Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “Joe, there was a strange power surge—a transient pulse of some sort—that Sellers thought he remembered just as the Airbus was making the final turn. His radar in the tower flashed and went blank for a few sweeps, and the radios all made noise, like a squelch going off and on.”

  “Is he sure?”

  “He went back and reran the original tower tape. It’s there, he says, big as life.”

  Joe had been silent for a few seconds.

  “Joe? That sounds significant to me, how about you?”

  “I’m trying not to jump to conclusions, Andy. There was lightning in the area at the same time.”

  “Agreed. I’ll do some more probing around before I come home.”

  Andy rang off, leaving Joe with one duty yet to perform. Bill Caldwell had never returned his daily calls the previous week. Earlier, Beverly Bronson from public affairs had dropped copies of the Washington Post and New York Times on his desk, with several related articles highlighted. The first one from the Times reported an in-depth analysis of the Wilkins charges from Friday, and that while sabotage was probably nonsense, the fact remained that there was a major piece of radar equipment at the airport which might have been operating, despite Air Force denials. Even the Secretary of Defense had been trotted out over the weekend to assure the country that the radar had been off and to attack the “gross irresponsibility of those who made such groundless charges.” But, said the Times, the module “… was there, is powerful, and even the FAA has in the past expressed concern about potential radio or radar interference with the A320.” Shipment of such items through the nearest civilian airports is normal, the article said, confirming that Kansas City International is the closest major airport to the factory. “According to Air Force sources, there are stringent safety precautions for shipping military transmitters through civilian airfields that require such a unit to be shut down at all times. The key question, therefore, is whether those precautions were followed.” In their view, the whole thing hinged on whether or not the Air Force’s word could be trusted, the implication being it could not.

  Submerged within their front-page coverage, the Washington Post had run an article reporting the FAA was considering grounding the A320 because of the alleged vulnerability of the flight controls. In quieter times, the article would have been above the fold, but Wilkins’s staff had eclipsed it with their Friday accusations. There was no question in Joe’s mind the article was a Caldwell leak. Bill Caldwell was doing as he had threatened a week before—drawing his own conclusions.

  Caldwell was behind his desk when Joe entered. He looked up at his own pace and extended his hand, lifting himself from his chair just enough to make a decent effort, but not enough to permit Joe to reach him without leaning over the desk. The man should get an Academy Award, Joe thought. The best actors are definitely not in Hollywood.

  “What can I do for you, Joe?”

  “Well, I’ve been trying to get you on the phone, as you asked.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been very busy.”

  “I can’t give you that assurance you asked for. I can’t guarantee that the flight controls aren’t involved, though we still have no evidence they are.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Joe. We’re satisfied up here at FAA, and the task force has been disbanded.”

  “What? But what about all that … those veiled threats you threw at me on the phone last week about possible groundings?”

  Caldwell had not smiled once. Now his face changed to a positive scowl as he took off his glasses and put down his pen. “Joe, I do not recall making any so-called threats to you or anyone else, but since then—in light of the allegations made the other day regarding that Air Force radar unit—we have satisfied ourselves through military liaison channels that the unit in question could not have been turned on, so therefore there could have been no sabotage, and thus no flight-control problem.”

  Joe sat back in his chair and stared at Caldwell. The administration’s official line has found its voice at the FAA, whether true or false, he thought. “Just like that?”

  “No, after careful investigation.”

  “Mr. Caldwell, your dismissal of the possibility of flight-control involvement is as premature as last week’s consideration of grounding. Hell, we haven’t even played the voice tape yet! That comes within the hour, and the smoking gun may be there.”

  “I’m glad you finally found that tape, Joe.”

  “So am I. But my point is, while it’s certainly okay at this stage—and in the absence of contrary evidence—to blindly accept the Air Force’s statements on the radar unit, there are still other possibilities. We still don’t know what caused that aircraft to pitch down.”

  “Well, we do know it wasn’t sabotage, by radar or any other means.”

