was the usual crop of niggles from inside the passenger cabin – several faulty video screens, a malfunctioning toilet pump – and a report from the previous flight crew of an anomalous autopilot action. While autopilot one had been engaged it had apparently skipped a pre-programmed level-off on ascent, climbing straight through to cruising altitude. Dalton was dubious. He suspected that the first officer, a new recruit to the airline, had mis-programmed the system. Ed Stevens promised he wouldn’t make the same mistake and double-checked the flight data. Despite his misgivings, Dalton recorded the reported error and certified the aircraft fit for flight.
Half an hour before take-off, the three wheelchair-bound passengers together with a sniffling Amy Patterson were brought along the gantry by ground staff and handed over to the cabin crew. Kathy Flood led the little girl to a seat near an exit door in the mid-section of the lower cabin where she could keep a close eye on her. She showed her where to find the kids’ movies on the seat-back screen and how to press the call button any time she needed something. Before joining Ransome Airways Kathy had spent two years as an au pair to a wealthy Italian family with six spoilt children, and compared with them Amy Patterson was a delight. Kathy helped her to send a text message to her mother saying the plane was due to leave on time, and handed her some sweets to suck during take-off. After a few minutes of Kat
hy’s reassuring attention, Amy’s mood lifted and she finally smiled.
First-class passengers embarked ahead of the crowd and were ushered upstairs into a spacious cabin that resembled the interior of a Manhattan boutique hotel. Forty luxury pods, with fully reclining seats upholstered in cream leather, were arranged around a kidney-shaped champagne and seafood bar. At the very front of the aircraft were six self-contained ‘ultra suites’ – glorified versions of the first-class pods – separated from the main cabin by sliding perspex doors.
Jimmy Han usually made do with the relative comfort of a regular pod, but it had been a hectic few days in which he had already travelled more than halfway across the globe. As soon as he slid the door of his suite shut and drew the blind he knew that he had made the right decision. Kicking off his shoes, he eased into the seat and adjusted it just so, stroking the controls until it moulded to the small of his back. Today was a rest day, a time for reflection. He closed his eyes and recalled a long-forgotten moment from his childhood: his father had kicked a stray dog that lay sunning itself in the street outside their drab apartment building. When he had asked why, his father had said, ‘Because he looks more comfortable lying on the hard ground than I’ll ever be.’ Han smiled. Even now he wasn’t as relaxed as that flea-bitten bag of bones; but he was worth more than 700 million dollars.
At eight-fifty the last of the sixteen cabin doors was secured and Captain Murray turned the simple ignition switch which commenced the automatic start-up of the four Rolls-Royce Trent engines. He watched the changing images on the engine screen as the aircraft’s computers started each of them in turn and pressurized the hydraulic systems. Sophisticated sensors relayed a constant stream of information: the computers finessed the many interconnected electrical and mechanical processes in a way no human ever could. It was as if the vast machine had a life of its own.
The ground crew disconnected the push-back tractor and radioed the cockpit to set the brakes to ‘on’. The aircraft’s computers calculated where its centre of gravity lay based on the size and distribution of the payload, and decided on the correct angle at which to attack the air: too shallow and it would struggle to leave the ground, too steep and the centre of lift would slip behind the centre of gravity, risking a disastrous stall. The wing flaps and stabilizer (the horizontal section of the tail) adjusted themselves accordingly. On older planes the pilot would feel his way into the air, instinctively responding to the feedback on his centre stick and the pressure on his rudder pedals, but the Airbus pilot had no feedback, no tactile sense of the air pressing against the flying surfaces. He relied instead on the streams of information on his visual displays. Among the many acts of faith the aircraft demanded, those required on take-off were the most profound.