Flight to Heaven

by Dale Black

  Forcing my mind to stay in control, I advance the throttles to go around thrust for the missed approach and pitch the aircraft up to a 15-degree nose-high attitude. My stomach cringes, knowing that the jet’s two engines are now guzzling our limited fuel reserves with the force of two fire hoses. At this altitude and with the high drag, we’re burning fuel four times faster than at cruise speed. Fuel, our aircraft’s life blood, is being sucked dry.

  Fighting to keep my thoughts from running wild, Steve and I review our in-flight scenario. There are no clouds, no fog or weather of any kind, verified by the crescent-moon light reflecting off our jet’s shiny wings—all the way down to two hundred feet. With a population of over a million people, the city of Lusaka seems to have disappeared. Not a car or truck light is seen. There are no street lights or campfires. We are about down to fumes remaining in the fuel tanks, and at two hundred feet we see no runway—no airport—not even any trace of the ground.

  It’s not just fear that silently strangles me. It’s total disbelief. And I can barely breathe.

  The radios continue their silence.

  In my sixteen years of flying jets and training pilots, I have never heard of this before. Are we way off course? If so, how far? Are we flying over water? Are we above some invisible layer of fog? Are the altimeters grossly in error? Nothing makes sense. My once-starched white-collared shirt is now damp and wilted, and my heart is racing.

  In a voice just above a whisper I pray out loud, “Lord, what should I do? You always answer prayer; so God, what should I do now?”

  While flying a worthless holding pattern twelve-thousand feet somewhere over Zambia, trying to sort out our in-flight midnight emergency, with only minutes of fuel remaining in the Learjet’s tanks, my mind flashes back to another flight . . . the life-changing airplane crash in which I was just a passenger—yet the only survivor.

  The flight that changed how I see things.

  The flight that changed me forever.

  The single flight that has defined my very existence.

  FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1969

  I was nineteen.

  It was before daybreak in my hometown of Los Alamitos, about half past four, and the sky was a dove gray with only a light feathering of low clouds. The morning paper had yet to arrive, but the day before, the LA Times announced: “Astronauts Prepare Landing Craft as Apollo Nears Moon.” The Apollo 11 flight had dominated the news that week. All eyes and ears were on the heavens, tracking the spacecraft’s every move, listening to its every transmission. The world was mesmerized. At the moment, though, most of my part of the world, Southern California, was asleep—oblivious to Apollo 11 speeding through space and oblivious to my MGB speeding through its streets on the way to Burbank Airport.1 A lightweight dark green roadster, it could do 0 to 60 in just over eleven seconds.

  What can I say? I was nineteen, with testosterone racing through my veins.

  I was an athlete, playing shortstop for Pasadena College, and an aviator on my way to flying jets. I was a driven person, particularly at that time in my life. I went to school full time, played baseball, and worked at my family’s business, which manufactured redwood shavings, hauling truckloads off to various places in California for use in landscaping everything from freeways to golf courses. Since childhood I worked in the trucking division, loading and unloading trucks, and performing routine maintenance on the big rigs. Several times a week I came to the plant after hours, looking for some additional work. I often spent my evenings catching up on truck maintenance. Sometimes I would run the packaging machine or baler all night to fill an order for the next day. But most of the time I would drive an 18-wheeler all night long, filled with bulk redwood shavings, and usually returned just in time to make my morning classes. After paying my way through college, any time and money I had left I spent taking flying lessons at Brackett Air Service in La Verne.

  Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. The “why” was easy. I wanted everything life had to offer. That meant logging a lot of hours in the classroom, on the playing field, and in the air. All of which took money. I wasn’t a trust-fund kid. I didn’t get an allowance. I didn’t get any help with school, let alone my extracurricular activities. Flying was expensive. Cars were expensive. School was expensive. And though my parents didn’t help financially, they did give me the opportunity to work as many hours as I wanted so I could earn the money to pay for those things.

