Joe stopped the tape and the stopwatch again. “At this point, they are about 4 miles from the runway and five minutes, fifty seconds from collision with Flight 170—provided I’ve calculated this correctly. They are dropping now at 1,500 feet per minute, the readout shows 75 percent engine power on both engines and rising, and they are several knots below stall speed. Okay, ready?” They all nodded, the tenseness in the room building. They all knew the Airbus had not crashed on this approach, but they were on the edge of their seats anyway. Joe reengaged the recorder and the stopwatch.
The distant sound of engines reaching full power raised the background noise level as the seconds ticked by.
“Climb, goddammit!” Timson again.
Joe stopped the tape again. “What this readout says happened during the period we just heard is this. At about 3 miles from the runway, they were showing, uh, 100 knots airspeed, full power on both engines—actually somewhere above maximum RPM, so they must have firewalled them—and they’re at 100 feet above ground level on the radio altimeter readout, and sinking still at 160 feet per minute.”
“Jeez.” The voice belonged to Barbara Rawlson.
“Yeah, I agree,” Joe said. “Okay, they keep sinking until they are 40 feet off the ground, I see a very high angle of attack here, the elevator channel shows a hefty up-elevator command, and their airspeed is hovering around stall speed, perhaps a hair above it, and they’re clearly close enough to be in ground effect.”
“Joe, weren’t there trees out there? I thought I heard a thump, but I could be mistaken.”
“We’ll go back over it. Now at 2 miles they had come back up to 72 feet and had started climbing, speed increasing, and by 1 mile they were climbing at 500 feet per minute at 110 knots and had reached 200 feet. After that they go up to about 1,500 and level off, over the runway.”
“That’s the strange go-around that many of the witnesses saw.”
He restarted the recorder once again, noting there were no cockpit sounds of rain or hail similar to what had been clearly audible on voice tapes from several other weather-related crashes such as Delta in Dallas in 1986. No further words were spoken on the tape as they listened to over a minute of various sounds, finally punctuated by the radio call.
“255’s going around.”
Joe looked at the faces of his colleagues as he stopped the tape and the watch this time. No one was moving or saying a thing. “Any thoughts so far?” Several of them looked at Joe, then at each other, before Barbara spoke up. “Are you kidding? They almost bought it. That was unbelievably close! I want to see that in a simulator.”
“Agreed.”
North America vice-president John Walters, who was in fact an official member of Andy Wallace’s human-performance group, had started shifting uneasily in his chair, his face a mask of grim discomfort. He had been silent and motionless before, but the last comment was too much. “I would appreciate it if we could get on with the tape and not spend time interpreting or characterizing actions that are going to take a great deal of study to understand.”
Joe nodded at Walters, understanding the defensiveness. “We’re not here to pass any judgments, least of all at the first playing of the tape, but Mr. Walters, I’m afraid some comments are natural at this stage.”
“Well, I’m not prepared to sit here and listen to you people conclude that they, as she put it”—Walters jerked a thumb in Barbara Rawlson’s direction—“‘almost bought it.’”
Barbara bristled instantly. “How would you characterize 40 feet off the ground 6 miles from the runway? Is that normal North America approach procedure?”
John Walters turned and glared at Barbara Rawlson as Joe raised his hand. “Okay! Not here, and not now. Let’s continue. I’ll restart the tape, and we’ll pick it up with them now over the end of the runway and at five minutes and one second before the crash.”
The cockpit sounds filled the room again. Normally the lab would send a copy of only the cockpit area microphone channel to the IIC, but Joe always requested they add the channel that picked up the radio transmissions to and from the aircraft. Having both to listen to at the same time made the task of tracking the flight sequence a much easier process. Radio calls often overlapped cockpit conversations in such a complex web that only by listening to the same sounds that the pilots had heard could an investigator meticulously piece together what had really transpired. Apparently, the lab had also included the intercom channel to the flight attendants.
“What in hell are you two doing? What happened?” A female voice, obviously a flight attendant, had called on the intercom.
Leyhe had answered, “Windshear. We nearly bought it.”
Joe noticed as Barbara threw a triumphant nod at John Walters, who did not react.
“Good Lord!” The voice was Timson’s, heard only in the cockpit, Joe figured. His reaction had been instantaneous. “Don’t tell that dumb broad something like that! She and her fellow cats will spread that all over the airline in fifteen minutes!”
“Well, however you cut it, Captain, we nearly—”
“No. Do NOT tell her that. Now correct it, tell her you were joking!”
“I’m informed,” Leyhe’s voice began again on the intercom, “that we did not almost buy it … but in fact we did.”
“Leyhe, goddamn you!”
“North America 255, what are your intentions?” The radio voice of the tower controller followed by a fraction of a second.
Timson had apparently taken over the radio calls—his voice replaced Leyhe’s in the next transmission. “Tower, North America 255 would like a closed pattern. We’ll come right back around for another visual approach to runway one-nine.”
