by M. R. Hall
Michael said, ‘I’ve heard of pilots forgetting to disengage autothrust, but not the switch failing to work. That’s a serious incident. Did he report it?’
‘To the airline, I think. He must have done.’
‘What about to the Civil Aviation Authority or AAIB?’
‘I’m not sure . . . I don’t remember him saying anything about that.’
Jenny and Michael exchanged a glance.
‘Any other scrapes he told you about?’ he asked Diane.
‘No. As far as I know it was a one-off.’ A note of alarm entered her voice. ‘You don’t think it was the same fault?’
‘I doubt it very much – it probably wasn’t even the same aircraft.’
Jenny said, ‘Mrs Murray, you wouldn’t happen to have a copy of your husband’s employment contract? We’ve learned that some airlines may be trying to stop their pilots reporting incidents as the law requires them to.’
‘I can look in his desk . . .’ She turned uncertainly to Michael. ‘You do think there was a fault, don’t you?’
‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ Michael said, ‘but that sounds a lot more likely than an experienced pilot having made a stupid mistake.’
He went with her along the passage to the alcove under the stairs where her husband had dealt with all his paperwork. Jenny heard them talking quietly as they went through the drawers of his desk. Michael was good with her, calm and reassuring, and able to confront her loss head on. Jenny cast her eyes around the kitchen and spotted mementos of Dan Murray’s career as an airman: a photograph of him as a young pilot posing on the steps of an airliner; another of him at the controls in mid-flight; a row of miniature planes lined up on the dresser.
Michael returned to the kitchen alone, closing the door quietly behind him. ‘She’s a bit upset. I told her she should go to bed – we’ll let ourselves out.’ He handed her a document – Dan Murray’s contract with Ransome. ‘He signed it five years ago, but have a look at the last page.’
Attached to the back with a paperclip was a side letter identical in form to the one which they had found at Nuala’s flat. Dan Murray had signed and dated it on 8 July the previous year.
‘We just checked his diary,’ Michael said. ‘His first flight as captain of a 380 was on 28 May. If the incident with the thrust lever was a month later, it looks as if the company gagged him straight away.’
Jenny said, ‘He can’t have reported it, or the aircraft would have been grounded.’
Michael nodded. ‘Like a shot.’
THIRTEEN
IT HAD BEEN A VERY LATE NIGHT. Stopping off at Michael’s for the coffee Jenny had needed to sustain her for the rest of the drive home had turned into several hours spent poring over the files they had retrieved from Nuala’s flat. She had been worried that there would be awkwardness between them after all that Michael had confessed to her earlier in the day, but their visit to Captain Murray’s widow had seemed to switch him into a different mode. He was a military pilot again: detached and purposeful, and determined to unearth any clue about what had gone wrong with Flight 189. Jenny hadn’t made it into her own bed in Melin Bach until nearly four a.m.
Their close examination of Nuala’s papers revealed that over the course of the previous six months she had printed out a vast number of documents relating to crashes and near-misses. Many makes of aircraft featured, but it was the Airbus in which she seemed to have the greatest interest. It might simply have been explained by professional curiosity – after all, it was the plane she flew – but both Jenny and Michael had sensed that she was searching for something in particular.
The incidents and accidents she had researched in detail fell into two broad categories: runway overruns and anomalous behaviour of aircraft systems while in the air. Michael had been of the opinion that the overrun incidents all seemed to have an explanation based in human error. A 320 that overran a runway in Portugal with no loss of life seemed simply to have landed too far along the runway. Another 320 that overran in Honduras the same year, killing the captain and a passenger, also seemed to have come to grief as a result of the pilot misjudging his final approach. Three years earlier a 340 landing at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had skidded off the end of the runway and come to rest in a ravine. Miraculously there was no loss of life. Again, the plane seemed simply to have set down too late, probably due to poor visibility during a violent rainstorm.
More disturbing were the incidents without an immediate human explanation. Qantas Flight 72, a 330-300 flying from Perth to Singapore, made a pair of uncommanded pitch-down manoeuvres at 37,000 feet. So violent were they that passengers were flung around the cabin, many sustaining serious injuries. The subsequent investigation found that computer errors had given false stall and overspeed warnings, which in turn had caused flight control computers to command a sudden nose-down movement resulting in a dramatic plunge of 650 feet lasting twenty seconds. Fortunately, the pilots regained control and made an emergency landing at a nearby airport. A little over two months later, another Qantas Airbus travelling the same route, but in the reverse direction, suffered a spontaneous disengagement of the autopilot and the crew received a warning of a malfunction in the Air Data Inertial Reference System – the same system that had malfunctioned on Flight 72. The crew switched off the suspect instruments and returned to Perth to make a safe landing.
