Into the Abyss

by Carol Shaben

  “We’ll see about that,” Jones said. He headed toward the hangar and disappeared inside, only to return moments later.

  “Get out of my plane,” Jones told Erik. “You’re done.”

  Erik didn’t argue. The truth was, he was done. The risks had simply become too great. With hundreds of hours of flight time under his belt, Erik figured he’d have little trouble finding a job at another airline. He figured wrong. He wouldn’t fly again until two years later, when word came to him that a small northern Alberta airline called Wapiti Aviation was looking for pilots.

  WAPITI

  Erik was ecstatic to sign on with Wapiti Aviation on August 30, 1984. Dale Wells, its thirty-six-year-old chief pilot, maintenance engineer and flight instructor, seemed competent and straightforward, and Erik quickly grew to know Dale’s dad, Delbert, the company president and director of operations, and Dale’s mother. The Wells family even hosted Erik in their home for a couple of nights until he found a place to live. Erik recalled the pilot proficiency check that Dale gave him in his first week as one of the most thorough he’d ever received. He’d been impressed.

  By September 6, Erik had completed his route check and been assigned captain on a twin-engine ten-seat Piper Navajo. But the challenges of flying with Wapiti Aviation far exceeded anything he’d faced in the Arctic, testing the bounds of his abilities. In comparison to flying in the far north, where the skies were uncontrolled and pilots crossing Canada’s vast expanses had room to manoeuvre, Wapiti’s passenger flights between Grande Prairie and Edmonton were complex. In short order, Erik had to learn approach procedures for six different airports, the locations and workings of eighteen navigational beacons, and the nuances of the weather and terrain in between. The airline maintained a fleet of fourteen single- and twin-engine commuter airplanes flying a loop of tightly timed stops to small communities in northern Alberta. Erik flew two to four flights a day, six days a week. When he wasn’t flying, he was on call for medivacs.

  During one of his first flights, he’d connected by VHF radio with a former bush pilot he’d met four years earlier when they’d both worked in the Arctic. Shortly into the chat, the pilot asked Erik to switch over to a private frequency, then asked, “What the hell are you doing at Wapiti?”

  Erik told him that he’d been desperate for work. He’d applied to dozens of airlines, but no one was hiring. When he’d learned about Wapiti, he’d been driving a transit bus for the handicapped in the Vancouver bedroom community of Surrey.

  “That company’s bad news,” the pilot told him. “Get out of there.”

  Soon after that exchange, Erik had a second chance encounter with another former Arctic bush pilot. Erik had just landed his plane in Edmonton and was waiting to be refuelled. The fuel truck finally arrived and a tall, familiar-looking man in a rampie’s jumpsuit got out. Erik’s eyes widened. It was Duncan Bell.

  Erik had heard nothing of Bell since the pilot had crashed his plane. The two men shook hands awkwardly. There was no light banter, no Hey, Enrico! Erik had wanted to ask him what had happened on the day he crashed. He still couldn’t understand how Bell could have made such a careless mistake, but considering how the tables had turned for the two pilots, Erik said nothing.

  The meeting with Bell reinforced Erik’s feeling that he was lucky to be aloft, even if there were rumblings about Wapiti. September unfurled mild and clear, the landscape aglow with vivid fall colours—brilliant reds and oranges against enormous blue prairie sky. In the fields, combine harvesters worked overtime and from above Erik watched them moving like small bugs across the prairie, consuming golden oceans of wheat and depositing neat bales like pats of butter upon the earth. The flying had been surreal, the air so crisp and clear that Erik half expected to look back to see clean sharp lines where the wings of his plane had sliced through it.

  The pace was punishing, but at twenty-four, Erik figured he could handle it. He was banking flying hours like bonus points in a pinball game. But the job took a toll and by mid-October Erik was down to 180 pounds from the 205 he’d weighed when he’d signed on. He often ate poorly and hadn’t had more than a few decent nights’ sleep in weeks. He missed his family and friends back on the coast, and Lee-Ann, to whom he’d become engaged after returning from the Arctic.

  Erik quickly learned why the bush pilot who’d radioed had warned him. Wapiti was a busy airline and the pressure on pilots to maintain their passenger schedules, regardless of the weather, was high. He had recently overheard a fellow Wapiti pilot, Mark Poppleton, on the radio during a flight in poor weather.