  One of those things was the British-made convertible I was driving into the sunrise of a beautiful Southern California morning. Two days of Santa Ana winds had cleared the haze from the San Fernando Valley. The only color in the sky was a streak of orange. The only sound the rpms in my four-cylinder engine, whining for me to shift.

  Did I mention I was nineteen?

  And did I also mention that a month earlier the college had expelled me? It wasn’t a slap-on-the-wrist suspension. It was permanent.

  But it didn’t matter. With my hand on the gearshift and my pilot’s license in my hip pocket, I was living my dream, the star of my own movie.

  My life was an action-adventure film waiting for the opening credits to finish so the story could get started and the adrenaline kick in. I was so close to getting that story started. For me, the opening credits were courses taken in school and hours logged in flight.

  I shaved a curb with the tires screeching.

  Even with Vietnam breathing down my neck, I didn’t give a thought to losing my student deferment. After all, I was nineteen, and I was invincible. There were other colleges. And I reasoned that if I didn’t get a baseball scholarship to one of them, I’d get one playing football. Other than flying, nothing made me feel more alive than a hard-hitting game of tackle.

  But none of that mattered. Not now.

  All that mattered was my date with a sleek twin-engine Piper Navajo. Soon I would be in the air, soaring above the snarl of L.A. traffic. All my cares would be behind me, including college with its classwork and course schedules and the thankless, never-ending work of driving a truck.

  Once at the airport, I downshifted, careful not to ruffle anyone’s feathers. Careful to show proper respect. For this was sacred ground to me, this place where my dreams were on the tarmac, waiting for me to climb into the cockpit and strap on the seat belt.

  Ever since I was fourteen, I wanted to become a commercial pilot—to travel, see the world, wear the uniform, live the adventure.

  I wanted it all.

  And I wanted it bad.

  To get there, I needed a mentor. I was meeting with him that morning. His name was Chuck Burns, a twenty-seven-year-old commercial pilot. He had the license, the uniform, the skill, everything. And he was willing to take me under his wing.

  I would show up two or three times a week to help him with his work, flying throughout the state to deliver bank checks. Even though I got paid nothing for my efforts, I got to log a lot of flight time. As a young pilot, that was compensation enough, plus it was a golden opportunity to fly in a quality aircraft and learn from an awesome instructor.

  I still have the logbook of those early flights. My first flight with Chuck was May 29, 1969, in a Piper Aztec. We had become fast friends. More than friends. He had become like an older brother to me.

  I was first to arrive on the tarmac where the red-and-white Piper Navajo was parked. The Navajo was a family of twin-engine planes designed in the mid-’60s by Piper Aircraft and targeted for small-scale cargo operations and the corporate market. The Turbo Navajo could hold up to seven passengers, plus crew, and came with powerful Lycoming engines rated at 310 horsepower each. The propellers were controllable pitch, fully feathering Hartzells. Empty, the plane weighed a little under four thousand pounds with a maximum takeoff weight of almost seven thousand. The maximum speed was 261 mph with a cruising speed of 238.

  Chuck and I had taken the Navajo out on the town just the night before. He and I had double-dated, impressing the girls with the lights that were spread over Southern California like
a glittering array of jewels on a black velvet background. It had been a beautiful evening—no wind, no clouds, and just a little haze. Chuck had taken off and landed, letting me do the flying in between. We had veered the plane over Van Nuys, then over Los Angeles. Back then, there was limited air traffic control. The air space above three thousand feet was more or less free to roam. And roam we did. Hollywood. Santa Monica. Arcadia. Pasadena. We had seen it all. And, more important, we had impressed our dates. We had gotten home fairly late, so it was an early morning for both of us.

  The airplane had flown effortlessly, not giving a bit of trouble or raising any concerns. Even though it had been less than eight hours since our evening flight, I couldn’t wait to get back into the air.

