Runway Zero-Eight

by Arthur Hailey

  “Hullo, Vancouver,” said Janet. “We don’t think we’ll be able to remember it.”

  “You don’t have to, 714. I’ll remember it for you. There are some other points, too, which we’ll deal with when we come to them. I want to go over these operations with you thoroughly, George, so that when I give the word you’ll carry out the action without too much loss of concentration. Remember, this is just a drill in flipping over switches. You still have to fly the aircraft.”

  “Ask him about time,” said Spencer. “How much have we got?”

  Janet put the question to Vancouver.

  “As I said, George, you’ve got all the time in the world — but we just don’t want to waste any. You’ll be over the airport in about twelve minutes. Don’t let that bother you. There’ll be as much time as you like for further practice.” A pause. “Radar reports a course adjustment necessary, George. Change your heading five degrees to 260, please. Over.”

  Treleaven switched off his microphone and spoke to the controller. “They’re well on the glide path now,” he said. “As soon as we’ve got visual contact, I’ll level them off and take them around for circuits and drills. We’ll see how they shape up after that.”

  “Everything’s set here,” said the controller. He called to his assistant, “Put the entire field on alert.”

  “Hullo, Vancouver,” came Janet’s voice over the amplifier. “We have now changed course to 260. Over.”

  “Okay, 714.” Treleaven hitched up his trousers with one hand. “Let’s have a check on your height, please. Over.”

  “Vancouver,” answered Janet after a few seconds, “our height is 2,500 feet.”

  On his headset, Treleaven heard the radar operator report, “Fifteen miles from the field.”

  “That’s fine, George,” he said. “You’ll be coming out of cloud any minute. As soon as you do, look for the airport beacon. Over.”

  “Bad news,” Burdick told him. “The weather’s thickening. It’s starting to rain again.”

  “Can’t help that now,” rapped Treleaven. “Get the tower,” he told the controller. “Tell them to light up — put on everything they’ve got. We’ll be going up there in a minute. I’ll want their radio on the same frequency as this. Spencer won’t have time to fool around changing channels.”

  “Right!” said the controller, lifting a telephone.

  “Hullo, 714,” Treleaven called. “You are now fifteen miles from the airport. Are you still in cloud, George? Over.”

  A long pause followed. Suddenly the radio crackled into life, catching Janet in mid-sentence. She was saying excitedly, “… lifting very slightly. I thought I saw something. I’m not sure…. Yes, there it is! I see it! Do you see it, Mr. Spencer? It’s right ahead. We can see the beacon, Vancouver!”

  “They’ve broken through!” Treleaven shouted it. “All right, George,” he called into the microphone, “level off now at 2,000 feet and wait for instructions. I’m moving to the control tower now, so you won’t hear from me for a few minutes. We’ll decide on the runway to use at the last minute, so you can land into wind. Before that you’ll make some dummy runs, to practice your landing approaches. Over.”

  They heard Spencer’s voice say, “I’ll take this, Janet.” There was a broken snatch of conversation, then Spencer came on the air again, biting off his words.

  “No dice, Vancouver. The situation up here doesn’t allow. We’re coming straight in.”

  “What!” shouted Burdick. “He can’t!”

  “Don’t be a fool, George,” said Treleaven urgently. “You’ve got to have some practice runs.”

  “I’m holding my line of descent,” Spencer intoned deliberately, his voice shaking slightly. “There are people up here dying. Dying! Can you get that into your heads? I’ll stand as much chance on the first run-in as I will on the tenth. I’m coming straight in.”

  “Let me talk to him,” appealed the controller.

  “No,” said Treleaven, “there’s no time for argument.” His face was white. A vein in his temple pulsed. “We’ve got to act fast. I say we’ve no choice. By all the rules he’s in command of that airplane. I’m going to accept his decision.”

