Airframe (4 page)

"Nguyen Van Trung, avionics ..." Trung was thirty, trim and quiet, self-contained. Casey liked him. The Vietnamese were the hardest-working people at the plant. The avionics guys were MIS

specialists, involved with the aircraft computer programs. They represented the new wave at Norton: younger, better educated, better manners.

"Ken Burne, powerplant ..." Kenny was red haired and freckled; his chin thrust forward, ready to fight. Notoriously profane and abusive, he was known in the plant as Easy Burne because of his quick temper.

"Ron Smith, electrical..." Bald and timid, nervously fingering pens in his pocket. Ron was extremely competent; it often seemed he carried the schematics for the aircraft around in his head. But he was painfully shy. He lived with his invalid mother in Pasadena.

"Mike Lee, who represents the carrier ..." A well dressed man of fifty, gray hair cropped short, in a blue blazer with a striped tie. Mike was a former Air Force pilot, a retired one-star general.

He was TransPacific's rep at the plant.

"And Barbara Ross, with the notepad." The IRT secretary was in her forties, and overweight.

She glared at Casey with open hostility. Casey ignored her.

Marder waved the kid to a seat, and Casey sat down beside him. "First item," Marder said

"Casey is now liaising QA to the IRT. Considering the way she handled the RTO at DFW, she'll be our press spokesman from now on. Any questions?"

Richman looked bewildered, shaking his head. Marder turned to him, and explained:

"Singleton did a good job with the press on a rejected takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth last month.

So she'll handle any press inquiries we get. Okay? We all on the same page? Let's get started.

Barbara?" The secretary handed around stapled packets of paper.

'Transpacific Flight 545," Marder said. "An N-22, fuse number 271. Flight originated at Kaitak Hong Kong at 2200 hours yesterday. Uneventful takeoff, uneventful flight until approximately 0500 hours this morning, when the aircraft encountered what the pilot described as severe turbulence—"

There were groans throughout the room. "Turbulence!" The engineers shook their heads.

"—severe turbulence, producing extreme pitch excursions in flight."

"Ah, Christ," Burne said.

"The aircraft," Marder continued, "made an emergency landing at LAX, and medical units were on hand. Our preliminary report indicates fifty-six injured, and three dead."

19

"Oh that's very bad," Doug Doherty said in a sad monotone, blinking behind his thick glasses. "I suppose this means we've got the NTSB on our backs," he said.

Casey leaned over to Richman and whispered, "National Transportation Safety Board usually gets involved when there are fatalities."

"Not in this case," Marder said. "This is a foreign carrier, and the incident occurred in international airspace. NTSB has its hands full with the Colombia crash. We think they're going to pass on this one."

'Turbulence," Kenny Burne said, snorting. "Is there any confirmation?"

"No," Marder said. "The plane was at thirty-seven thousand feet when the incident took place.

No other aircraft at that altitude and position reported weather problems."

"Satellite weather maps?" Casey said.

"Coming."

"What about the passengers?" she said. "Did the captain make an announcement? Was the seat-belt sign on?"

"Nobody's interviewed the passengers yet. But our preliminary information suggests no announcement was made."

Richman was looking bewildered again. Casey scribbled a note on her yellow pad, tilted it so he could read: No Turbulence.

Trung said, "Have we debriefed the pilot?"

"No," Marder said. "The flight crew caught a connecting flight out, and left the country."

"Oh great," Kenny Burne said, throwing his pencil on the table. "Just great. We got a damn hit-and-run."

"Hold on, now," Mike Lee said, in a cool tone. "On behalf of the carrier, I think we have to recognize the flight crew acted responsibly. They have no liability here; but they face possible litigation from the civil aviation authorities in Hong Kong, and they went home to deal with it"

Casey wrote: Flight Crew Unavailable.

"Do, uh, we know who the captain was?' Ron Smith asked timidly.

"We do," Mike Lee said. He consulted a leather notebook. "His name is John Chang. Forty-five years old, resident of Hong Kong, six thousand hours' experience. He's Trans-Pacific's senior pilot for the N-22. Very skilled."

