Up Up and Away

by Nesta Tuomey

  Two hours later, Graham was showered and shaved, sitting at his bureau, glancing back over the letter he had written two days previously to Kay. He had held on to it, uncertain how he should finish it. Aware that time was passing, he picked up his pen and quickly added another couple of lines, before signing his name and slipping the sheets into an envelope. He addressed it to her, care of the Hostess Section and rejoiced that soon the misunderstandings and loneliness would be at an end. When they met, he told himself, they wouldn’t be long about sorting it all out between them.

  A knock came at the door.

  ‘Pick-up taxi waiting, Captain Sahib,’ the mess-boy called.

  Graham got to his feet and searched the table for a stamp, but to his annoyance he found he had used the last one. He was forced to leave the letter down again. Then he smiled at his impatience. There was no immediate rush. He would stamp and post it when he returned.

  It was baking in the mini-bus taking them to the airport. Graham sat beside John and wiped sweat from his neck with a hanky. He thought of the forthcoming flight and mentally check listed the route. The first leg was straightforward enough, ninety minutes to Bombay, then a little over two hours to Colombo where they would overnight, becoming the slip crew that would next day take the incoming London service on to Singapore. Nothing too taxing if the weather held good. Freak storms were the greatest hazard in the Monsoon season but after two months in the east, Graham was becoming more accustomed to them.

  They careered along the busy street, the driver taking terrible risks, recklessly overtaking and changing lanes. Surprisingly there were very few accidents. Graham reminded himself of this as they narrowly escaped collision for the second time and firmly turned his attention to the camels and rickshaws jostling each other on the city street. Although it was his second time in Pakistan he was still intrigued by the lack of order, the total chaos of city traffic. There were no designated bus stops and crowded buses moved steadily along with people climbing on and off all the time.

  Ahead of them, another mini-bus cut in without warning and a heavily loaded horse-cart toppled backwards, causing even greater confusion. The drivers of both vehicles climbed rapidly down and there was a passionate interchange of opinion, accompanied by much gesticulating and verbal rhetoric.

  Graham exchanged rueful glances with John and hoped the delay would not be too prolonged. On almost every trip to the airport something similar occurred. Thankfully so far, he had never been more than a few minutes late on taking-off. He glanced at his watch and hoped his record was not about to be broken.

  It grew steadily hotter in the bus. Over eighty degrees, Graham reckoned, regretting the lack of air-conditioning. Even a fan would have been welcome. He envied Ralph in London, and pictured a nice spring day there, strolling about Piccadilly. By now his letters might even be delivered, he thought.

  In Montreal where Captain Kenny put down the Celtic Airways Boeing en route to pick up more passengers, the temperature was below 20 degrees and several inches of snow covered the airfield. Kay manned the back of the cabin and shivered under her silk lined cloak as the freezing night air gusted in the open door. She gazed out into the blackness and was relieved when she saw the Celtic rep hurriedly crossing the tarmac with the joining passengers. Heads down, they climbed the metal steps, eager to get in out of the cold.

  ‘What’s the weather like at home?’ they enquired good-humouredly as they came aboard, stamping snow from their shoes.

  ‘Bright and sunny,’ Kay told them, laughing when they accused her of pulling their legs.

  It was true that when they left Dublin at the beginning of the week they had been enjoying an unusually mild, untypically Irish spell of dry weather.

  There was a continual buzz of chatter as the jet took off into the darkness and steadily climbed up the airways. With Easter so near everyone was in good spirits.

  Sitting on the tarmac in Karachi International Airport Graham finished his preliminary take-off checks and heard the air traffic controller give him permission to roll.

  ‘Victor Echo cleared to Runway Zero Two and hold.’

  As one by one the engines burst into life, Graham began tapping confidently round the knobs on the control panel. He moved his right hand over the well-known contours, familiarising himself again with the smooth square feel of the throttle box and the rows of levers. Over his head he was conscious of the myriad of switches. The brakes came off with a tearing sound and they began to move steadily forward. As his co-pilot and the engineer got on with the Check Lists, he peered at the blue taxi lights.

