Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  There was a long pause, filled with the hissing static of a long-distance line, before the answer came. “No. No Bill, I’m not. I’m sorry to call you, but I don’t know what else to do. I guess I’m spooked.”

  Caldwell shifted the telephone handset from his right to his left ear, his right hand instinctively uncapping a pen and adjusting a yellow legal pad he kept on the small rosewood desk with the telephone.

  “Tell me about it, Doc. What’s the matter? And where are you?”

  “Canada. I’m in Banff, or near it. Kananaskis. Bill, there’re a couple of people at the safety board trying to get my license, and I haven’t done anything wrong. They’re after me, and the local police up here are now asking me questions and want me to talk to the NTSB people again. I’m too old to go through this, Bill. I can’t … I mean, I’m not responsible for Dick Timson’s crash. I—”

  “Whoa, Doc, please. One thing at a time.” Caldwell questioned him slowly, making notes as the panicked physician related the NTSB’s attempts to question him about the Timson medical records, his protests that all the exams were properly done, and his belief that Captain Richard Timson was in good shape.

  Bill Caldwell wondered if there was something more. He had taken a chance once before for Doc when the agency had suspected him of giving class I medicals without all the proper tests. Bill had administratively “fixed the ticket,” as he called it, crushing the violation filed by the FAA Air Surgeon which would have suspended McIntyre’s certification as a doctor licensed to administer FAA medical exams. He had done it aboveboard by forcing an internal review, but it was sticking his neck out, and for a surgically careful bureaucrat who had become a professional survivor, it amounted to a career gamble. Yet his loyalties to Doc ran deeper than for any other human being. When Caldwell had engineered the ouster of the FAA’s federal Air Surgeon a few years back—a doctor who refused to take the associate administrator’s orders—he had thought about recommending Doc McIntyre as a replacement. Doc would have done his bidding and been totally devoid of ambition or initiative. The realization that Doc was also very lazy had canceled the idea. If he failed, it would reflect badly on Caldwell.

  “Doc, please understand, I have to ask you this. Have you complied with all the regulations on this man’s exams? Have you been keeping your nose clean like you promised me? Was everything done properly?”

  It seemed the doctor hesitated too long, but the answer came at last. “Yes. Yes, Bill, it’s all been done right. I’m just scared of these people. Since I’m a company doctor, I’m afraid they’re out to get me in order to get North America.”

  “Why don’t you just talk to them and find out what they want? I mean, if everything was done right, then maybe all they want is your impression of Captain Timson.”

  “No, Bill! No! They’re after me. You’ve … you’ve got to believe me. I’ve heard things. I’ve heard they want to prove I didn’t do a good job of examining Timson so they can say his medical was no good.”

  “Was it, Doc?”

  “Yes. I mean, he was in perfect health. My records show that. Bill, is there anything you could do to get these people off my back without endangering yourself? They’ve been calling and calling, and the company told me to go on vacation to get away from them, at least until the Kansas City hearing is over … so the company knows they’re after me. Please, Bill. I don’t want to put you in jeopardy, but if there’s anything …”

  Caldwell sighed quietly and thought. Since it involved the NTSB, and that was headed by Dean Farris, maybe there was a safe way to protect him.

  “Doc, give me your number, then sit tight for a few days and don’t worry. There is one guy I can get hold of and find out what’s going on. If I can help, I will, but this problem doesn’t originate within my agency like last time.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” He took down McIntyre’s number and hesitated for a second, a merged image of Doc’s chronic laziness and the various duties of an FAA-certified company doctor coalescing in his mind, ready to ring caution bells and sound career alarms. Caldwell lifted his eyes from the legal pad suddenly and arrested the thought in its tracks. This was a matter of loyalty, and besides, he could be sufficiently circumspect and careful to avoid personal danger.

  18

  Tuesday, December 4

  Pete Kaminsky’s entrance had not gone unnoticed. The second day of the NTSB hearing had been underway for fifty minutes when the captain of the doomed Boeing 737 entered quietly at the back of the ballroom, his six-foot-four-inch frame moving like a huge shadow toward the first empty chair in the last row as Joe Wallingford watched from the head table. Even at a distance, the grim determination and the pain were visible in the pilot’s face. Reliving the crash would clearly be an agony for him.