  “You can’t do that,” Burdick protested. “Don’t you realize—”

  “All right, George,” Treleaven called, “if that’s the way you want it. Stand by and level off. We’re going to the tower now. Good luck to us all. Listening out.” He ripped off his headset, flinging it down, and shouted to the others, “Let’s go.” The three men leaped out of the room and raced along the corridor, Burdick bringing up the rear. Ignoring the elevator, they bounded up the stairs, almost knocking over a janitor, coming down, and burst into the tower control room. An operator stood at the massive sweep of window, studying the lightening sky through night binoculars. “There he is!” he announced. Treleaven snatched up a second pair of glasses, took a quick look, then put them down.

  “All right,” he said, panting. “Let’s make our decision on the runway.”

  “Zero-eight,” said the operator. “It’s the longest and it’s pretty well into the wind.”

  “Radar!” called the captain.

  “Here, sir.”

  Treleaven crossed to a side table on which appeared a plan of the airport under glass. He used a thick chinagraph pencil to mark the proposed course of the aircraft.

  “Here’s what we do. Right now he’s about here. We’ll turn him so he begins to make a wide left-hand circuit, and at the same time bring him down to a thousand feet. I’ll start the pre-landing check here, then we’ll take him over the sea and make a slow turn around on to final. That clear?”

  “Yes, Captain,” said the operator.

  Treleaven took a headset that was handed to him and put in on. “Is this hooked up to the radar room?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Right here.”

  The controller was reciting into a telephone-type microphone: “Tower to all emergency vehicles. Runway is two-four. Two-four. Airport tenders take positions numbers one and two. Civilian equipment number three. All ambulances to positions numbers four and five. I repeat that no vehicle will leave its position until the aircraft has passed it. Start now.”

  Leaning down on the top of a control console, the captain nicked the switch of a desk microphone. At his elbow the spools of a tape recorder began to revolve.

  “Hullo, George Spencer,” he called in a steady, even tone. “This is Paul Treleaven in Vancouver tower. Do you read me? Over.”

  Janet’s voice filled the control room. “Yes, Captain. You are loud and clear. Over.”

  Over the telephone, the calm voice of the radar operator reported, “Ten miles. Turn to a heading of 253.”

  “All right, George. You are now ten miles from the airport. Turn to a heading of 253. Throttle back and begin to lose height to one thousand feet. Janet, put the preliminary landing procedure in hand for the passengers. Neither of you acknowledge any further transmissions unless you wish to ask a question.”

  Removing his hands one at a time from the control column, Spencer flexed his fingers. He managed a grin at the girl beside him. “Okay, Janet, do your stuff,” he told her.

  She unhooked a microphone from the cabin wall and pressed the stud, speaking into it. “Attention please, everyone. Attention please.” Her voice cracked. She gripped the microphone hard and cleared her throat. “Will you please resume your seats and fasten your safety belts. We shall be landing in a few minutes. Thank you.”

  “Well done,” Spencer complimented her. “Just like any old landing, eh?”

  She tried to smile back, biting her lower lip. “Well, not quite that,” she said.

  “You’ve got plenty of what it takes,” said Spencer soberly. “I’d like you to know I couldn’t have held on this far without…” He broke off, gently moving the rudder and the ailerons, waiting to feel the response from the aircraft. “Janet,” he said, his eyes on the instruments, “we haven’t much more time. This is what we knew
must happen sooner or later. But I want to make sure you understand why I must try to get her down — somehow — on the first shot.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I understand.” She had clipped her safety belt around her waist and now her hands were clenched together tightly in her lap.

  “Well, I want to say thanks,” he went on, stumblingly. “I made no promises, right from the start, and I make none now. You know, if anyone does, just how lousy I am at this. But taking turns around the field won’t help. And some of the folk in the back are getting worse every minute. Better for them to… to take their chance quickly.”

  “I told you,” she said. “You don’t have to explain.”

  He shot a look of alarm at her, afraid in the passing of a moment that he stood exposed to her. She was watching the air-speed indicator; he could not see her face. He glanced away, back along the broad stretch of wing behind them. It was describing with infinite slowness the tiny segment of an arc, balancing on its tip the misty blue-gray outline of a hillside twinkling with road lamps. Sliding under the body of the aircraft, on the other quarter, were the distantly blazing lights of the airport. They seemed pathetically small and far away, like a child’s carelessly discarded string of red and amber beads.