  ‘Coming up to Zero Two now, sir!’

  They came slowly around the corner and stopped. Within minutes the controller in the tower gave them clearance.

  ‘Victor - Echo - clear - take-off - cleared to Bombay.’

  Graham pushed the throttles up to 10,000 rpm. The jet began to shudder. He released the brakes and with a powerful, sustained roaring, they pounded down the runway. One by one the runway lights came twinkling up at them, then were left behind as slowly and majestically they rose into the air. Graham allowed the Boeing ride along half-way between sky and ground for a couple of seconds, then he pulled back and up she went.

  ‘Gear up! After take-off check.’

  At two thousand feet a minute they began to climb. The needle on the airspeed indicator read at 180 knots - the only indication they had they were moving. All vibration had stopped and everything was steady. Beside him John confirmed that they were levelling off at cruising altitude. It was an hour and a half from Karachi to Bombay and the flight plan called for a height of 35,000.

  Keeping her dead on course, Graham relaxed and began to enjoy himself. He moved the control column to the left and the port wing gracefully dipped. He pressed the rudder bar gently with his foot and felt the responsive twitch of her huge tail. As always he felt exhilarated as the jet responded to his every touch.

  As they flew on his thought kept returning to his marriage. The trouble was he had got hitched too young, Graham told himself. He had not really been ready for it. At twenty-six he had been a rather brash First Officer, still in the process of maturing. Five, or even three years, he mused, would have made all the difference.

  Graham’s situation was not all that uncommon. Scores of similar marriages existed. Couples did not always grow together, then found after so many years that they were no longer compatible. Perhaps Sile and he never had been! Given a choice he would have wished it otherwise but there came a point when nothing more could be done. Things were as they were and surely to God he was entitled to some happiness before it was too late. That Kay was so much younger than him worried Graham slightly but he shrugged away the thought and brought his mind back to the gauges on the glowing panel in front of him. From now on, he decided, he was going to live his life fully, not keep putting it off a moment longer. They flew on through a calm sky.

  Forty miles on they ran into turbulence. Graham switched on the seat belt sign and made an announcement to the passengers. As the heaving got worse they strapped on full harness. The third member of their crew adjusted the power and activated the engine igniters to guard against a possible flameout.

  It was a very strong wind and it kept changing its flight pattern, tossing them up and down and from side to side. The wind speed was 180 knots.

  Graham glanced out of the side window and saw the wing tip see-sawing up and down. For twenty minutes they felt the full force of its fury. Then it abated as suddenly as it had begun, and the wind speed dropped back to a gentle 60. They kept their harnesses strapped on.

  One hundred and twenty miles from Bombay they closed the throttles and lowered the nose to keep a speed of 260 knots. As Graham ordered the descent approach check and his crew progressed through the listed items, he found himself wondering again if Nicky had got his letter. He only hoped Ralph had posted it immediately on landing as promised. A smile hovered on his lips as he began the descent, gear and half flap down, all checks compl
eted, dead in line with the runway.

  ‘Very nice landing, sir,’ John complimented him.

  Graham nodded acknowledgement. If Colombo was half as good, he thought, they would have nothing to complain about.

  FIFTY SEVEN

  En route to Colombo a storm suddenly sprang up lashing the skin of the aircraft. Water cascaded over the cockpit windscreen. It was getting bumpier. The Boeing began pitching and rolling.

  Graham stole an anxious glance away from the instrument panel and out into the raging torrent. The dull rain-filled sky eerily reflected back the phosphorescent glimmer of the dials. They were fifteen minutes from Colombo and visibility was zero.

  The cockpit door opened and one of the Tamil stewardesses in her gleaming blue sari came in, clinging carefully to the ledges and backs of seats, to clear away the crew’s empty coffee cups. When she had gone out again John asked, ‘Shall I report to Colombo Centre, sir?’

  ‘Do that!’

  Graham heard voices crackling on the radio transmitter.

  ‘Victor Echo crossing the coast in cloud at Flight level 140. Request clearance to descend.’

  ‘Victor Echo clear to descend at 10,000,’ came the Ceylonese controller’s sing-song voice. ‘Wind.south-west twenty-five knots gusting.’