  “I can’t get through,” Poppleton had said, fear in his voice as he circled the airport. He didn’t want to return to Grande Prairie, he later told Erik, because he worried that Dale Wells would get in the airplane and make him do the flight again. Wapiti’s chief pilot was known to take planes back up after a pilot had aborted a flight, bringing the terrified pilot along to show him how it was done. If a pilot declined to take a flight a second time, he might just find himself grounded and working in the hangar. Two weeks later he could be gone. Fourteen pilots had quit or been fired from the airline in the previous six months.

  Transport Canada had frequently cited Wapiti for safety violations, including landing when the weather was below allowable limits, flying with one pilot when conditions required two, and unsatisfactory aircraft maintenance. In recent weeks, the government had grounded eight of the company’s planes because it had failed to conduct the mandatory airworthiness inspections.

  “It didn’t strike me as a place I wanted to stay a long time,” Erik would later say of his time at Wapiti Aviation. The ace up his sleeve was that he didn’t think he’d have to. Erik had an inside line on a better flying job with a Calgary-based cargo carrier. He needed only thirty-five more hours on a multi-engine plane and the job was as good as his. The way Erik figured, he would say goodbye to Wapiti by the end of the month. All he had to do was keep from getting fired.

  Unfortunately, yesterday’s fiasco hadn’t helped. Tuesday, October 16 had been the last in a six-day flying stint on the morning schedule and Erik had been looking forward to a day off. As usual, he was at the Wapiti hangar at 4:45 a.m., which gave him just enough time to prep for his 6:00 a.m. departure. It was a milk run—outbound, a yo-yo of takeoffs and landings arcing north then east from Grande Prairie to the towns of Fairview, Peace River and High Prairie, and then south to Edmonton. Inbound, a direct flight back to Grande Prairie, arriving by mid-morning. Then Erik spent several hours helping out around the hangar. Watching the weather move in, he was grateful that he wasn’t scheduled to fly the following day, and in the early afternoon he went home to bed. He’d slept less than an hour when his pager went off—a series of shrill beeps cutting through his fog of exhaustion. It was Dale Wells.

  “I need you back here now,” Dale told Erik. “We’ve got a medivac to Edmonton.”

  Erik dragged himself out of bed and back to the airport. In the short time he’d been asleep, winter had arrived with shocking suddenness, blue sky wiped away by a rag of grey. Snow had also started to fall, swirling like tiny dervishes along the road to the airport.

  Erik was on the phone getting a weather briefing when Delbert Wells entered the hangar. Dale’s father was a compact, wiry man in his early seventies with a bowlegged gait; a farmer his entire life who, as far as Erik could see, didn’t know the first thing about flying. Twelve years earlier Del had sold the farm to support his son’s dream of starting an airline. Now he was president and head of flight operations.

  “So I’ll need a co-pilot,” Erik said aloud into the phone, confirming the conditions he’d just received from the weather office and hoping Del would take the hint.

  The cloud ceiling had dropped to less than the legal minimum for a single pilot and Erik wanted to make sure his boss understood that today wasn’t a day for flying solo. Del muttered loudly and though Erik couldn’t make out the exact words, the gist of it was clear: take this flight or you won’t b
e taking any. Crestfallen, Erik hung up the phone and headed outside.

  A paramedic, Neil Godwin, was waiting beside an ambulance when Erik taxied over to the terminal. By the time the two men had loaded the patient and were airborne, it was dusk. The temperature had dropped noticeably since Erik’s morning flight and snow darted toward his cockpit windshield. It wasn’t until he descended into Edmonton that he broke through the clouds. At 500 feet above the deck the runway suddenly appeared, a grey belt of asphalt barely distinct from the cloud and surrounding snow-swept fields.