  “Are you sure? One of my people has reported within the past fifteen minutes that one of your people in the Kansas City control tower has confirmed the presence of a pulse, or transient electrical interruption, at the precise time the Airbus was turning to final. Are you aware of that?”

  Caldwell shook his head condescendingly and looked exasperated. “Of course I’m aware of it. Power fluctuations occur all the time during electrical storms. Were you aware there were lightning strikes in the vicinity at that same moment?”

  “Yes. But my point is we don’t know whether that glitch was caused by lightning, some transient electrical load through the local power grid, or perhaps a powerful source of electromagnetic energy on the airport property suddenly coming on line.”

  “Well, Joe, you chase your theories to your heart’s content. This branch of the United States government is fully satisfied that the representations of the Department of Defense are true, and that the Secretary of Defense is not a liar.”

  “I wish I could share your confidence,” Joe replied, his eyes boring into Caldwell’s, “that the secretary and his generals haven’t made an honest mistake, but I can’t. By the way, did you see that Washington Post article this morning quoting unnamed FAA sources and mentioning possible grounding?”

  “Yes.” Caldwell nodded his head and sat back, trying to look relaxed. “Leakers everywhere. I’m trying to find out who was responsible for that one. Of course we’re not in any way thinking about grounding the 320, and by the way, you misinterpreted what I said last week.”

  The two men regarded each other in uncomfortable silence.

  “One other thing, Joe.” Caldwell moved forward and leaned on his desk. “My people were not responsible for leaking the tower tape. I got the report a while ago. Now where do you suppose that leaves us?”

  Joe bit his tongue as he tried to affect an unconcerned look, meeting Caldwell’s hard gaze. “I don’t know. The only member of my team that had a copy swears he never let it out of his possession.”

  “Well …” Caldwell was drumming his fingers. “Well, that means we’ve got a liar loose in the woodwork somewhere. It’s your people or mine, but someone’s guilty, and I intend to find out who and fire him.”

  There was silence for a few seconds before Caldwell spoke again, still looking at Joe with the same expression. “Gardner, isn’t it?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Your man on the ATC group. Nick Gardner? A former air traffic controller of ours. He had the NTSB copy of the tower tape, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Tell him I want the tape copy back. I’m going to have it analyzed against the radio broadcast. Each tape copy has its own characteristics.”

  “Fine with me. I’ll relay the message.” Joe got to his feet thoroughly disgusted, but left with just a nod, heading for the elevators and the conference room on the eighth floor, where the group was assembling to listen to the cockpit tape—unaware that Bill Caldwell at the same moment was angrily scrambling to get the Kansas City tower chief on the phone. No one had told him about the electrical pulse, leaving him to get blindsided by an inferior bureaucrat from the NTSB!

  Kell Martinson had phone
d Joe first thing Monday morning to ask whether the IIC had talked to the FBI agent, and what had been said. “Noncommittal attitude” was the phrase Joe had used to describe the agent’s reception of the relatively insignificant news that the NTSB was satisfied. They talked about the Wilkins allegations, and when Joe mentioned that the CVR tape had been found, Senator Martinson asked to attend the first playing of the tape.

  Now Kell was waiting for Joe as the NTSB man emerged from the elevators on the eighth floor, unflattering descriptions of Caldwell’s duplicity echoing in his head. Joe had made the decision to include the senator, knowing it would be questioned—and probably criticized—by everyone. While Dr. Mark Weiss was simply too interested to be legitimately included, the head of the oversight authority for NTSB in the senate was not. And something undefinable—some gut instinct—had told Joe to do it. Martinson might somehow turn out to be even more helpful to the investigation than he had already been.

  In the meantime, his presence on the eighth floor at Joe’s invitation was only a career threat as long as neither Dean Farris nor the congressional affairs people knew about it.

  “Senator, before we get started, let me walk you into the chairman’s office for a second, and”—the two men began walking in that direction—“if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t volunteer the fact that I invited you.”