  Ten minutes before Kaminsky arrived, Dr. Greg Phillips, a well-known aviation psychologist, who was the first witness, had been asked how likely it was that a captain could set up an accident by intimidating his copilot into inaction.

  “It’s happened many times before. Intimidated crewmembers permitting captains to do dangerous things are quite common. The Air New England Twin Otter crash in 1979, for instance. The captain apparently went to sleep on final approach, but he was the director of operations and a tough ex-marine, and his copilot was a brand-new employee who was so intimidated that he sat on his hands and let the airplane fly into the ground rather than take a chance of offending the captain by stopping what had become a clearly dangerous descent short of the runway. Before that there was the copilot in a Texas International Convair near Mena, Arkansas, in 1973 who finally got around to asking ‘how high are these mountains?’ as his captain blundered through valleys at low altitude, in the blind, in and out of clouds. The question was his last, however. They slammed into a hillside the split second the words left his mouth. We also had communications and copilot-assertiveness problems in the Eastern Airlines Charlotte, North Carolina, crash in 1974, the Air Illinois crash near Pinckneyville, Illinois, in 1983, the Pan Am and KLM takeoff collision at Tenerife in 1977, and, of course, the real classic, Air Florida’s crash in the Potomac in 1982. All of these and many more have involved breakdowns in cockpit communication partially or fully based on pilots’ being too reluctant to speak up and be assertive. We call it the ‘iron-pants captain’ syndrome, and it’s cost thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.”

  “And,” Joe interjected, “cockpit resource management courses can solve it?”

  “No.”

  “No?” The response startled Joe.

  “It’s merely a start, but a necessary and vital one.”

  “Madam Chairman.” The voice belonged to Dean Farris. Joe had been aware of some movement on his far right, but Farris’s interjection was unexpected. Susan had been caught off guard as well and was looking now at Farris as he more or less hunched over his microphone on the far end of the head table, looking back at Susan.

  “I’m sure all this is very interesting, but I think we’ve heard enough from this witness. His testimony isn’t really relevant.”

  At North America’s table, John Walters was nodding vigorously as he chimed in, “Madam Chairman, we too would like to say that this testimony is totally irrelevant. The place of such courses as cockpit management training in a modern airline is very much a disputed and debatable issue, and even the FAA has not mandated such training as yet. North America specifically rejects the concept as useless undermining of a captain’s legal authority, a concept which in some circumstances could be dangerous.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Joe muttered, close enough to the microphone to be heard.

  “Let’s take a ten-minute recess, please,” Susan said without warning, looking first at Dean Farris, then at Joe, then back at Farris again. Before either of them could say more, Joe noticed Susan glaring at him, her face hard and angry. “You,” she hissed in a stage whisper, turning the other way toward the NTSB chairman, “and you.
Come, please.” Susan was out of the chair and off the back of the platform in an instant, and both men found themselves following her out the door and into the adjacent small conference room, where Susan was waiting with folded arms. Joe closed the door carefully.

  “Now would you two boys like to put up your fists and duke it out on national television?”

  Dean Farris’s mouth was open as he groped for a dignified reply, but Susan was not in a listening mood. Hands on hips, her eyes flaring, she paced to one side of them, then another, like an angry teacher confronting two students caught fighting in the hallway.

  “What a grand, dignified, appropriate display that was! It’s not bad enough that I’ve a battle keeping Walters under control, now you two have to go ballistic.”

  “Now Susan, let’s—” Dean Farris’s right palm was in the air, a gesture to stop, but she continued.

  “Dean, that remark was totally uncalled for. If you don’t realize the significance of that man’s testimony, you have not done your homework. I intend to create a record in this hearing which includes enough testimony about human performance to enable a clear decision on whether or not it applies. I resent and refuse to tolerate your prejudicial remarks.” Susan’s arm flailed the air in the direction of the ballroom. “You saw what that did. That sparked Walters off again and gave everyone the impression we’re making premature judgments.”