  He could feel his heart thumping as his body made its own emergency preparations, as if aware that what remained of its life could now be measured in minutes, even seconds. He looked critically at himself, a man apart, performing the movements to bring the aircraft back to level flight.

  He heard himself say, “Here we go, then. This is it, Janet. I’m starting to lose height — now.”

  ELEVEN

  0525—0535

  HARRY BURDICK lowered his binoculars and handed them back to the tower controller.

  From the observation balcony which girdled the tower, the two men took a last look over the field, at the gasoline tankers pulled well back from the apron and, clearly visible now in the half-light, the group of figures watching from the boarding bays. The steady throb of truck engines from the far end of the field seemed to add to the oppressive, almost unbearable air of expectancy which enveloped the whole airport.

  Searching in his mind for any possible fault, Burdick reviewed Treleaven’s plan. The aircraft would arrive overhead at something below two thousand feet and carry on out over the Strait of Georgia, descending gradually on this long, downwind leg while the last cockpit check was executed. Then would follow a wide about-turn on to the final approach, giving the pilot maximum time in which to regulate his descent and settle down carefully for the run-in.

  A good plan, one which would take advantage too of the slowly increasing light of dawn. It occurred to Burdick what that would mean to those of the passengers who were well enough to care. They would watch Sea Island and the airport pass beneath them, followed by the wide sweep of the bay, then the island getting shakily nearer again as their emergency pilot made his last adjustments to the controls. Burdick sensed, as if he were up there with them, the suffocating tension, the dreadful choking knowledge that they might well be staring death in the face. He shivered suddenly. In his sweat-soaked shirt, without a jacket, he felt the chill of the early-morning air like a knife.

  There was the sensation, quickly passing, of being suspended in time, as if the world were holding its breath.

  “We are on a heading of 253.” The girl’s voice carried to them distinctly from the radio amplifier. “We are now losing height rapidly.”

  His eyes shadowed with anxiety, Burdick glanced meaningly into the face of the young man at his side. Without a word they turned and re-entered the great glass surround of the control tower. Treleaven and Grimsell were crouched before the desk microphone, their features bathed in the glow from the runway light indicators set into the control console in front of them.

  “Wind still okay?” asked the captain.

  Grimsell nodded. “Slightly across runway zero-eight, but that’s still our best bet.” Zero-eight was the longest of the airport’s three runways, as Treleaven well knew.

  “Radar,” said Treleaven into his headset, “keep me fed the whole time, whether or not you can hear that I’m on the air. This won’t be a normal talk-down. Scrap procedure the instant 714 runs into trouble. Cut in and yell.”

  Burdick tapped him on the shoulder. “Captain,” he urged, “what about one more shot at getting him to hold off — at least until the light’s better and he’s had—”

  “The decision’s been made,” said Treleaven curtly. “The guy’s nervy enough. If we argue with him now, he’s finished.” Burdick shrugged and turned away. Treleaven continued in a quieter tone, “I understand your feelings, Harry. But understand his too, surrounded by a mass of hardware he’s never seen before. He’s on a razor edge.”

  “What if he comes in badly?” put in Grimsell. “What’s your plan?”

  “He probably will, let’s face it,” Treleaven retorted grimly. “If it’s hopeless, I’ll try to bring him round again. We’ll save any further arguments on the air unless it’s obvious he doesn’t stand a chance. Then I’ll try to insist he puts down in the ocean.” He listened for a moment to the calm recital of radar readings in his earphones, then pressed the switch of the microphone. “George. Let your air speed come back to 160 knots and hold it steady there.”

  The amplifier came alive as 714 took the air. There was an agonizing pause before Janet’s voice intoned, “We are still losing height. Over.”

  Like a huge and ponderous bird, the Empress moved slowly past the western end of the Landsdowne Race Track, hidden now in the early-morning mist, and over the arm of the Fraser River. To the right the bridge from the mainland to Sea Island was just discernible.