  Kell held up a hand. “Don’t worry, Joe, I fully understand the drill. I forced this visit on you, and neither you nor your chairman have much choice—if you want to keep your funding, that is.” Joe glanced at Kell, slightly relieved to see a broad smile on the senator’s face.

  Joe knew the chairman was in. He also knew the magnitude of the shock that was coming—and that brought a smile to Joe’s face as well.

  15

  Monday, October 22

  Joe’s hopes were higher than they should be. The key to the entire puzzle of the Kansas City crash might—just might—lurk in the magnetic particles of the mylar tape he was about to play in the NTSB conference room, but such hopes could be easily dashed. The problem was time, and which way to focus the efforts of his people. The public hearing—formally called a Board of Inquiry—would be held in six weeks in Kansas City to help answer the main questions surrounding the crash. But first, they had to decide exactly what the main questions really were.

  Senator Kell Martinson’s presence on the eighth floor had astounded Dean Farris. The chairman had fallen all over himself to be friendly, and Kell had acted as if Joe were a brand-new acquaintance who had dutifully marched the senator to the head man. “If the IIC, Joe Wallingford, here, has no objections, Senator, we’d be glad to have you sit in,” Farris had told him.

  With Kell in tow then, Joe joined Susan Kelly, Nick Gardner, Barbara Rawlson, and two of Andy’s staff members in the conference room. Dean Farris, for some reason, declined.

  Joe had tried to get select members of the official parties to come in if possible, though it was on very short notice. North America vice-president John Walters had responded, having already been in town for a meeting with the airline’s insurance carrier, and an FAA flight standards representative on Barbara’s systems group—one of Caldwell’s men—had shown up, as had one of the Air Line Pilots Association’s accident investigators. The room was small and crowded as a result.

  “First,” Joe began, “let me introduce the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that nurtures us financially and legislatively, Senator Kell Martinson, who is following this investigation’s progress. The senator has agreed to confidentiality restrictions. He’s here to see what we do and how we do it.” Joe glanced at John Walters, who looked alarmed. A senator meant political dangers, and Walters would certainly find reason to complain. There were nods and smiles from the rest of the group.

  “What you’re about to hear are the last thirty minutes of Flight 255 as it approached Kansas City a week ago Friday night. I assume everyone understands the strict nondisclosure rules, the delicacy of this tape in terms of the rights of the pilots and their families and their airline, and the effect it may have on your personal feelings. This tape starts thirty minutes before the accident, and I will be roughly timing the tape against the printout the lab sent of the flight data recorder’s digital flight information. I’ll try to periodically give you an idea what the airplane was doing from this readout and sequence it with the tape as best I can.”

  He snapped on the recorder and a stopwatch simultaneously, the scratchy sounds of the airstream outside Flight 255’s airborne cockpit from ten days before immediately filling the room. As they became absorbed in the sounds—the sporadic comments of Copilot Don Leyhe and Captain Dick Timson along with the radio transmissions to and from the airplane—a secretary remained outside the door on Joe’s instructions, making certain no enterprising newsman tried to listen in.

  The descent had been rather routine, the handoff from the FAA’s air route traffic control center (called “center” for short) to Kansas City approach control handled with professional brevity. The shortness of Timson’s answers to Leyhe’s checklist-induced questions was not unusual, nor was the sharpness and sarcasm of Timson’s response to Pete Kaminsky’s radioed warning.

  “North America 255, this is North America 170 on the ground,” Kaminsky had radioed. “That’s pretty wild weather you’re getting into. We just had a lightning strike along the runway. Recommend you wave it off.”

  Joe Wallingford had heard that transmission before on the tape recordings made by the control tower. What he had not heard was the exchange that followed in the cockpit of 255.

  “Who the hell is that, some Navy pussy? Where do our procedures give that sonofa bitch the right to play mother hen? Wave off indeed!” Timson had growled the words rhetorically, it seemed, as he keyed his microphone to reply in more friendly tones to Kaminsky. “Thank you 170, but I believe we can handle it!”