The incident which had engaged Nuala most deeply was the catastrophic loss six months afterwards of Air France Flight 447. A 330-200 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic with the loss of all 216 passengers and 12 crew. The precise cause of the crash remained a subject of ongoing discussion, but a trail of evidence pointed to problems in the system responsible for determining the airspeed. Messages automatically transmitted by the aircraft’s computers in the minutes before the disaster suggested that one of the three airspeed indicators having been found faulty and switched off, the remaining two continued to give contradictory readings.
Investigators’ attention focused on the pitot tubes, the small hollow pipes positioned beneath the aircraft’s nose which measure airflow and thereby airspeed. If the tubes had frozen and become blocked with ice crystals, it was suggested, no accurate airspeed readings would have been possible. The flight data recorder, retrieved two years later from the deep ocean floor, revealed that the two co-pilots at the controls (the captain was on a rest break) appeared disorientated by the automated stall warning generated as a result of the false speed readings. It was an unexpected event at high altitude and they instinctively responded by pulling up the nose. The aircraft climbed rapidly out of the flight envelope, lost lift, and entered a disastrous stall – precisely the thing they were trying to avoid – from which they failed to recover.
Shortly after the crash Airbus operators were advised to update all pitot tubes to a modern heated version designed to prevent icing. On a copy of the US Federal Aviation Authority’s directive ordering the change, Nuala had written a note in her own hand: the two initials MD. Michael had no idea what they meant, except that it might have related to one of her many contacts on the Airbuzz forum; perhaps another pilot who had encountered similar problems.
Jenny switched on the radio as she crossed the bridge into England to catch the eight-thirty news. Flight 189 was once again the lead story. The BBC’s aviation correspondent excitedly reported that the AAIB had taken the unusual step of releasing a transcript of a portion of the cockpit voice recording. It had already been shown to the relatives of the dead and would be made available to the media later in the day. At the same time, a newspaper journalist had apparently got hold of the story that Flight 189’s ACARS transmissions had mysteriously stopped a little over three minutes before the aircraft started to fall from the sky. The source of the rumour was reported to be a French engineer close to the investigation. A pair of aviation experts drafted in to comment read this as a highly significant fact, but disagreed violently as to the reason why. As well as allowing commu
nication between the aircraft and the airline, the ACARS system relayed essential flight data back to the airline’s computers. One of the experts saw the absence of this data as suspiciously convenient for Ransome Airways; the other saw it as further evidence to bolster the theory that there had been a sudden and disastrous failure of the aircraft’s electrical systems.
Jenny recalled all that she had read about the Air France flight. What little information that had survived the disaster had come from ACARS messages reporting fault codes in the aircraft’s system. Against her better judgement, she felt herself siding with the expert who sniffed important information being buried.
Armed with excuses and platitudes, Jenny pushed through the office door ready for the inevitable hail of complaints from Alison at having been left abandoned for an entire day, but the face that looked up from behind the reception desk was unexpectedly cheerful.
‘You’ve got visitors, Mrs Cooper,’ Alison said. ‘I hope you don’t mind – I told them to go through.’
Jenny waited for further explanation, but Alison merely smiled and returned to her typing.
Jenny nudged open her office door to find Mrs Patterson and Nick Galbraith waiting for her.
Galbraith was quick to his feet and instantly apologetic. ‘Sorry to intrude, Mrs Cooper—’
Mrs Patterson was far from contrite. ‘We thought you’d disappeared.’
‘No—’ Jenny began.
Mrs Patterson interrupted her. ‘Well, that’s certainly the impression you’ve given, and not just to me.’
Jenny addressed herself to the lawyer. ‘Mr Galbraith, you’re aware that this meeting isn’t strictly appropriate: the inquest is still being heard.’
‘Well, that’s news to us,’ Mrs Patterson interjected. ‘Thank you. Now are we going to hear about this lifejacket, or is that secret information, too?’
Galbraith hid his embarrassment well. ‘The purpose of our visit is merely to bring some further evidence to your attention, Mrs Cooper.’ He fixed Mrs Patterson with a firm gaze. ‘Not, I emphasize, to discuss the substance or conduct of your inquiry.’
‘I suppose that falls within acceptable bounds.’
She hung her coat on the back of the door and walked around to her side of the desk, trying to banish the unkind thoughts she was having about her uninvited visitors: after all, Mrs Patterson was only doing exactly what she would in her situation.
‘Right, what have you got?’ Jenny asked.
‘All the relatives were emailed a copy of the CVR, or a small part of it, at least,’ Mrs Patterson said. She handed a document across the desk.
