Altitude (Power Reads Book 1)

by Dean Crawford

  Penrose said nothing but instead nodded in agreement. He knew as well as Jason that landing on the water in this weather would be tantamount to suicide but there was no other option and they were running out of time, airspeed and altitude.

  ‘Five thousand feet.’

  Jason glanced at the weather radar and saw the nearest heavy storm before them looming up, looking like it would hit the airport just at the wrong time, when they’d be preparing to touch down.

  ‘We’ll turn before that storm cell and try to land parallel to the shore,’ he said as he grabbed his charts and looked at the coast.

  The town of Reykjanesbaer was just to the east of Keflavik, and the peninsula on which the airport stood would provide some shelter from the westerly gales, making the waves less violent and perhaps giving them a chance of survival. Just to the north, there was a small man–made harbour and dock in the north of the town. If he could land the plane on the water and direct it into the harbour the passengers might just be able to make it to shore from there. If they were incredibly lucky he might even be able to ride the plane up onto the beaches. Anything he could do to put the airplane down near the coast and avoid the worst of the heavy seas would increase their chances of surviving.

  ‘You won’t be able to see anything,’ Penrose reminded him.

  Jason put the charts away and grabbed the controls.

  ‘The best I can do it put us close,’ he replied. ‘The rest is going to be up to the passengers and crew, but if we can get them off in that harbour they might just stand a chance.’

  Jason prepared to switch off the autopilot as he saw the storm cell looming on the weather radar before them, and then something made him hesitate. He looked at the position of the cell, and at the range to Keflavik on the DME.

  ‘What?’ Penrose asked.

  Jason’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at the storm cell, and in a moment of recklessness he released the autopilot switch and made his decision.

  ‘Maintain course. We’re going through that storm cell.’

  ***

  XXXII

  Penrose stared at Jason as though he had just grown horns. ‘You want to go into a storm cell?’

  Jason didn’t reply as he glanced at the altimeter and saw the dial wind down through four thousand feet. They were closing in on the runway now, just a few miles away although he wouldn’t have been able to see it even if the dense cloud cover and darkness had not obscured his vision.

  ‘Stand by,’ Jason replied as he took the controls. ‘I’m switching the autopilot off.’

  Penrose gaped at him, appalled and confused in equal measure. ‘Have you decided that you want to die now too?’

  Jason said nothing other than to indicate the altimeter. ‘Let me know if the ground gets in our way.’

  The Airbus rocked and shuddered as it plunged through the dense banks of cloud enshrouding it, the lights on the wingtips glowing like beacons in a hellish night as the rain pummelled a windshield that was useless to them.

  Jason kept his gaze fixed on the ILS display on his screen and watched as the horizontal glideslope beam began moving further up the screen, indicating that they were below glidepath. A second vertical beam indicated their lateral position. By lining up the two beams to cross in the very centre of the screen, Jason could maintain the perfect glideslope approach to land at Kelfavik without any external reference to the ground or a horizon at all.

  ‘We’re not going to make it, Jason,’ Penrose said, his voice betraying the very first hint of concern.

  Jason gripped the controls tighter. ‘Cover the landing gear and flaps levers, deploy them on my mark and not a moment before.’

  Penrose reached out and grabbed the handles but his expression said it all. He was thinking that the stress had proved too much and that Jason had lost his mind, had abandoned all hope of survival and was leading them in a final charge to their deaths amid the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean. A fast and painless end.

  And yet Jason maintained a gentle descent angle, keeping the Airbus as slow as possible.

  ‘Three thousand,’ Penrose uttered, his face ashen and his voice tight.

  Jason hit the autopilot switch and instantly the airplane’s control surfaces were back under his command. He gripped the control stick at his side as an alarm warned him that the autopilot had been deactivated, but he ignored the blaring siren and instead focussed on the ILS screen before him, completely ignoring the rain battering the windshield and the violent rocking of the wings as they soared into the first wave of turbulence. The squalls worsened as they hit the leading edge of the storm cell and the sound of rain drummed all around them in the cockpit, louder now than ever in the absence of the roar of the engines.