  “Good,” said Treleaven. “Now set your mixture controls to take-off — that is, up to the top position.” He fixed his eyes on his wrist watch, counting the sweep of the second hand. “Take your time, George. When you’re ready, turn your carburetor heat controls to cold. They’re just forward of the throttles.”

  “How about the gas tanks?” Burdick demanded hoarsely.

  “We checked earlier,” replied Grimsell. “He’s on main wing tanks now.”

  In the aircraft Spencer peered apprehensively from one control to the next. His face was a rigid mask. He heard Treleaven’s voice resume its inexorable monologue. “The next thing, George, is to set the air filter to ram and the supercharges to low. Take your time, now.” Spencer looked about him wildly. “The air filter control is the single lever below the mixture controls. Move it into the up position.”

  “Can you see it, Janet?” asked Spencer anxiously.

  “Yes. Yes, I have it.” She added quickly, “Look — the airport’s right below us! You can see the long main runway.”

  “Plenty long, I hope,” Spencer gritted, not lifting his head.

  “The supercharger controls,” continued Treleaven, “are four levers to the right of the mixture controls. Move them to the up position also.”

  “Got them?” said Spencer.

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl.” He was conscious of the horizon line dipping and rising in front of him, but dared not release his eyes from the panel. The roar of the engines took on a fluctuating tone.

  “Now let’s have that 15 degrees of flap.” Treleaven instructed, “15 degrees — down to the second notch. The indicator dial is in the center of the main panel. When you have 15 degrees on, bring your air speed back slowly to 140 knots and adjust your trim for level flight. As soon as you’ve done that, switch the hydraulic booster pump on — extreme left, by the gyro control.”

  Through Treleaven’s headset, the radar operator interposed, “Turn on to 225. I’m getting a height reading, Captain. He’s all over the place.. Nine hundred, up to thirteen hundred feet.”

  “Change course to 225,” said Treleaven. “And watch your height — it’s too irregular. Try to keep steady at 1,000 feet.”

  “He’s dropping off fast,” said the operator. “1,000… 1,0
00… 900… 800… 700…”

  “Watch your height!” Treleaven warned. “Use more throttle! Keep the nose up!”

  “650… 600… 550….”

  “Get back that height!” barked Treleaven. “Get it back! You need a thousand feet.”

  “550… 450…” called off the operator, calm but sweating. “This isn’t good, Captain. 400… 400… 450 — he’s going up. 500….”

  For a moment, Treleaven cracked. He tore off his headset and swung round to Burdick. “He can’t fly it!” he shouted. “Of course he can’t fly it!”

  “Keep talking to him!” Burdick spat out, lunging forward at the captain and seizing his arm. “Keep talking, for Christ’s sake. Tell him what to do.”

  Treleaven grabbed at the microphone, bringing it to his mouth. “Spencer,” he said urgently, “you can’t come straight in! Listen to me. You’ve got to do some circuits and practice that approach. There’s enough fuel left for two hours’ flying. Stay up, man! Stay up!”

  They listened intently as Spencer’s voice came through.

  “You’d better get this, down there. I’m coming in. Do you hear me? I’m coming in. There are people up here who’ll die in less than an hour, never mind two. I may bend the airplane a bit — that’s a chance we have to take. Now get on with the landing check. I’m putting the gear down now.” They heard him say, “Wheels down, Janet.”

  “All right, George, all right,” said Treleaven heavily. He slipped the headset on again. He had recovered his composure, but a muscle in his jaw worked convulsively. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them, speaking with his former crispness. “If your undercarriage is down, check for the three green lights, remember? Keep your heading steady on 225. Increase your throttle setting slightly to hold your air speed now the wheels are down. Adjust your trim and keep all the height you can. Right. Check that the brake pressure is showing around 1,000 pounds — the gauge is to the right of the hydraulic booster on the panel. If the pressure’s okay, don’t answer. You with me? Then open the gills to one third. D’you remember, Janet? The switch is by your left knee and it’s marked in thirds. Answer me only if I’m going too fast. Next, the intercoolers…”