‘I heard about this on the news,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m surprised a copy hadn’t already leaked out.’
‘All the relatives signed a confidentiality agreement,’ Galbraith explained. ‘They receive information before the media in exchange for a strict undertaking not to release it.’
‘You’re happy for me to read this?’ Jenny asked.
‘Please do,’ Mrs Patterson answered.
Jenny studied the surprisingly short transcript of the cockpit voice recording which began as the pilots finished their preparations for take-off.
KEY
CAM
Cockpit area microphone voice or sound source
PIL
Pilot
PO
First Officer
***
Expletive
INT
Interphone voice or sound source
TWR
Radio transmission from the Heathrow Controller
DEP
Heathrow Departure
BRI
Radio transmission from the Bristol Controller
08.58.06
TWR:
Skyhawk one eight nine cleared for take-off
08.59.02
CAM:
TOGA (take-off go-around)
08.59.04
PIL:
TOGA set
08.59.25
CAM:
(sound similar to increase in engine speed)
08.59.45
FO:
Eighty knots
08.59.47
PIL:
Check
09.00.01
CAM:
V one
09.00.03
FO:
Rotate
09.00.18
FO:
Positive rate
09.00.20
PIL:
Gear up
09.00.23
FO:
Gear up
09.00.40
PIL:
Engage AP one (autopilot)
09.00.55
DEP:
Skyhawk one eight nine, Heathrow Departure, good morning
09.01.00
FO:
Good morning Skyhawk one eight nine super passing one thousand five hundred feet on Detling two Golf departure
09.01.10
DEP:
Skyhawk one eight nine Heathrow Departure radar contact, maintain one thousand five hundred
09.01.13
CAM:
(sound similar to decrease in engine speed)
09.01.18
DEP:
Maintain fifteen hundred Skyhawk one eight nine
09.01.22
FO:
One thousand five hundred
09.01.35
DEP:
Skyhawk one eight nine continue climb through six thousand
09.01.39
CAM:
(sound similar to increase in engine noise)
09.01.45
PIL:
A little bit cloudy today
09.02.47
FO:
Radar’s showing clear over the Irish Sea
09.02.55
PIL:
Flaps one please
09.02.57
FO:
Flaps one
09.03.02
PIL:
Flaps up please after take-off checklist
09.03.05
FO:
Flaps up
09.04.08
FO:
After take-off checklist complete
09.06.01
PIL:
Weather?
09.06.05
FO:
Dense cloud over Bristol through to Welsh coast
09.06.07
PIL:
No problem
09.06.09
FO:
Do you want to keep cabin seat belts on?
09.06.12
PIL:
See how we go
09.10.12
FO/PIL:
Light level one hundred
09.10.15
CAM:
(sound similar in increase in engine noise)
09.11.13
PIL:
OK, nice and smooth. Disengage passenger seat-belt signs
09.11.15
FO:
Sure?
09.11.17
PIL:
Sure
09.15.12
BRI:
Skyhawk one eight nine this is Bristol, good morning
09.15.14
PIL:
Good day. Skyhawk one eight nine super passing flight level one four five climbing level two hundred
09.15.16
BRI:
Skyhawk one eight nine identified, climb level three one zero, unrestricted
09.15.18
PIL:
Climb level three one zero unrestricted. Thank you, Bristol
09.16.05
CAM:
(sound similar to objects moving in the cockpit)
09.16.07
FO:
Bumpy. Seat belts?
09.16.18
PIL:
We’re OK
09.16.20
FO:
(hesitant) OK
09.18.10
FO/PIL:
One to go
09.19.05
FO:
Bristol, this is Skyhawk one eight nine. Any weather to report over the Channel?
09.19.08
BRI:
Cactus two one zero ten minutes ahead of you reports light turbulence to mid Channel. Storm clouds moving in from the north. Nothing major
09.19.19
FO:
Thank you
09.19.30
CAM:
(sound similar to decrease in engine noise)
09.19.32
PIL:
Cruise
09.19.34
FO:
Decimal eight
09.19.47
PIL:
How’s the baby? Getting any sleep?
09.19.49
FO:
Doing my best, on the sofa
09.19.53
PIL:
Like that, is it?
09.19.56
FO:
I told her, I’ll change all the dirty nappies you like, but getting up in the night, forget it. I’ve got a plane to fly
09.20.04
PIL:
Off the leash tonight, then? I hope she doesn’t expect me to keep an eye on you
09.20.10
FO:
In New York? You really think you’d keep up?
09.20.14
PIL:
You’d be surprised
09.20.22