  Farris tried a shallow bow in her direction. “I am very sorry, Susan, I was merely—”

  “And you, Joseph Wallingford, know damn well better than make such a remark with your microphone on.” She had turned to Joe suddenly, leaving Farris in the midst of a conciliatory bow to her back.

  Joe raised both hands. “I am sorry, Susan. You’re right, of course.”

  She was out the door in a flash, leaving an embarrassed Dean Farris staring at an equally embarrassed Joe Wallingford, a brief standoff which ended immediately as they both moved toward the door, Farris startled by her ferocity, and Joe deeply impressed.

  John Walters spent the next half hour trying unsuccessfully to put some distance between North America Airlines and Dr. Phillips’s flat statement that a captain-oriented airline was always less safe, but finally gave up, clearing the way for the FAA’s lawyer, who dragged out the fact that cockpit resource management training would become an FAA requirement very soon. Increasingly, however, eyes were shifting to Captain Pete Kaminsky at the back of the room as the questioning of Dr. Phillips came to an end with ALPA’s questions about the effects of massive corporate losses on pilot safety performance levels.

  And at last Pete was on the stand, Joe guiding him gently into the events of that Friday night, asking him to relate them as he remembered them, the occupants of the ballroom transfixed as the big man with the quiet voice told of his shock at finding his passengers gone, his craft in ruins, running from seat to ruined seat looking for someone to save. When he finished, there was dead silence in the room, and Joe could see tears reflecting in Pete’s eyes.

  “There was nothing I could do. There was nothing.”

  “Captain,” Joe began, “do you know Dick Timson?”

  “Yes. I know Dick.”

  “One of the things we are interested in probing is whether the management style of Captain Timson in his role as chief pilot was in any way a detriment to North America pilots’ maintaining the highest levels of safety, and whether it was intimidating in general.”

  Pete dropped his head for a moment, then raised it again, looking to his right and looking Joe in the eye.

  “Dick ruled with fear and threats and intimidation—taught his junior chief pilots to do the same. His style reduced a proud group of self-respecting professionals to a divided, warring camp—an us-against-them war zone of distrust and company hatred in which we regarded the future as bleak and hopeless. In that atmosphere, coming to work was like taking a beating, each and every time. Did it affect our performance? How … how on earth could it not? Do you do your best work tied up in a knot or deeply angry? Could you reason as well if told by word and deed that you’re worthless, mediocre, and easily replaceable?” Pete dropped his eyes again to the tablecloth, the fingers of his right hand playing absently with a fold in the fabric.

  “Captain, let me ask you if—”

  “Just before we pushed back,” Pete began again suddenly, seemingly unaware of Joe’s question, “my copilot and I were discussing a cut in a tire that should have grounded the aircraft. I mean, I should have told them to change it. It would have been safer. As it turned out, if I had—if I’d had the damn courage to say, ‘I am the goddamn captain and I want the goddamn tire changed right now, and I’m not flying or pushing back or anything until it’s done’—all those people would still be alive. But I was too tired of being sniped at for exercising a captain’s authority, so I took the coward’s way out. And … well …”

  Joe and the staff questioned Pete for thirty minutes in all, giving the other parties their opportunity to question Pete Kaminsky as well. The FAA had nothing to add, but ALPA’s investigator asked Pete enough questions to establish that his decision to leave the gate with a cut tire was perfectly legal, and nearly an hour after Pete Kaminsky took the stand, Susan gave John Walters his chance to question him, an opportunity which, to everyone’s surprise, Walters turned down. He would have a chance to take the stand himself later on. That would be the time to attempt to repair as much of the damage as possible.

  What John Walters had bitterly opposed in the prehearing conference started then in spite of his protests. Four North America captains, a first officer, and two flight attendants took the stand, all qualified and currently flying the Airbus 320, and all of them subpoenaed to attend. The picture they provided of life inside North America Airlines had convinced Andy Wallace, and in turn Joe Wallingford, that the story must be aired at the hearing. One by one they told of excessive pressure for on-time performance and a distrustful management who thought all employees were out to “get” the company.