“Captain,” they heard Don Leyhe begin, “we damn near died out there. We were down to 40 feet, and that microburst is still there. I think we’d better go out and hold until this blows over.” The voice was barely controlled, a few words seeming to shake slightly as they emerged from the copilot. One did not, in the cockpit traditions of North America, speak that way to one’s captain. Though many airlines had been teaching an entirely new way of training crews to talk openly and frankly with each other in just that manner, at North America it was heresy, as Timson himself had said at an industry conference on human performance a year before. Heresy to talk back to a senior captain, let alone the chief pilot, and heresy to suggest that maybe his decision was wrong, or, heaven forbid, dangerous. Leyhe had neatly violated all applicable courtesies.
Joe raised his hand for everyone’s attention, but did not stop the tape. “At this point they begin a right turn to reverse course and fly a downwind pattern. They’re just south of the far end of the runway here.”
There had been a pause after the copilot’s recommendation, but now Timson’s voice could be heard again, tinged with what sounded like sarcasm.
“Damn control tower should have warned us, but I told you this ship could handle it. I’ll admit that was a helluva lot closer than I ever want to see again, but … that microburst will be gone by the time we come back around. It’s blowing east.”
“Sir, you didn’t hear me.”
More seconds ticked by without a response from the captain, each of the NTSB team members sitting in absolute silence, listening to every sound as if the most subtle one might hold the key. The captain’s broadside against the tower controller was by itself enough to provoke a major legal battle—North America’s lawyers would try to prove the FAA contributed to the crash by failing to warn the crew properly.
“I heard you, Leyhe!” The snarl in Timson’s voice was clear enough, the response sudden enough, that several of the occupants of the room jumped. “And if I want your goddamn advice, I’ll ask for it. I’m not going to discuss it further.”
Eight more seconds passed before the copilot responded, apparently refusing to drop the issue. “Captain Timson, we don’t know for sure that it isn’t right off the end of the runway now. Please, let’s go wait it out. I’m very uncomfortable w
ith this.” Joe could hear a shakiness in the copilot’s voice again. The words that followed validated his apprehension.
“Don, goddamn it! You’re just like all these other weak sisters I’ve got to nursemaid around this fucking airline, scared of your own shadow. The goddamned windshear is NOT over the end of the fucking runway!”
There was silence on the tape and silence in the room as the team members looked around at one another, wide-eyed and startled by the exchange. All except the North America executive, Walters, who had his arms folded and his eyes welded to a spot on the desk in front of him. The tension in the man’s expression was painfully obvious. What on earth was next?
“What do you want me to do, Captain?” The copilot’s voice had dropped in volume. He sounded resigned, defeated, all the fight beaten out of him.
“I want you to shut your goddamn face and let me fly my airplane!” Timson’s voice replied.
There were no further words from the copilot as the seconds ticked by. The sound that was probably a flap handle being activated was heard several times, followed by the landing gear cycling down, but if there was any copilot participation they could not hear it. There was no repeat of the before-landing checklist, no copilot call out of airspeeds and sink rates—nothing. It was as if Leyhe had simply left the cockpit.
The sounds of Timson’s radioed exchange with the tower filled several seconds, then silence.
“At this point they are one minute from the end of the tape, from impact, and the flight recorder shows them beginning a tight right turn to final and descending out of 1,500 feet, airspeed 135 knots,” Joe added.
Nothing but background noises filled the tape.
Joe raised his finger again, “Thirty seconds to go. They are coming through a heading of zero-nine-zero magnetic, 650 feet in altitude.”
“Fifteen seconds, heading 130—” Joe stopped in midsentence. The sound of a quick burst of static, as if there had been a momentary power surge in the radio squelch circuits, instantly riveted his attention. “Wait a minute.” Joe stopped the recording and his stopwatch, rewinding the tape slightly, listening again to the short, transient sound.
“Anyone have any idea what that might be?” Joe looked at each of them in turn. Barbara spoke up.
“Sounds like the noise you get in the radios when you switch electrical power in the airplane, Joe.”
Several of them nodded. “We’ll need to research that—see if there’s anything similar on the tower tape. You all realize why I’m making a point of this?”
“The radar unit?” Barbara asked.
“Exactly.” He restarted the tape and his watch then and resumed the narration. “Now at exactly this point is where the turn began stopping, the rate of descent suddenly increases … all the parameters change here. This is where the elevator suddenly goes to nose down.” Joe stopped, listening intently as Leyhe’s voice rang through on the tape.
“Captain! What are you doing?”
Several unidentifiable sounds could be heard which might be controls being positioned rapidly, punctuated by a computer voice which said simply, “Priority right,” followed by the rising pitch of the engines.
“At this point, the elevator comes back to nose up, engine power increases steadily all the way to max power, the ailerons command a roll to the left back to a wings-level posture, and the aircraft finally stabilizes just above the surface on a heading directly for the 737. All that’s from the flight recorder.” Joe had stopped the tape and now reached to restart it. Susan stopped him. “What did that mean? Priority right?”
Barbara answered and Susan looked in her direction. “This airplane’s two side control sticks are not physically linked together, they’re electrically linked. The last pilot to press the priority button—which is located on each stick—controls the airplane and disconnects the other pilot’s control stick.”