"Oh yeah?" Burne said, leaning forward across the table. "And when was he last recertified?"

"Three months ago."

"Where?"

"Right here," Mike Lee said. "On Norton flight simulators, by Norton instructors."

Burne sat back, snorting unhappily.

"Do we know how he was rated?" Casey asked.

"Outstanding," Lee said. "You can check your records."

20

Casey wrote: Not Human Error (?)

Marder said to Lee, "Do you think we can get an interview with him, Mike? Will he talk to our service rep at Kaitak?"

"I'm sure the crew will cooperate," Lee said. "Especially if you submit written questions ... I'm sure I can get them answered within ten days."

"Hmm," Marder said, distressed. "That long..."

"Unless we get a pilot interview," Van Trung said, "we may have a problem. The incident occurred one hour prior to landing. The cockpit voice recorder only stores the last twenty-five minutes of conversation. So in this case the CVR is useless."

'True. But you still have the FDR."

Casey wrote: Flight Data Recorder.

"Yes, we have the FDR," Trung said. But this clearly didn't assuage his concerns, and Casey knew why. Flight recorders were notoriously unreliable. In the media, they were the mysterious black boxes that revealed all the secrets of a flight. But in reality, they often didn't work.

"I'll do what I can," Mike Lee promised.

Casey said, "What do we know about the aircraft?"

"Aircraft's brand-new," Marder said. "Three years' service. It's got four thousand hours and nine hundred cycles."

Casey wrote: Cycles = Takeoffs and Landings.

"What about inspections?" Doherty asked gloomily. "I suppose we'll have to wait weeks for the records..."

"It had a C check in March."

"Where?'

"LAX."

"So maintenance was probably good," Casey said.

"Correct," Marder said. "As a first cut, we can't attribute this to weather, human factors, or maintenance. So we're in the trenches. Let's run the fault tree. Did anything about this aircraft cause behavior that looks like turbulence? Structural?"

"Oh sure," Doherty said miserably. "A slats deploy would do it. We'll function hydraulics on all the control surfaces."

"Avionics?"

Trung was scribbling notes. "Right now I'm wondering why the autopilot didn't override the pilot. Soon as I get the FDR download, I'll know more."

"Electrical?'

"It's possible we got a slats deploy from a sneak circuit," Ron Smith said, shaking his head. "I mean, it's possible..."

"Powerplant?'

21

"Yeah, powerplant could be involved," Burne said, running his hand through his red hair.

"The thrust reversers could have deployed in flight. That'd make the plane nose over and roll.

But if the reversers deployed, there'll be residual damage. We'll check the sleeves."

Casey looked down at her pad. She had written:

Structural — Slats Deploy

Hydraulics — Slats Deploy

Avionics—Autopilot

Electrical — Sneak Circuit

Powerplant — Thrust Reversers

That was basically every system on the aircraft.

"You've got a lot of ground to cover," Marder said, standing and gathering his papers together.

"Don't let me keep you."

"Oh hell," Burne said. "We'll nail this in a month, John. I'm not worried."

"I am," Marder said. "Because we don't have a month. We have a week."

Cries around the table. "A week!"

"Jeez, John!"

"Come on, John, you know an IRT always takes a month."

"Not this time," Marder said. "Last Thursday our president, Hal Edgarton, received an LOI from the Beijing government to purchase fifty N-22s, with an option for another thirty. First delivery in eighteen months."

There was stunned silence.

The men all looked at each other. A big China sale had been rumored for months. The deal had been reported as "imminent" in various news accounts. But nobody at Norton really believed it.

"It's true," Marder said. "And I don't need to tell you what it means. It's an eight-billion-dollar order from the fastest-growing airframe market in the world. It's four years of full-capacity production. It'll put this company on solid financial footing into the twenty-first century. It'll fund development for the N-22 stretch and the advanced N-XX widebody. Hal and I agree: this sale means the difference between life and death for the company." Marder placed the papers in his briefcase and snapped it shut.

"I fly to Beijing Sunday, to join Hal and sign the letter of intent with the minister of transport.