  ‘What’s the latest visibility?’

  ‘Visibility one mile in heavy rain,’ came the reply. ‘You can say that again!’ said John grimly.

  ‘It’s coming down in buckets,’ Graham agreed, more cheerfully. ‘We had better go down and have a look.’

  ‘Two minutes,’ John advised. ‘Procedure turn.’

  Graham tilted up the port wings and started to descend. He put the wheels down and called for the landing check. He could still see absolutely nothing. They were in a dense grey blanket.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the small island below with its foothills leading in to the higher peaks in the centre. As John and the engineer droned through the items, he kept his eye on the needles on the ILS - the localiser in the orange sector, the glide path at the top of the instrument showing the aircraft had not yet started to cut the beams.

  Very gradually the localiser began to move. Graham slightly increased the left bank and the 707 slid into the beam onto a heading of 280 degrees. They were now nine miles from the runway.

  Graham felt a niggling unease. He stared hard at the ILS, then with a jolt, he realised what it was.

  The glide path needle had not budged.

  Half a minute went by. The aircraft was still in a grey porridge. The speed fluctuated around 140 knots. In all this bumpiness, Graham was almost having to wrestle with the controls.

  ‘Come in Victor Echo,’ came the controller’s high-pitched voice. ‘Clear to land.’ Graham punched the stop-watch on the instrument panel and put down flap. They were descending faster. Rain and greyness still blinded the windscreen.

  Suddenly the edge of the grey swirled and lifted. Graham got a glimpse of the solid mass of jungle heads just under the aircraft. They were very low and very far short of the threshold.

  ‘More power,’

  The engine noise increased. ‘More power!’

  Graham pulled back on the stick. The jets roared. Ahead he could see the threshold lights shining misty and green and then the 707, hampered by heavy drag of flap and extended undercarriage, cleared them and roared back up into the sky.

  ‘That was a nasty one,’ John was first to break silence. Sweat beaded his forehead. Graham’s heart thudded in his chest. It had been nasty.

  There was a slight shake in John’s voice as he said, ‘Think we should divert to Madras?’ ‘We’ll have another go first,’ Graham spoke curtly to cover his own growing unease. He looked at his instrument panel and gauges. With the faulty ILS he was beginning to doubt their accuracy.

  ‘Making another approach,’ he told the Tower.

  ‘Very well. Here is the latest weather: visibility down to 600 yards, gusting rain. Graham continued to climb, then levelled off at twenty-five hundred feet.

  ‘On Procedure turn. Height twenty-five hundred.’

  They were back in the relentless fury of the storm. Rain sloshed the windscreen and the 707 began pitching and rolling as Graham came out of the procedure turn and carefully lined the aircraft on the ILS beam. He felt as if he were in a time warp, condemned to making everlasting approaches in appalling weather conditions.

  Worse was to come. The lightning flashes had triggered his migraine. Graham was aware of a shimmering dazzle in front of his right eye, blinkering his vision. When he peered at the instrument panel it was as if a small chunk had been bitten out of the gauges and he found it difficult to distinguish between the colours red and green. Unless he turned his head fully he could not see John.

  He cursed the ill-timing of the attack and fumbled awkwardly in his pocket for a tablet. With full harness strapped on it was not easy to get at. By releasing the catches on his harness he managed at last, and slipped a tablet into his mouth.

  On the radio he could hear the Colombo Tower giving instructions to another aircraft. ‘You are now Number One to land.’

  ‘Roger.’

  And a few moments later.

  ‘Overshooting... request re-clearance to Madras at 19,000.’ Graham said to John, ‘There’s a DC8 gone on to Madras.’

  They were descending at five hundred feet a minute enveloped by a thick asbestos jacket.

  ‘You are now Number One to land,’ came from the Tower.

  Graham’s vision was still distorted. The tablet was not acting fast enough but there was no time to do anything. He kept his eye on the blurry gauges, his confidence in himself and them bleeding away by the second. Beside him, John peered out his side window, eyes anxiously searching.