  ‘Two thousand!’

  Penrose was actively concerned now, his knuckles white on the landing gear lever and the flaps controls as he held on for grim death, his eyes fixed to the altimeter as they plummeted down. The ILS display was replicated before him and he could see the same information as Jason could.

  ‘We’re five hundred feet below glide path,’ he snapped. ‘Impact will be half a mile off the coast. You need to get to the left laterally or the crosswind will blow us off course.’

  The Airbus reared up as its wings were tossed this way and that, and in the silence of the cockpit with no engines running Jason could almost hear the fearsome gales blustering outside above the rain streaming across the windshield. He turned the airplane to port, pushing it deliberately off centre from the runway. When the time came to touch down, he would have to be accurate not just with airspeed and descent rate but also judge the rate of drift from left to right as the crosswinds blasted across the runway.

  The glideslope indicator shot up toward the top of the screen and the altimeter wound down to one thousand feet as Penrose’s voice leaped several octaves.

  ‘We’re below glidepath, airspeed two hundred, we’re not going to bloody make it!’

  The Airbus jerked and wrestled with the winds and then suddenly Jason felt himself compressed into the seat as a massive updraft slammed into the airplane from below. The plunging descent was arrested and as Jason glanced at the altimeter he saw it cease almost all motion, winding down only slowly as the airplane soared through the storm cell.

  Penrose stared at the altimeter in wonderment as Jason guided the airplane as gently as he could, the powerful updrafts helping to keep her aloft as they glided toward Keflavik. He switched his attention to the airspeed indicator and saw a hundred and ninety knots.

  ‘Stage one flaps, now!’ Jason snapped.

  Penrose responded instantly and pulled down the flaps a single stage. The flaps whined down from the trailing edge of the wings using the auxillary power. Extended out into the airflow, they altered the pitch and the trim of the airplane but also generated even more lift beneath the wings by increasing the air pressure there, allowing the Airbus to fly more slowly without stalling.

  Jason almost yelped in delight as he felt the airplane rise up slightly. He lowered the nose in response to maintain the airspeed as the Airbus rode the powerful updrafts inside the cloud. They were heading into the wind for landing as was standard procedure, and the storm was now rushing in toward them over Keflavik Airport. In the northern hemisphere, the leading edges of a developing cumulonimbus cloud were filled with rising updrafts of warm air, while the trailing edge was where the savage downdrafts of virga were to be found, as well as the torrential “rain curtains” that often trailed behind them.

  Jason knew that those updrafts could move at over a hundred miles per hour, the force necessary to lift fist–sized hailstones into the upper atmosphere, or provide enough extra lift to carry an engineless Airbus A318 a mile or two further that it ordinarily would be able to fly.

  ‘Clever,’ Penrose uttered, ‘but it won’t last for long. There’ll be virga on the other side of the cell.’

  Jason grinned, consumed by a fatalistic bravado.

  ‘Like you said, c
lose enough is enough.’

  Jason saw the glidepath indicator return to the center and then pass below them as they moved above the glideslope, and then suddenly the updraft vanished and the aircraft began to descend again at the normal rate.

  ‘Is it enough?’ Jason asked as more rain hammered the windshield.

  Penrose didn’t reply as he tried to do the maths in his mind, and then he shook his head.

  ‘We’re still going to be a few hundred feet short!’

  Jason gripped the control column tightly in his hand as suddenly the thick cloud cloaking the Airbus was swept away and the darkness of Iceland loomed through the side windows. Jason glimpsed street lights through Penrose’s side window, a blessed sight of terra firma that bolstered his confidence even though the comfort was symbolic only.

  Through the shattered windscreen he picked out a bright patch of light that could only be Keflavik airport, and the brightest section of it likely to be runway two niner. He looked down at the ILS screen and saw the glideslope indicator drifting back down through the centre once again, the lateral indicator just off to the right.