He's going to want to know what happened to Flight 545. And I better be able to tell him, or he'll turn around and sign with Airbus. In which case I'm in deep shit, this company is in deep shit—and everybody at this table is out of a job. The future of Norton Aircraft is riding on this investigation. So I don't want to hear anything but answers. And I want them inside a week. See you tomorrow."

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

22

WAR ROOM

7:27 A.M.

"What an asshole," Burne said. "This is his idea of motivating the troops? Fuck him."

Trung shrugged. "It's the way he always is."

"What do you think?" Smith said. "I mean, this could be great, great news. Has Edgarton really got an LOI from China?"

"I bet he does," Trung said. "Because the plant's been quietly gearing up. They've made another set of tools to fab the wing; the tools are about to be shipped to Atlanta. I'll bet he's got a deal."

"What he's got," said Burne, "is a major case of cover my ass."

"Meaning?"

"Edgarton might have a tentative from Beijing. But eight billion dollars is a big order from a big gorilla. Boeing, Douglas, and Airbus are all chasing that order. The Chinese could give it to any of them at the last minute. That's their style. They do it all the time. So Edgarton's shitting rivets, worrying he won't close the deal and he'll have to tell the board he lost the big one. So what does he do? He lays it on Marder. And what does Marder do?"

"Makes it our fault," Trung said.

"Right. This TPA flight puts them in perfect position. If they close with Beijing, they're heroes.

But if the deal falls apart..."

"It's because we blew it," Trung said.

"Right. We're the reason an eight-billion-dollar deal cratered."

"Well," Trung said, standing, "I think we better look at that plane."

ADMINISTRATION

9:12 A.M.

Harold Edgarton, the newly appointed president of Norton Aircraft, was in his office on the tenth floor, staring out the window overlooking the plant, when John Marder walked in. Edgarton was a big man, an ex-fback, with a ready smile and cold, watchful eyes. He had previously worked at Boeing, and had been brought in three months earlier to improve Norton's marketing.

Edgarton turned, and frowned at Marder. "This is a hell of a mess," he said. "How many died?"

"Three," Marder said.

"Christ," Edgarton said. He shook his head. "Of all the times for this to happen. Did you brief the investigation team on the LOI? Tell them how urgent this is?"

"I briefed them."

"And you'll clear it up this week?"

"I'm chairing the group myself. I'll get it done," Marder said.

23

"What about press?" Edgarton was still worried. "I don't want Media Relations handling this one. Benson's a drunk, the reporters all hate him. And the engineers can't do it. They don't speak English, for Christ's sake—"

"I've got it handled, Hal."

"You do? I don't want you talking to the fucking press. You're grounded."

"I understand," Marder said. "I've arranged for Singleton to do the press."

"Singleton? That QA woman?" Edgarton said. "I looked at that tape you gave me, where she talked to the reporters about the Dallas thing. She's pretty enough, but she comes off as a straight arrow."

"Well, that's what we want, isn't it?" Marder said. "We want honest all-American, no-nonsense.

And she's good on her feet, Hal."

"She'd better be," Edgarton said. "If the shit hits the fan, she has to perform."

"She will," Marder said.

"I don't want anything to undermine this China deal."

"Nobody does, Hal."

Edgarton looked at Marder thoughtfully for a moment. "You better be real clear about that," he said. "Because I don't give a damn who you're married to—if this deal doesn't close, a lot of people are going to get taken out. Not just me. A lot of other heads will roll."

"I understand," Marder said.

"You picked the woman. She's your call. The Board knows it. If anything goes wrong with her, or the IRT—you're out on your ass."

"Nothing will go wrong," Marder said. "It's under control."

"It damn well better be," Edgarton said, and turned away again to look out the window.

Marder left the room.

LAX MAINTENANCE HANGAR 21

9:48 A.M.

The blue minivan crossed the runway and raced toward the line of maintenance hangars at Los Angeles Airport. From the rear of the nearest hangar, the yellow tail of the Transpacific widebody protruded, its emblem shining in the sun.