  “If you mean,” began one of the pilots, “do I feel compelled to fly passengers in airplanes I’d rather have maintenance fix, or in weather I’d rather not chance? Yes, I do. If you mean, does the fact that every time I’ve grounded an airplane for reasons I felt valid, I’ve been forced to drive 50 miles on my day off to be chewed out by a junior assistant chief pilot masquerading as a captain, does that impinge on my go—no-go decision the next time when I sit in that cockpit with a broken fuel gauge or a marginal tire? Yes it does. If you mean, am I getting sufficiently tired of this job that sometimes I catch myself daydreaming when I should be answering checklist items? The answer is yes.” The man paused and looked at the desk, wondering whether to continue, and Joe waited patiently until he looked up again.

  “You know, sometimes the pressure comes from inside. We’re professional people—technicians, yes, but most of us are aware of business realities. We know that our company, our careers, and our bank accounts are all welded together, and we know this airline is losing it’s ass financially. I’m sorry for the language, but it’s true. When you know that, you also know that if we ground a flight, we all lose money. So sometimes the pressure to fly in less than optimal conditions comes from our own desire to have our company survive.”

  Joe leaned forward and turned on his microphone. “One question, sir. Have you ever heard of, or witnessed, a situation in which a copilot or flight engineer was disciplined or chastised by the company for speaking up to a captain in flight?”

  The man nodded and smiled. “You joking?”

  “No sir, Captain, the question is quite serious.”

  “That’s very common around North America. You don’t cross a North America captain, and that’s a barrier between me and my crew I don’t want. They’re afraid to speak up even when I want them to.”

  Finally it was John Walters’s turn, and Joe watched with a disconcerting mix of empathy and hostility as he took the witness chair. Joe questioned him for forty minutes as Walters do
dged and parried with argumentative pugnacity any queries about North America’s methods of handling pilot operations and training. He was interested only in reading his corporate version of reality into the record. There was nothing wrong with Dick Timson’s methods, he said, no morale problem in the North America pilot ranks—despite Pete Kaminsky’s impassioned statements—and no reason to consider Don Leyhe, Flight 255’s copilot, an intimidated man.

  “You’re saying Captain Kaminsky is lying?”

  “I’m saying Captain Kaminsky may believe what he’s saying, but that’s an isolated, inaccurate view. Just because one wrought-up man, who I admit has been through hell, remembers his work environment as being terrible, does not make it so.”

  “All right then; then, Mr. Walters, let’s move on to Don Leyhe. Having heard the voice tape, why do you believe Don Leyhe was so slow to act?” Joe had asked.

  “I don’t know that he was slow to act. That’s an unjustified conclusion.”

  Joe sighed all too audibly. “The nose had dropped, sir. They were aimed at the ground short of the runway, yet it took nearly ten seconds for him to seize control by pressing the priority switch. Don’t you consider that excessive slowness?”

  Walters had shaken his head vigorously. “Not unless you have the unwarranted, preconceived notion, Mr. Wallingford, that the captain was doing something wrong. We have the captain’s testimony, right here from this seat. He told you he had the proper back pressure and the plane nosed over on him. That’s the only appropriate area for inquiry.”

  Susan was shaking her head ever so slightly as she looked at Walters, noticing the stir of activity and angry faces at the Airbus table. Even Dean Farris, still seated at the far end, was watching Walters closely, and not interfering. Joe had heard that Walters had been chosen to handle the hearing simply because he was upper management, but it was obvious that had been a major mistake. David Bayne had sent a company attorney to sit next to Walters and advise him, but the operations vice-president was still far too brusque and technically uninformed. Maybe that’s the problem, Joe thought. Maybe there’s no one in the airline’s management who is qualified, including Walters’s superiors. Perhaps John Walters was the only candidate, but either way, he was putting on a very bad show.