  Jason’s eyes flicked to his side window and he spotted streetlights that rushed past, but also moved to the left to pass out of sight beneath them. The Airbus was drifting to the right and he got the tinest hint of by how much.

  ‘This is going to be bloody tricky!’ Penrose gasped.

  Jason knew that they had no plays left and that this was going to come down to a game of skill and luck, the latter of which they had experienced none of in the last hour.

  ‘Flaps up!’

  Penrose complied immediately and the flaps whined upward once again. The extra lift was snatched away from the wings but the airspeed increased as Jason fought for control in the gusting winds and tried to judge his landing.

  ‘Five hundred feet!’ Penrose yelled, one hand still gripping the landing gear lever.

  The ILS beams wobbled as Jason fought to keep the airplane steady in the ferocious gales. He glimpsed to his right the coast drift past beneath them, the twinkling lights of Keflavik glowing in the deep twilight as they rushed past. The cloudbase was deeply bruised and almost in darkness, the landscape beneath them barely discernible from the wild oceans around it.

  The Airbus’s wings rocked violently and Jason saw them drifting harder to the right as the crosswinds pulled them off the ILS beam. He slammed in left aileron and a stab of left rudder to kick the airplane into the wind as he glanced at the airspeed indicator.

  One hundred eighty knots.

  The Airbus’s nose was now pointing well to the south of the airport, the airplane coming in sideways in a steep “crabbing” manoeuvre as Jason fought both the turbulence and the crosswinds.

  ‘Two hundred feet!’

  Penrose was positively near cardiac arrest now, unable to see the ground ahead and so instead watching out of his side window as he sought a glimpse of the runway passing by beneath them.

  Jason fought to keep the airplane in alignment, saw the ILS beam drifting inexorably toward the centreline as he rocked the control column this way and that to keep the wings level as they rocketed over the coastal town toward the airport. The Airbus shuddered as turbulence tossed her to one side and forced Jason to compensate with right aileron, keeping the wings level but drifting them onto the runway centreline once more, too soon for their touch down.

  The automated altitude warning voice chimed calmly through the cockpit.

  ‘One hundred feet.’

  ‘For the love of God, put the damned wheels down!’ Penrose yelled as he spotted massive squalls of rain obscuring the runway lights at the other side of the airport. ‘Virga ahead!’

  Jason did not look up, resisting the urge to glance at the savage downdrafts and rain curtains rushing toward them. He waited a moment longer, his gaze fixed upon the instruments, glanced at the altimeter and saw eighty feet altitude and then he bellowed the command.

  ‘Half flaps, wheels down now!’

  Penrose yanked the landing gear lever down and dragged the flaps lever back as though his life depended on him ripping them from the control panel. Jason heard the wheels wind down under emergency power as the flaps extended and suddenly the Airbus slowed and felt as light as a Tiger Moth he had once flown over Southern England. The gusting winds slammed into the flaps trailing from the wings and slowed their rate of descent and their airspeed.

  ‘Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty…’

  The airspeed wound down to one hundred and sixty knots as Jason hauled back on the control column, slammed in left rudder and a healthy dose of left aileron and arrested the descent rate to zero.

  Time seemed to stand still as Jason focussed only on holding the Airbus in what was known as the “flare” for as long as she would stay there. The airliner sailed along for several seconds just ten feet above the ground, a combination of the raised nose and the ground effect of high air pressure beneath her fuselage and wings creating an aerodynamic cushion upon which she would sit until the airspeed decayed away. Then, the airplane’s weight would overcome the aerodynamic effect, gravity would win and she would descend once again with nothing left to stop her.

  Jason’s muscles ached as he held the controls in position for what felt like an age, the port wing low to prevent the gales from getting underneath it and flipping them over, and then suddenly the Airbus sank abruptly as the airspeed dropped below one hundred and fifty knots.