  ‘Surely there’s something now,’ Graham was on edge. He fought down his impatience to be landed. There were no short cuts to safety. He peered at the instrument panel and through a slight blur saw that the glide path needle was still at the top of the ILS, as if stuck in glue. The altimeter was unwinding past 800 feet. Or was it 600? The greyness went on forever.

  Suddenly John shouted, ‘Approach Lights.’

  Graham took his eyes from the instruments and looked out. Below the nose, a few hundred yards ahead, an area of the thick soup showed a muted glow. He descended more steeply pushing the nose down to get under the cloud. Abruptly the aircraft seemed to dive into the calmer air, the pounding on the skin slackened to a gentle drumming.

  Through the blinding rain Graham saw in horror the hillock and the tops of the trees. Too late he realised that at two and a half miles out he was at two hundred feet not five hundred and the smouldering glow came from the fire by the native huts. He pushed all throttles forward and hauled back on the stick. A massive shudder shook the aircraft from nose to tail. With a roar the 707 struggled gamely just above the trees.

  It hung there for a moment in a begging attitude, then abruptly lost its ability to fly and reverted to eighty ton of ugly metal as it ploughed on into the hill.

  FIFTY EIGHT

  In the Celtic Airways 707 Captain Kenny resumed his seat on the lefthand side of the cockpit. It was time to get a radar fix. Below them, the United States Coastguard cutter permanently steamed in a fixed position ready to supply navigational assistance and weather information to overflying aircraft. And when necessary provide search and rescue facilities for both ships and aircraft.

  He called the ship.

  ‘I have a fix,’ came back the answer. ‘Are you ready to copy?’ The routine transmission began.

  Captain Kenny sat relaxed at the controls and tuned in to the high-frequency radio, idly monitoring the chatter between air traffic controllers and pilots. Behind him the navigator was telling the co-pilot he was going to Killarney for Easter.

  Suddenly he stiffened to attention, ‘Something’s up,’ he muttered and listened attentively for a few moments. Then he said soberly, ‘Sounds like a Boeing has gone down somewhere.’ He glanced across at Ne
d who was taking a spell in the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Not one of ours, thank God! A Pakistani jet by the sound of it.’

  Ned adjusted his own earphones. ‘Who’s out in Karachi this weather?’ he wondered.

  Pete Kenny vaguely recalled a conversation with a fellow pilot in New York, but couldn’t remember whom.

  ‘Jim Shannon did a stint recently,’ offered the navigator. ‘He came back last month.’

  ‘Poor devils,’ Pete said in heartfelt accents.

  Everyone in the cockpit sat very still. A slight gloom descended on them all. ‘Give us a few bars, Ned,’ ordered the Captain.

  Ned reached obediently for his tin whistle and after a moment the sweet mournful notes of ‘The Cualainn’ filled the cockpit.

  ‘Have a heart, Ned,’ Pete exploded.

  ‘Sorry Skipper.’ Sheepishly Ned raised the whistle to his lips again and the jaunty notes of ‘Slattery’s Mounted Foot’ tripped gaily forth.

  All on the flight deck visibly relaxed but they shared the same sobering thought; it was a requiem nonetheless.

  Kay felt a sick twisting in her gut when she saw the headlines, ‘Colombo Air Crash. Irish Pilot Killed.’ She fumbled the paper off the pile on the counter and peered at the print underneath. ‘A Pakistani airplane en route from Karachi crashed in a rainstorm and came down in the Ceylonese jungle killing all 187 people on board. The wreckage of the aircraft is burning and chances of tracing any survivors are remote.’

  The words danced queerly before Kay’s eyes and she had a sensation of unreality as though the voices all round her were actually echoing inside her head.

  Coming in from Chicago she had been aware of certain murmurings amongst the crew. She had been too tired to pay much heed but had been conscious of a strange unease. When she went to bed she fell into a heavy sleep immediately but was awake an hour later, sweating and trembling. She had lain in a semi-conscious state, longing to get back to sleep and yet not able to. At last she had got up and dressed herself and gone round to the corner shop to get something for her tea. It was then that she glimpsed the shocking headline in the evening paper.