  It was dark when Godwin finally got back to the terminal, apologetically explaining that the emergency department had been backed up. Erik waved off the apology, anxious to be airborne. Stepping outside, white tufts of his breath floated upward like pale ghosts. Erik and Godwin loaded the empty gurney and climbed into the cockpit. Moving quickly through his checklist, Erik cracked the throttle to half open and then flipped the starter switch. A series of rapid-fire sounds erupted and the prop spun into motion, but the engine would not fire. After a few seconds, he stopped then hit the starter switch back over and tried once more. Again the prop spun into motion and the engine strained to engage. No luck. Erik tried several more times, and on the last, instead of the familiar chk-chk-chk-chk-chk of the engine turning over, the pilot heard only a weak murmur followed by a sickening clicking sound. The starter had burned out. Erik’s stomach flipped like some great slug rolling over. He’d have to call Dale and let him know. Erik knew how much his boss hated having his planes out of service and if the airline lost revenue on Erik’s account, there’d be hell to pay. He walked with Godwin back into the terminal, got him a seat on Wapiti’s evening flight back to Grande Prairie, and then called Dale.

  “I’m stopping in Edmonton tonight on my way down to Calgary,” Dale told him. “We’ll try to hand prop it.”

  Bone tired, Erik sat down to wait. He dared not close his eyes, fearing that if he did, he wouldn’t wake up until Dale was standing over him. Dale’s plane didn’t arrive until after eleven and Erik rushed outside to meet it.

  For nearly twenty minutes, the two tried to hand prop the plane—a technique where one person sits at the controls while the other cranks the propeller. Finally Dale called it quits, saying that he would have to fly in a new starter on Wednesday’s morning flight. Without further instructions for Erik, Dale strode away toward his plane.

  The young pilot was at a loss. By the time he mustered the courage to ask Dale about a hotel room, he was already 30 feet away and out of earshot. Erik stood beside his disabled plane, frozen fingers tucked into the armpits of his parka, until he saw Dale’s aircraft taxi down the runway, take off, and disappear into a low bank of cloud.

  Inside the deserted terminal, fluorescent lights cast an antiseptic glow. Erik was numb with anxiety, and a raw ache churned the pit of his stomach. It was almost midnight and the agents and baggage handlers were shutting things down. He felt tears burning as he stepped back outside into the cold. He looked around helplessly. Down the service road a lone light shone in the trailer of the Shell refuelling depot. He vaguely knew the attendant who worked there, and walked toward the trailer. The attendant was just closing up when Erik reached the door.

  “I’m grounded for the night,” Erik told him. “I need a place to sleep.” The attendant nodded in the direction of a battered old couch pushed up against the wall. It wasn’t much, he said, but Erik was welcome to it.

  Erik shifted his weight on the sagging couch. He’d curled into a C on the matted upholstery, long legs accordioned into his torso, and had lain awake shivering through the night. Outside, snow fell hard and steady, laying a white carpet over the airport. Snowplows had grumbled non-stop and now one was clearing the parking lot behind the trailer. Erik could feel the vibrations from its massive blade shuddering through the thin wall. He checked his watch—4:00 a.m.—then closed his eyes and, wrapping his arms around his torso, drifted into an uneasy sleep. The sound of a key turning in the lock woke him forty-five minutes later.

  The attendant brought a blast of cold air in with him. He urged Erik not to get up, saying that he’d wake him after he fuelled the early morning flights. The man returned an hour later and Erik ventured out into the frosty morning to call his boss. Dale’s directions were typically curt: the company was flying down a starter on the 8:40 flight. Erik was to offload the parts, get the plane to a hangar, arrange for the repair, and fly the plane back that day.

  After he’d unloaded the parts and found a mechanic to fix the plane, Erik settled in at the terminal to wait. Jim Powell, one of Wapiti’s veteran pilots, came across him in the early afternoon.

  “Isn’t this your day off?” he asked. Erik explained what had happened and that he was waiting for the fix on the starter. Jim seized the opportunity.

  “I’ve got a flight to McMurray and I really could use a co-pilot,” he said.

  Fort McMurray was a booming northern city servicing the Canadian oil sands. Its population of 35,000 had more than quadrupled in the past dozen years, and a year ago Wapiti had started daily flights from Edmonton.

  Erik didn’t think twice. It beat hanging around the terminal, and the return flight would have him back before the work on the starter was finished.

  On the flight to Fort McMurray, Erik and Jim had time to catch up. The two men discussed the situation at Wapiti. Jim had been concerned enough about the airline’s safety standards that two days earlier he’d called Transport Canada. He’d informed an aviation safety inspector that Wapiti pilots sometimes had to “bust the minimums” on their approaches into uncontrolled airfields along the company’s northern Alberta routes. Minimums are the minimum altitudes to which pilots may safely descend to see if visual conditions exist that allow the aircraft to land. When flying on instruments—required at night or in bad weather—minimums are sacred ground for pilots, who are taught never to bust them. Period.