  Jason felt his heart miss a beat and then the undercarriage slammed into the ground. The Airbus slewed wildly left and right and in an instant, he knew that they had missed the runway.

  ***

  XXXIII

  Jason slammed down a bootful of right rudder to counter the airplane’s wild slew to the left and he felt the Airbus slow dramatically as the undercarriage ploughed through the ground beneath them. The fuselage shuddered and groaned and he was shaken violently in his harness as they careered along what felt like icy mud.

  ‘We’ve missed the airport!’ Penrose snapped as though appalled. ‘You’re off the bloody runway!’

  Cries of alarm burst from the passenger cabin to add to the noise around them. Jason grabbed the instrument panel cowling to steady himself as he tried to control the airplane, keeping the aileron hard over into the wind and trying to steer the Airbus with the rudders while there was still enough airspeed to maintain control.

  ‘We won’t be able to take off again on mud!’ Penrose added.

  Jason squinted through the windshield, the splintered, opaque glass filled with bright lights that he had been certain were those of the airport, and he was filled with a sudden and terrible fear that they were instead the lights of Keflavik town.

  The fuselage was shaken by a violent thump that reverberated throughout the aircraft and he heard the shouts and cries of panic from the passenger cabin rise in volume behind them, and then suddenly the wild vibrations stopped and he felt smooth asphalt beneath the aircraft as Penrose shouted jubilantly.

  ‘Runway!’

  Jason looked to his left and he saw the pin–prick runway border lights flashing past beside his window. He realised that they must have touched down just prior to the runway, on an open but flat strip of land that preceded the threshold. Jason pushed his toes down on the wheel brakes and the nose dropped in response as he steered the airplane onto the runway centreline.

  Jason keyed the public address switch on the instrument panel.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please stay in your seats,’ he said, and sighed in relief. ‘We have landed.’

  From behind him in the passenger cabin he heard the cries of panic suddenly turn into shouts of delight and cheers of relief as the passengers realised that they were now on a runway and could see the airport buildings and terminal to the right of the airplane as it rolled.

  Outside, Jason saw heavy squalls of rain pounding the airport as the virga trailing the storm cell pummelled the ground and the fuselage, drumming on the aluminium surface with a vio
lent humming sound. If they had arrived at the airport a moment or two later, the downpours and associated downdrafts would have sent them ploughing into the ground just short of the airport.

  ‘Well done, young man,’ Penrose said as he gripped Jason’s shoulder and squeezed it firmly.

  Jason smiled his gratitude, but then steeled himself.

  ‘We’re not out of this yet,’ he said. ‘Grab the oxygen masks.’

  Penrose reached for two full–face oxygen masks inside a cabinet in the cockpit as Jason hit a switch on the instrument panel that would release the emergency oxygen masks in the passenger cabin. Then he activated the broadcast switch once again.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please put on the oxygen masks in front of you and await further instructions.’

  Penrose handed him a mask as Jason used the last of the Airbus’s momentum to steer off the runway via the nearest exit, and the airplane rolled to a stop a short distance from the runway. He hauled the mask over his face and then began shutting down all of the aircraft’s unnecessary systems.

  ‘I’m going to re–route all power to the APU and the oxygen system,’ he informed Penrose as he shut down almost everything but the emergency lighting. ‘There’s probably enough fuel remaining to keep the APU alive for a few minutes. We need to keep everyone as comfortable as possible.’

  ‘And alive,’ Penrose said, and then smiled and winked at him, ‘at which you have done an admirable job so far.’

  Jason hit the transmit switch on his control column. ‘Narsarsuaq, we’re on the ground and need an update immediately.’

  Narsarsuaq control came back instantly.

  ‘Phoenix three seven five, the emergency services saw you land and are on their way to you right now. The geographical survey team report that the air is still contaminated in your area. Repeat: the air remains toxic.’

  Jason punched the console in frustration as he replied.