  It was a thrill to be alone with such an aircraft, its sturdy workhorse function bred with a sleek racehorse form, as beautiful as it was powerful. I checked out the aircraft’s structure, examining everything from the wheels to the windshield. I felt like a jockey checking out the Thoroughbred he was about to race, examining the legs, the saddle, the reins.

  Everything checked out. That’s when I climbed into the cockpit. Sat there a minute, just taking it all in. The dials, the switches. The smell of leather and metal. The feel of my hands gripping the controls. The feel of my dreams ready to take flight.

  I made a few checks, then started the engines. They coughed to life but quickly evened out to a strum. The propellers burst into a whirl, then a blur.

  The sensation of that much power in your hands, it was exhilarating.

  I cut the engines, and all that power died at the touch of a hand. My hand.

  It was more than exhilarating; it was intoxicating.

  I got out of the plane and waited near the aircraft’s tail, looking over at the giant commercial jets lined up at their respective gates; over at others taxiing on the tarmac, waiting their turn to take off. My blood stirred as the roar of their massive engines launched them into the air.

  Though I grew up in the ’60s, I was never a child of the ’60s. The whole drug scene passed me by without giving me a second look. I did love a lot of the music, though. Many of the lyrics spoke of drug use. “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds, for example: “Eight miles high, and when I touch down . . .”

  These jets could fly eight miles high, literally. I had flown pretty high myself in smaller planes. I was sure that no drug could come close to the feeling of flying that high, especially in that powerful of a plane.

  Which made you feel powerful yourself.

  You can’t imagine the feeling of taking off in one of those things, flying in one, landing one—the final approach . . . the stripes on the runway coming at you at over 100 mph . . . the yelp of rubber as you touch down . . . the roar of the engines catching up to you.

  What a rush!

  My parents didn’t share my enthusiasm for flying. They weren’t any different from other parents raising kids in the ’60s. There were plenty of things to worry about on the ground—drugs, sex, the British invasion and the music they brought with them, Vietnam. What parent would want to add to the list by putting their kid in an oblong box of metal and letting him take it to forty thousand feet?

  And besides, they had hopes that I would stay in the family business. Grandpa, who started it, was there. My dad, who started his own company within Grandpa’s business, was there. My two uncles. Mom. Grandma. My brothers and several cousins. It was just kind of expected that I would follow suit.

  I think they thought I would get flying out of my system someday and come down to earth, get my feet on the ground, and put my nameplate on a desk in the company office. But they saw how passionate I was about flying—how driven—and they indulged me.

  Another jet took off, its surging engines causing something to resonate within me that I can’t explain. It was like hearing the most stirring music being played, everything within you reverberating to the music, and in one swelling crescendo speaking to your soul, saying, “This is what you were made for.”

  My daydreams were interrupted by a pleasant man in his thirties who approached me, offering his hand.

  “I’m Gene Bain. I’ll be flying with you today.”

  His handshake was firm and confident.

  Gene was a Fresno police officer and a friend of the company’s chief pilot. He also had his commercial license and on occasion had flown the route by himself. He also had a good reputation as a pilot, which was important. After all, I was putting my life in his hands.

  “Have you gone through a pre-flight and engine run-up yet?”

  “Well, not really,” I said.

  Actually I had, and everything checked out, but I didn’t want him to know. I felt too inexperienced to shoulder that much responsibility.

  “I did warm up the engines,” I confessed, “and conducted the pre-flight on the exterior, but you had better go ahead and check it out yourself.”

  We’ll be twice as safe today, I thought.

  A few minutes later Chuck joined Gene and me, and the three of us walked briskly to the plane that was to take us northward to Santa Maria, Coalinga, Fresno, Visalia, Bakersfield, and several other stops in the state.

  We climbed aboard and settled into our flight positions. Gene took the pilot’s seat. I took the seat next to him, the copilot’s seat. And Chuck, the most experienced of us, sat on a temporary third seat behind us so that he could monitor our every move.

  The weather was calm. The sky clear. And I felt relaxed as Gene started the engines. The propellers kicked in. So did my heart. Revving in anticipation of taking flight.