“And that’s what we heard on the tape?” Susan asked.
“Right. When you have to use a priority switch to gain control, the computer voice tells you ‘priority left,’ meaning the captain has seized control, or ‘priority right,’ meaning the copilot has seized control.”
“And in this case …”
“In this case the copilot seized control from the captain, and the captain’s side stick was definitely not in the neutral position, which means”—Barbara glanced at Joe to make sure he wasn’t disapproving of her narration—“which means that the captain was actively flying the airplane and operating the controls when the copilot took over.”
Susan looked amazed. “You can tell all of that just from the presence of that computer voice?”
“Absolutely.”
“And,” Joe said, “the flight recorder indicates that at that exact moment, when we hear ‘priority right,’ the elevator began moving back to nose up.”
Joe looked around at the group as they absorbed what they had heard. “Let me restart this, now, within ten seconds of impact.”
Joe’s eyes were glued to his stopwatch, but instead of speaking, he held up a final show of fingers counting down to the end. Five … four … three … two …
“GODDAMMIT!” punctured the air as the muffled roar of colliding metal dropped to silence, marking the point where the cockpit voice recording had lost power as it was suddenly decelerated from 145 knots to zero and violently thrust into the baggage compartment of the disintegrating 737.
There was silence in the room again, this time for nearly a minute; it was broken first by Barbara Rawlson after an audible intake of air.
“Was that Timson’s voice at the last?” The voice had been a significantly higher range than normal, but there was a gruffness to it that sounded like Timson, the word goddamn and its variations an overly familiar Timson usage by the end of the tape.
“Mr. Walters, what do you think?” Joe asked, but there was no response. He glanced at Susan and Barbara, then back at Walters. “Sir? Mr. Walters?”
John Walters looked up suddenly, an accusatory look on his face, as if rudely disturbed. “What?”
The reply was sharp and rude in and of itself, and Joe hesitated before asking, “Was that Timson at the last? The last word, goddamn, was that Timson?”
Walters nodded again. “I think so. It sounds like him … like his voice, I mean.”
For a second time John Walters shot a series of hunted looks around the room before seeming to regain his confidence, this time without the anger. “I’m sorry, everyone. I guess I’m stunned. Would you please excuse me?” Without waiting for a reply, Walters was on his feet, and just as quickly out the door, leaving the rest of the group in uneasy silence.
They played the last five minutes again, making notes and going over several times the last word Timson had uttered, before Joe Wallingford took the cassette out of the recorder, noting the dead silence in the room, several of them staring into the distance and a few heads shaking slowly, as if rejecting what they had heard. Joe felt ill. There was no key, only more questions—including the sinister radio noise as the flight controls began to change position, with or without pilot input. Once again, it had gone from impossibly complicated to totally Byzantine.
Nick Gardner spoke first. “Joe, uh, am I reading all this right? The copilot did take over, but too late to save them?”
Joe nodded. “That’s the way it seems to me.”
“So the question, or one of them,” Nick continued, “is why did he have to take over? What happened to the captain? He asks, ‘Captain, what are you doing?’ Could the captain have been flying them into the ground?”
Joe shook his head with a consternated expression and a sigh. “The captain says he was flying it properly. He says the airplane didn’t do what he told it to do.”
Barbara nodded at that and shifted forward in her chair. “That makes sense, though, Joe. He would have been pulling his stick, the airplane’s not responding, the copilot finally takes control, but recovers too late. But when the copilot seizes control, his stick is working. T
hat tells me the problem was probably electromechanical and in the captain’s control stick—or radar interference with that same left side.”
The implication of that sank in: a dreaded flight-control problem. Joe knew the FAA member would be telling Caldwell about it within a half hour, even though the associate administrator had already summarily dismissed flight-control problems as a potential cause because the political wind was blowing in the other direction. This should at least make the little bastard nervous, Joe thought to himself.
“Excuse me, could I add some ideas?” Kell Martinson had been studying the faces of each member, apparently trying to decide whether to jump in.
“Certainly,” Joe said.
“Logic would dictate, I would think, several consistent possibilities from what I’ve just heard, but I’m sure there’s a lot I’m not seeing, so please blow these comments out of the tub at will. First, the captain’s stick could have malfunctioned as mentioned. That would explain the sudden flight-control change when the copilot took over. Second—the possibility we don’t really want to face—the captain’s control inputs are overridden or cancelled by electromagnetic interference from outside, from the SDI radar, which our military people say could not have been turned on. Third, they could have been caught in a small microburst, or downdraft, and come out of it at the same instant the copilot took over, sort of coincidentally. And fourth, the captain may have, for some physical or psychological reason, pushed his stick forward at the wrong moment. Not with intent, you see, but a momentary lapse.” Kell sat back and waited, and Barbara spoke first.
“The third is probably not possible, Senator, because the flight recorder shows no airspeed variations or rates of descent not explained by the aircraft’s attitude.”
Final Approach Page 27