  “I think he just wanted to make sure we knew about that cell, Dick.”

  Copilot Don Leyhe’s voice was distinctive and quite different from Timson’s low register. Leyhe’s vocal tones were sharp and in the range of a tenor. Timson’s, on the other hand, had a deeper rumble which nevertheless could be heard clearly through a noisy crowd with little effort.

  “Who is that guy, Don?”

  “I don’t recognize his voice.”

  “Well, I’ll find out later. Flaps to position one.”

  It was always eerie, listening to the words of pilots who had not survived. For a moment you could find yourself mentally and emotionally in that doomed cockpit with them, knowing what they didn’t know, but unable to communicate, watching the sequence unfold inexorably toward tragedy.

  “There may be some windshear in here, Captain,” Leyhe had said, followed by silence from Timson as they approached the outer marker, the point on the instrument landing approach where the airplane should have its flaps and landing gear properly positioned for landing, be at a stable approach airspeed for the conditions, and begin descending.

  Joe stopped the tape as he looked at his stopwatch and at the digital flight recorder’s readout, a sheet full of digits, columns of them, all from the computer readout of the A320’s flight data recorder, and each of them giving another parameter of the flight: airspeed, bank angle, engine speed, and many others.

  “At this point,” Joe said, “they were about 8 miles out, slowing through 145 knots, flaps at 20, gear down, descending at 700 feet per minute, and at an altitude of 2,400 feet.” He restarted the tape, nearly forty seconds passing before the next words crackled from the speaker.

  “Captain, if there’s a microburst up here, we’re too slow.” Leyhe’s voice sounded distant on the tape, but the words were clearly audible, as was his concern. For a few seconds there was no response from Captain Timson, then a sharp “What?” rang out.

  “That exchange,” Wallingford began, “started at six miles out and 1,760 feet, 135 knots.”

  There was just enough time for Joe’s statement before
Captain Timson’s voice could be heard again. “Oh for Christ’s sake, Leyhe! I think this bird can handle a few gusty winds, don’t you? That’s what the kid in the Metroliner said: gusty.”

  Joe Wallingford reached over and stopped the tape, freezing his stopwatch at the same moment. “Okay, now the way I read this, at this point they were 5 1/3 miles from the runway at 137 knots and 1,570 feet, just a hair below the normal visual glide path. Remember that the ILS had been knocked off the air by a lightning strike and they were doing a visual approach—had accepted a visual approach. Now the note I have here from the lab indicates they think the aircraft entered a microburst at about 5 miles, and it probably had a diameter of 1 to 1½ miles. At exactly 5 miles out they were stable at 135 knots of indicated airspeed, but their speed over the ground was, according to the radar track the air traffic control group has been working with, 114 to 115 knots. So they were flying into a 20- to 21-knot head wind with an equal tail wind on the other side. At 4¾ miles their vertical velocity drops to 1,000 feet per minute descent, and by 4 miles out they are down to 1,500 feet per minute rate of descent, 98 knots of airspeed while still at 112 knots of ground speed, and less than 600 feet above the terrain.”

  Susan Kelly shook her head. “In other words, they were dropping like a rock at that point, within the space of 1 mile.”

  “According to this readout, yes,” Joe replied as he reached over and turned the recorder on again, punching his stopwatch at the same time.

  It seemed to Joe that the background wind noise changed suddenly, but it was hard to tell. Neither pilot said anything for nearly thirty seconds, then the voice of the copilot could be heard in an urgent cry.

  “Captain! Windshear! Go around!”

  The sound of engines increasing in power filtered through in the background, and that would have been very hard to measure if there had not been a digital flight recorder readout. In many other crashes there had been perpetual disagreement over just when the crew pushed up the throttles because there was only an old-style flight recorder which couldn’t tell the investigators the exact power setting. Even when the accurate digital recorders became available, the FAA refused to order airlines to install them in place of the old ones. Joe had fought that battle years before with the FAA, and lost.