‘Ross, try to get a damage report from the cabin.’ We need more information about damage and injuries, because elevating our emergency condition to mayday requires more justification.
I use this short break to give Pete a summary of our current situation. He nods as I describe the degraded, manual manipulation that I’ve been forced to accept.
I direct him to start our diversion phase to Learmonth. For us, it’s a rarely used contingency airfield; none of us have been there before.
Well, that’s not exactly true. A short visit to this airport and to the Harold E. Holt naval base was the start of my path to live in Australia.
*
After my first visit to Western Australia in August 1981, an opportunity to return came in December that year when we’d completed our deployment. Two of my squadron mates were travelling back to Perth for the southern summer and asked if I wanted to go, too. We’d hitch a ride on military transports if any seats were available.
It just so happened that a transport service was scheduled between California and Learmonth, and we were on it.
After a few days of rough travel in the back of a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, we landed in Learmonth. We stayed the night at Harold E. Holt naval base and flew to Perth the following day on Airlines of West Australia. The blowflies were particularly persistent and fearless at Exmouth. We made the mistake of playing a set of tennis but most of our ground strokes were reserved for the blowies.
Our holiday in Perth was a relaxing tonic after eight months at sea. I felt comfortable with the Aussie beach-based lifestyle, and the laidback approach to living was a stark contrast to life at a military base in Southern California. I hoped an opportunity would present itself for me to spend more time here.
That opportunity came during my second cruise on the ‘Big E’, the USS Enterprise. The Royal Australia Air Force advertised a ‘personal exchange’ position: the Australian government was buying the F-18 Hornet to replace the ageing French-made Mirage 3 aircraft as their frontline fighter and it is common practice for militaries in the Western world to ‘exchange’ personnel and operational doctrine. My Aussie counterpart would be based at NAS Lemoore in California and would learn to fly the F-18 as an instructor pilot.
I was due to transition to a shore-based position; luckily, this exchange assignment would satisfy that requirement. And my experience fit the stringent RAAF job prerequisites: junior officer, operational experience, instructor experience and fighter weapons school graduate. This was a full house of military experience that few other applicants would have, so I applied.
I didn’t hear much from the Pentagon after that, but my life changed in another way – I became engaged to a young woman from Perth whom I’d met the previous year. The exchange assignment would help those marriage plans become a reality, and my feeling was that instructing in the RAAF would be a slow-paced assignment compared to the hectic life of a navy pilot. But though my aircraft-carrier cruise was drawing to an end, I still had no word on my next assignment.
On 27 April 1983, Carrier Air Wing 11 completed their second deployment, and it was time for all the squadrons to fly off from the USS Enterprise and return to their home base. Fighter Squadron 114 was based in San Diego at NAS Miramar, and our group of F-14s would arrive in a mass formation of sixteen aircraft.
I almost didn’t make the fly-off.
I was assigned the aircraft that our maintenance division had designated the ‘hangar queen’. Each squadron on the ship kept one aircraft in the hangar to use as a source of spare parts for repairing their other jets; towards the end of the cruise, the hangar queen was rebuilt in preparation for the flight home. I was a qualified post-maintenance test pilot in my squadron, so the job of flying this jet off the carrier was left to me, even though it wasn’t in the greatest shape. It was still being worked on and inspected as I waited to fly out. Eventually, mine was the last aircraft to be shot off the catapult, and I said goodbye to the ‘Big E’.
The VF-114 Aardvarks had been away for eight and a half months, and the Miramar flight line was crowded with friends and families to welcome us home. Not only was our fly past spectacular, but, once again, I was positioned in the middle of the formation. Straight after landing, the squadron stopped and lined-up on the taxiway. We pulled off all our flight gear in the small confines of our cockpits down to our orange flight suits and soft khaki hats, ready to join the party.
But after landing, I started having problems with my Tomcat; it still thought it was in the air and wouldn’t let me steer with the nose wheel. I limped into my parking spot as much as my failing jet would allow.
