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.Delbaugh also hoped they could tell him how the hell he was supposed tofly an aircraft as large as an apartment building without the aid ofelevators, rudders, ailerons, and other equipment that allowed him tomaneuver.Even the best flight training programs were structured underthe assumption that a pilot would retain some degree of control in acatastrophic incident, thanks to redundant systems provided by thedesigners.Initially, the people at SAM had trouble accepting that he had lost allhydraulics, assuming he meant he'd had a fractional loss.He finallyhad to snap at them to make them understand, which he deeply regrettednot only because he wanted to uphold the tradition of quietprofessionalism that pilots before him had established in direcircumstances, but also because he was seriously spooked by the sound ofhis own angry voice and thereafter found it more difficult to deceivehimself that he actually felt as calm as he was pretending to be.Pete Yankowski, the flight instructor from Denver, returned from histrip to the rear of the plane and reported that through a window he hadspotted an eighteen-inch hole in the horizontal part of the tail."There's probably more damage I couldn't see.Figure shrapnel ripped upthe rear section behind the aft bulkhead, where all the hydraulicsystems pass through.At least we didn't depressurize."Dismayed at the rippling sensation that quivered through his bowels,achingly aware that two hundred and fifty-three passengers and ten othercrew members were depending on him to bring them home alive, Delbaughconveyed Yankowski's information to SAM.Then he asked for assistancein determining how to fly the severely disabled aircraft.He was ùnotsurprised when, after an urgent consultation, the experts in SanFrancisco could come up with no recommendations.He was asking them todo the impossible, tell him how to remain the master of this behemothwith no substantial controls other than the throttles-the same unfairrequest that God was making of him.He stayed in touch with United's dispatcher office, as well, whichtracked the progress of all the company's hardware in the air.Inaddition both channels-the dispatcher and SAM-were patched in toUnited's headquarters near O'Hare International in Chicago.A lot ofinterested and anxious people were tied to Delbaugh by radio, but theywere all as much at a loss for good suggestions as were the experts inSan Francisco.To Yankowski, Delbaugh said, "Ask Evelyn to find that guy from McDonnellDouglas she told us about.Get him up here quick."As Pete left the flight deck again, and as Anilov struggled with hiscontrol wheel in a determined if vain attempt to get at least someresponse from the craft, Delbaugh told the shift manager at SAM that aMcDonnell Douglas engineer was aboard."He warned us something waswrong with the tail engine just before it exploded.He could tell fromthe sound of it, I guess, so we'll get him in here, see if he can help."At SAM, the General Electric expert on CF-6 turbofan engines cameback at him: "What do you mean, he could tell by the sound? How couldhe tell by the sound? What did it sound like?""I don't know," Delbaugh replied."We didn't notice any unusual noisesor unexpected changes in pitch, and neither did the flight attendants."The voice in Delbaugh's headset crackled in response: "That doesn't makesense."McDonnell Douglas's DC-10 specialist at SAM sounded equally baffled:"What's this guy's name?""We'll find out.All we know right now is his first name," SleightonDelbaugh said."It's Jim."As the captain announced to the passengers that they would be landing inDubuque as a result of mechanical problems, Jim watched Evelyn approachhim along the port aisle, weaving because the plane was no longer assteady as it had been.He wished she would not ask him what he knew shehad to ask.".and it might be a little rough," the captain concluded.As the pilots reduced power to one engine and increased it to the other,the wings wobbled, and the plane wallowed like a boat in a swelling seaEach time it happened, they recovered quickly, but between thosedesperate course corrections, when they were unlucky enough to hit airturbulence, the DC-10 did not ride through it as confidently as it haddone all the way out from LAX."Captain Delbaugh would like you to come forward if you could," Evelynsaid when she reached him, soft-voiced and smiling as if delivering aninvitation to a pleasant little luncheon of tea and finger sandwiches.He wanted to refuse.He was not entirely sure that Christine and Casey-or Holly, for that matter-would live through the crash and itsimmediate aftermath without him at their side.He knew that on impact aten-row chunk of the fuselage aft of first-class would crack loose fromthe rest of the plane, and that less damage would be done to it than tothe forward and rear sections.Before he had intervened in the fate ofFlight 246, all of the passengers in those favored seats had beendestined to come out of the crash with comparatively minor injuries orno injuries at all.He was sure that all of those marked for life werestill going to live, but he was not certain that merely moving theDubroveks into the middle of the safety zone was sufficient to altertheir fate and insure their survival.Perhaps, after impact, he wouldhave to be there to get them through the fire and out of thewreckage-which he could not do if he was with the flight crew.Besides, he had no idea whether the crew was going to survive.If hewas with them in the cockpit on impact.He went with Evelyn anyway.He had no choice-at least not since HollyThorne had insisted that he might be able to do more than save one womanand one child, might thwart fate on a large scale instead of a smallone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]