  Jim had asked the Transport Canada official whether the pilot or the carrier would be held responsible if a pilot was pressured to bust the minimums and was caught. The inspector told him that it was the carrier’s responsibility to ensure its pilots knew the regulations. However, he also cautioned that pilots who broke the rules, either knowingly or unknowingly, wouldn’t be completely absolved of blame.

  Jim also warned Erik that even though a functioning autopilot was required for single-pilot IFR flights, the autopilots on some Wapiti aircraft couldn’t be trusted. To prove his point, Jim engaged the autopilot on his plane and it responded erratically.

  Despite these weighty issues and the weather, Erik enjoyed his flight with Jim. The sky was overcast as they descended through snow and heavy fog, and the plane was only a few hundred feet off the ground before the runway appeared. Once on the tarmac, Erik helped unload luggage while Jim went to get a weather update and check on passengers for the flight back to Edmonton. When he returned, Erik knew from the look on his face that something was wrong.

  “We’re fully booked,” Jim said.

  “You’re bumping me?” How the hell was he going to get back?

  Jim was apologetic, telling Erik that another Wapiti pilot, Ed Seier, was flying to Edmonton later that afternoon, and Erik could catch a ride with him. Seier was tight with the bosses and the other pilots kept their complaints to themselves when he was around. Erik groaned. He had no doubt that Seier would mention his unauthorized side trip to the Wellses.

  Mercifully, by the time Erik flew his own repaired plane back to Grande Prairie that night, Dale and Delbert had both gone home. The next day he was scheduled to begin another six-day run of flying, this time on the p.m. sked. Erik was certain he was about to become the latest member of the “89 Day Club,” what Wapiti pilots dubbed the company’s practice of terminating pilots before their ninetieth day of employment to avoid having to provide two weeks’ notice and holiday pay. He lay in bed sick with worry until exhaustion overtook him and he eventually fell asleep.

  A heavy weight of dread fill
ed Erik as he arrived for work on Thursday—whether at the prospect of seeing Dale or flying, he couldn’t be sure. A low-pressure system had moved in and settled in a wide band stretching north from Montana through Edmonton and up to Fort Smith, which meant there would be no escaping the weather.

  Tonight would be the first time he’d have to rely on his instruments to get into the uncontrolled airports in High Prairie and Fairview. The thought of trying to land in these conditions made Erik nervous. He believed that Dale would want him to take a shot at getting in, no matter the weather, and the best Erik could hope was that Dale would assign a co-pilot on the flight.

  That is, if Erik still had a job.

  As if the thought summoned the man, Dale entered the hangar.

  “Kawa will be your co-pilot tonight,” he said. “And another thing …”

  Erik held his breath, but instead of firing him, Dale asked Erik to pick up a set of propellers in Edmonton and bring them back that evening. Relief swept over him. Without waiting for Dale to say more, Erik hurried outside to prep his flight.

  Erik was happy to have Andy Kawa with him. After landing in Edmonton at 6:20, the two pilots worked flat out to turn the flight around and get airborne within the allotted half-hour. Erik left Kawa to look after the passengers while he went in search of the props. When he returned Kawa had good news: there were no passengers bound for High Prairie or Fairview. Erik loaded the propellers into the plane’s wing lockers, boarded his passengers and prepared to depart.

  The cloud ceiling had dropped to below 900 feet by the time the plane took off. The temperature hovered just below freezing, and heavy, sodden snowflakes clung to the windshield before the wipers pushed the slushy mess away. Erik gained altitude and was soon above the cloud and into clear air, where he remained until Peace River Air Traffic Control gave him clearance to begin his descent into the airport. The plane stumbled out of the cloud at 800 feet and when it landed, Erik was ten minutes behind schedule. As he deplaned, he discovered why. The leading edges of the wings were coated with thick, uneven crusts of ice. The sight of it shocked him. He hadn’t expected that level of icing to form in less than an hour. Erik climbed back into the cockpit and flipped the switch for the wing de-icer boots, but nothing happened.