As I shut down the engines and opened the canopy, a senior officer climbed up to the cockpit, gave me a rose and told me I was going to Australia!
I was awarded the assignment as the first US Navy exchange pilot to the RAAF. One month later, in May 1983, I arrived at the base in Williamtown, New South Wales, as a fighter combat instructor. The future leaders of the RAAF would be my students, and I would be married later that year.
This posting proved to be the start of a new life and a new adventure in Australia. In 1986 I resigned from the US Navy and was hired by Qantas.
*
It looks like today I’ll set foot on the Learmonth tarmac once again, but in radically different circumstances. We agree that diverting there is the safest and smartest course of action. Under my direction, Pete dials in a slower speed, followed by our cleared altitude of 35,000 feet.
We are on our way.
I’m already pointing the aircraft to Learmonth visually; we’re 80 kilometres to the south of the airfield, and we can see its shape. Cut out of the burnt-red earth of Australia’s wild outback is a long grey strip of concrete.
Pete’s competence as an experienced ex-military pilot is comforting. I know he’ll be able to keep up and provide solid support with this high-tempo emergency workload. Ross, likewise, is working professionally through the haze of the pitch-down’s aftermath. We know our position is still precarious and the reality is that there is more work to be done to land safely. We work with quiet professionalism, and it’s gratifying to know that I don’t have to monitor their performance, in stark contrast to the supervision directed at our deranged Airbus.
Learmonth is an unknown airport for us so we’ll need some time to prepare. I’ve selected minimum speed to give us some time, and I must prepare a strategy to address landing an aircraft that’s behaving very badly. This scenario isn’t covered in any of our manuals.
I muse privately that the shit must be hitting the fan at Airbus headquarters by now.
Pete is struggling to insert a ‘direct to Learmonth’ command into his computer, which would allow us to access the appropriate digital charts for our approach and landing. He tries several times, but this computer is also refusing to interact. Another element of our automation has failed, forcing us to revert to basic visual navigation. Fortunately, we can clearly see the airport, so I fly towards it as Pete backs me up with his target selections.
‘Geeze . . . okay, Pete,’ is all I can muster as I watch Pete’s finger continuously jab the ‘insert’ button in frustration.
I continue to crosscheck the standby instruments and Pete’s instrumentation to confirm our safe flight path. I work out that the yellow guidance bars superimposed on my primary display are working and in agreement with Pete’s. They’ll give me another visual cue to assist in following the performance targets he’s setting.
We need to start our descent now and move into the next phase of our procedural sequence for landing.
Pete signals our descent, ‘Qantas 72, left 37,000.’
‘Qantas 72, roger. Clear to leave controlled airspace.’
Melbourne Centre has cleared us to leave their area of controlled airspace that projects upwards from 25,000 feet over the Earth. We aren’t in radar control; this will add to our workload.
*
Lisa is still strapped into her crew seat. Since the second pitch-
down, the aircraft has stabilised, but the many injured passengers are in various states of pain and discomfort. She glances over at her two crew, Samantha and Jen, now seated opposite her on the right side of the galley. Their concerned eyes briefly lock before they’re interrupted by shouts in the cabin.
They’re shocked to see that Rory, another flight attendant, is out of his seat and running through his area, bravely assisting the injured as best he can while yelling instructions to others to fasten their seatbelts. He enters the forward galley, limping, then turns back into his area of responsibility and completes his loop. Lisa, Samantha and Jen scream at him to return to the safety of his crew seat and buckle in. He says he must check on the babies secured in their bassinets on the cabin wall behind the galley. In a flash, Rory disappears back into the cabin, offering support and instructions to his passengers, then he hobbles to secure himself in his seat.
The interphone rings – it’s Ross making contact with Lisa to ask for a damage report. From her seat she can’t clearly see down to the back of the aircraft, so she reports that her vision is blocked.