  As Gene taxied the aircraft toward the runway, though, the calm was broken. He seemed overly abrupt and aggressive on the flight controls. I wondered what his problem was.

  Chuck wondered too, though he didn’t say anything. He just tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to change places with him.

  As Chuck fastened his seat belt, we approached Runway 15. We would be making an “intersection departure,” our usual procedure. This simply meant that instead of taxiing to the far end of the runway, we would leave from the terminal parking lot where the plane was, and we would take off from the place that intersected with the runway. This meant we would not use the twelve hundred feet of runway that was behind us. By doing that, we saved a little time and a little fuel.

  We paused for the necessary engine run-ups and to go through the Before Takeoff Checklist. Gene flipped the switches, checked the gauges. I watched him go through every procedure, procedures that by now I could do with my eyes closed.

  All primary and secondary systems checked out.

  Chuck watched it all, monitored it all. If he was feeling uneasy, he didn’t show it.

  At last we were cleared for takeoff. Gene throttled the engines and steered the plane toward the southeast horizon.

  Through the window I caught a glimpse of a PSA Boeing 727 taxiing a few hundred feet away. Don’t get me wrong, the Navajo was a great plane. But it was dwarfed by the 727. I will be flying one of those someday, I thought, which was less of a thought and more of a vow.

  Words crackled from the control tower.

  “Navajo Five-Zero-Yankee, this is Burbank Tower. You’re cleared for takeoff, Runway one-five. After takeoff, turn right, heading two-four-zero, climb and maintain three thousand. Departure control will be on one-two-four-point-six-five.”

  Chuck spoke into the microphone. “Roger. Navajo Five-Zero-Yankee cleared to go. Runway one-five, right heading two-four-zero, climb and maintain three thousand and twenty-four-sixty-five.”

  All systems were go. Gene throttled to maximum takeoff power, and the plane accelerated down the runway, causing it to bounce slightly. But that usually happened.

  What didn’t usually happen was that we were suddenly airborne at an abnormally slow speed. I scanned the dials as questions raced through my mind. Why were we airborne so soon? Why would Gene take off at less than normal airspeed with the plane fully loaded with fuel and cargo?

&n
bsp; I said nothing. After all, he was a good pilot, I was told, and twice my age.

  The engines strained under the weight and the lack of lift. They seemed out of sync with each other. Disturbingly so. Instead of the familiar harmony between the two engines, their rpms gave a dissonant whine.

  Something was terribly wrong. I knew it. Chuck knew it. Gene knew it.

  Chuck barked the bone-chilling words that confirmed my worst fears. “Let’s land in that clear area over there.” He pointed toward a cemetery a few hundred yards away.

  I held my breath as the sight of pine trees filled the front windshield. We’re not climbing, I said to myself. We’re not going to clear those trees.

  Every muscle in my body froze.

  My God, we’re going to crash!

  Chuck lunged for the flight controls.

  I braced myself for impact.

  I was nineteen.

  2

  PORTAL OF THE FOLDED WINGS

  Because of that crash, a part of me would forever be nineteen.

  And no part of me would ever be the same.

  The last thing I remembered was the sight of Chuck’s hands on the controls, violently wrenching the flight controls fully left and fully back.

  I remembered nothing of the plane clipping the treetops at eighty feet. I remembered nothing of the plane careening head-on into a seventy-five-foot structure with a mosaic dome. Nothing of the sound of metal slamming into concrete or the plane shattering to pieces. I remembered nothing of the impact with the ground, nothing of the excruciating pain, nothing of the eerie silence that undoubtedly followed and the suffocating smell of airplane fuel that would have hung in the air like a toxic cloud.

  What I do remember came back to me in the most fragmentary of ways. A piece at a time. My memory was like a jigsaw puzzle with only a few recognizable pieces and no overall picture to serve as a reference. Besides the pieces that were missing, the pieces I did have were turned over in my mind, without color or clue as to where they fit.