Another voice now speaks on the interphone. ‘There are severe injuries in the rear of the aircraft! Broken bones, lacerations and maybe spinal injuries! There’s damage to the cabin and the ceilings!’ It’s Diana, reporting from the rear galley.
Through the buzz of our hectic workload, Pete and I hear this report through our headsets. Our eyes lock, and simultaneously we come to the same decision: our emergency status is justified.
‘That’s it,’ I say.
‘Mayday?’ Pete prompts.
I confirm our situation. ‘Mayday.’
I can’t risk flying longer than necessary with a cabin full of severely injured passengers and crew, and I’m sending out the call that we need all the help we can get. Added to that is the uncertainty generated by the erratic behaviour of the aircraft and our computers systems.
I need to get on the ground as quickly as possible, but I haven’t figured that part out yet.
*
Diana has used her initiative by responding to the all-stations interphone call. Her damage report provides critical information to the pilots, and now she returns to the seat assigned on her boarding pass, her progress impaired by debris.
An elderly man makes eye contact with Diana as she hurries past. His face is streaked in blood and his scalp is badly torn. Part of his skull is clearly visible. Grabbing a small pillow, she presses it firmly on his bleeding head and gestures to him to keep it in place. He nods in understanding, and his eyes glisten in gratitude.
When Diana arrives at her seat and belts in, she notices that seated next to her is a young woman gasping for breath and in distress from a panic attack. Diana tries to retrieve one of the dangling oxygen masks to help the woman breathe, but it’s too high up. She holds the woman’s hand, hoping to comfort her.
In the row behind Diana’s right shoulder, two young sisters under the age of ten are travelling alone. They are distraught but their despair is barely audible among the moans cries of the many panic-stricken, injured passengers in the rear of the plane. She reaches out to them but they’re inconsolable. To distract them, she sings ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’.
Secure in her seat, again she directs her gaze towards some activity in the front of her cabin zone. Horrified, she sees a pair of limp legs dangling from the ceiling. She can’t see the head but she can see a hole from which the unconscious woman’s body hangs like a gallows victim. Passengers’ arms are outstretched around her, trying to free her.
What a nightmare, Diana is thinking.
Then her thoughts focus on her two daughters, seated in the front of the plane. Are they okay? She prays they kept their seatbelts fastened, but her heart and mind are heavy with worry.
Although her injured shoulder is aching terribly, she continues to hold the hand of the panicked woman next to her. The young girls are singing now through their subdued sobbing.
Peter and Fuzzy drift in and out of consciousness, secured in the crew rest seats, while Diana silently prays the plane won’t repeat its violent behaviour and that this horror flight will end soon.
9.
Pete has been back on the flight deck for three minutes. In that time we’ve declared a pan, started our diversion and decided to declare a mayday.
Before Pete presses his radio switch, he recalls a saying from his old Australian Navy squadron: ‘If you’re gonna make a mayday call, don’t sound like a dick!’
‘Melbourne Centre, mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Qantas 72. Qantas 72. Qantas 72. Flight-control problems, and we have significant numbers of serious injuries onboard. Tracking direct Learmonth.’
‘Qantas 72, Melbourne Centre. Mayday acknowledged. Track direct Learmonth.’
With the mayday declared, the shit has really hit the fan.
Melbourne Air Traffic Control pushes the ‘crash button’, figuratively, and a nationwide alert phase is activated. All airborne commercial aircraft listening to Melbourne control frequencies in the southern half of Australia hear this distress call because it’s automatically retransmitted through a repeater system.
Pilots in all those flight decks will be looking at each other incredulously. What the bloody hell has happened to Qantas 72?!
A colleague and good friend is one of those pilots, flying between Perth and Sydney. ‘That could be Kev Sullivan,’ he says to his first officer, knowing that I’m flying today from Singapore. They listen intently to their radios as they fly east.
I retard the power now to descend gently at a reduced speed. We still need time to prepare for our approach and to familiarise ourselves with the Learmonth airport charts, and we’ll need paper copies. The warning alerts and caution chimes continue.
As the thrust is reduced, there’s a noticeable change in cabin pressurisation.
Ross’s ears are popping. He quickly confirms that the automatic control has failed and the pressure is fluctuating. It may already have identified itself as a faulty system, but the constant scrolling of caution messages would have hidden this malfunction. It’s another critical system that’s offline adding to our heavy workload – we must manually control the cabin pressure as we descend. Ross volunteers to do this.
When Pete backs up Ross’s troubleshooting of the cabin pressure system, he selects the appropriate systems page and sees that it confirms failures of the pressure system’s computers: they’re highlighted in amber to indicate the fault. As a matter of course, Pete selects a summary page marked ‘status’. He’s blown away by the huge list of inoperative and faulted systems in the fifteen minutes since this began.
‘Hey, Kev,’ Pete says, his finger prompting me to look down at the screen.
There are two pages full of faulted systems, including some significant failures that will affect our landing. It’s like a very disappointing report card for a parent to read, full of failing grades and unacceptable behaviour.
I don’t have time to handle these failures now. I acknowledge the status information, and Pete tells me about the loss of the automatic braking system. Mentally, I reshuffle my priorities to move that consideration to a higher level.
I’m pointing our disabled jet towards the runway, and I have to keep things simple. We are all struggling to concentrate through the haze of fight-or-flight chemicals. I will fly over the airfield once we get there and circle as we continue our deliberate descent.
What will fail next on our A330? These system faults have not been displayed to us, lost in the merry-go-round of cycling master caution alerts. I don’t even have time to smirk or bitch now. We’re down to the level of a small propeller-driven aircraft. The workload and distraction level required to manage our situation is escalating as we get closer to Learmonth.
I’m relying on ‘Aviate, Navigate, Communicate’. This helps me prioritise my many tasks and decisions while I manage our emergency situation. In the extreme and distracting environment our confused computers have created, this mantra will be
my lifeline if I can maintain my discipline and concentration.
I grab this small opportunity to discuss the sequence of failures with Pete. He listens carefully, his finger selecting the various systems pages on the centre screen as he searches for something we may have missed.
He suggests a call to our company maintenance unit, a 24-hour ‘assistance hotline’ based in Sydney. The aircraft is constantly streaming systems information and flight parameters through a data link to our home base. What if they can see something we can’t access?
I agree, and Pete calls them on our satellite phone. He continues to back up my manual flying with target selections while he communicates with the maintenance unit.
We are calm and methodical. It’s up to me to manage the pace and workload as we descend towards the runway. I have only two hands and don’t hesitate to delegate responsibilities to my two trustworthy pilots. Because we can’t access the digital airport information in our navigation computer, I assign Ross the task of finding the paper charts for Learmonth and to prepare an airport briefing for us.
This is no easy job because the paper contents of this manual have exploded on impact during the first pitch-down. Ross must sift through the scattered papers to find the right charts. He’s also manually controlling the cabin pressure and maintaining communication with Lisa in the cabin.
Using his initiative, he activates the airfield pilot-assisted lighting on the runway through one of the radios. This will give us a lighting aid that we’ll use for landing. The lighting system at Learmonth is normally off unless activated by a pilot using the airfield; there’s no control tower or radar control at this small airport.
The flight deck workload for all three pilots is ramping up. I think we are busier than all the traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the opening bell. We steal short scans of each other as we concentrate on our individual tasks.
Ross, Pete and I have ‘split up’ temporarily as we work independently, but we’re all listening to the radios, the cabin interphone and Pete’s satphone. We’re all silently reciting our mantra of Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Our workload is enormous, yet Ross and Pete are each monitoring my control of the flight path. They’re on alert for opportunities to absorb tasks that will alleviate some of my workload, ensuring my manual flying is safe and appropriate.
No Man's Land Page 8
