The chief nodded. “I’m not surprised. He had to have lost equipment when he took out the Runway Seven-right ILS tower. I am surprised he’s still in the air.”
“Meridian Five, Hong Kong Approach. How do you copy?” The controller looked up at the chief. “I’ve been calling him constantly. He either can’t hear us, or he can’t talk.”
“Maybe both,” the chief replied. “Keep trying him, though.”
“Meridian Five, do you hear Hong Kong Approach?” Still no response. “I’ve asked an outbound Cathay Pacific flight to look for him out there, but there’s a thunderstorm cell to the east that may make it more difficult. Is there anything else we can do to help him?”
The chief thought for a long time before shaking his head again. “If he is truly blind, and if there are no other pilots on board to help him fly that airplane, his only chance is an automatic landing. The other ILS system is working for Seven-left, but he’ll have to find the beam on his own. Make sure that ILS is up and monitored!”
“Yes, Sir.”
The chief straightened up. “Keep calling him. Ask him to make turns even if he isn’t responding, just on the chance that he might be able to hear us. If not — if you lose his radar return — note carefully his last position and call me upstairs.”
The possibility that faulty airport equipment had almost caused a crash was politically intolerable — as intolerable as the idea that a brand-new, state-of-the-art ILS system could fail. The ILS had been hit by lightning. That was not their fault.
The thought of the hapless blinded pilot and his crew and passengers losing what might have been their only chance for a safe landing sickened the chief.
Maybe, he thought, maybe there’s another pilot on board after all.
“What’s our altitude now?” Dan asked.
“Climbing through five thousand steadily,” Geoffrey answered.
“Your left wing is dropping again, Dan,” Dallas said.
He rolled right in response as the interphone call chime rang. “How’s that?”
“Good. Wings are almost level again. Now they’re level.”
Dan reached for a switch on the overhead panel, feeling it latch into place.
“Hey! That helped. The cockpit lights are back,” Dallas said.
“Robert?” Dan said. “Grab that handset from the back of the center pedestal and see who’s calling.”
“You bet.” Robert MacCabe pulled the handset from its cradle to hear the shaking voice of a flight attendant from somewhere below. “Captain? I think we hit something. There’s a terrible roaring under our feet.”
Robert shielded the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hang on. He knows.”
Dan reached to the center pedestal behind the throttles and changed his radio settings before calling Hong Kong again, but there was still only silence.
“Dan, the left wing is down five degrees,” Geoffrey told him.
“Roll right a little, Dan,” Dallas echoed, “and bring your nose down a bit. You’re what I’d call about ten degrees up.”
“Airspeed?” Dan’s voice was little more than a hoarse croak.
“Two hundred sixty, no, two-seventy,” Dallas shot back.
Dan Wade throttled back, listening to the distant whine of the engines. “Altitude?”
“Ah,” Dallas began, “coming up to seven thousand feet.”
“Help me level off, Dallas. I’m going to start pushing over now. Give me degrees of nose up.”
“Okay, you’re about ten nose up, now eight… five… three.”
Dan pulsed the yoke back about an inch. “How about now?”
“Nose up about three degrees. You’re dropping a little.”
He pulled back slightly and triggered the elevator trim, which repositioned the horizontal tail up or down to reduce the need for back pressure or forward pressure on the controls.
Once more he called Hong Kong Approach.
And once more there was utter silence from the radios.
“That’s… what I was afraid of,” he said quietly.
“Get your nose up a little, Dan, and roll right a bit,” Dallas added. “What were you afraid of? What does that tell you?”
Another long, ragged sigh from the right seat. “It… tells me we have no radios, no navigation radios, no autopilot. It tells me we crammed something into the electronics bay and my popping ears tell me we’re depressurized.”
“So what do we do?” Geoffrey Sampson asked.
“I can tell you this, folks,” Dan said, his voice breaking. “I… cannot fly this way for very long.”
Robert leaned forward and grabbed his right shoulder. “Dan, hang on. And this isn’t a Leslie Nielsen speech. We’re going to do this together. We’re going to find a way to talk you through it, okay?”
Dan was shaking his head with increasing violence. “No! NO, NO, NO!” There was a sharp intake of breath and a sob from the right seat. “Don’t you understand? I can’t do this! We have no autopilot and now we have no contact. We’re all alone up here. We can’t talk to anyone, we can’t navigate, and we’ve got no way to land! I couldn’t even keep it flying straight through the last hundred feet.”
“There’s got to be a solution,” Dallas said, her voice low and tense. “And Robert’s right. You’ve got to hang on.”
“GOD! Don’t you think I know that?” Dan turned his bandaged head to the left. “Geoffrey, thank you for the help. Please get out of that seat and let Ms. Nielson in it. Dallas? You’re going to have to fly.”
“Not on your life, Honey!”
“Britta said you were a flight engineer on seven-forty-sevens!”
“No. I’m a broadcast engineer who’s logged hundreds of hours flying Microsoft simulators using a keyboard. ’Course, I might have forgotten to mention the broadcast part, but your flight attendant wasn’t going to let me up here otherwise.”
“Microsoft?” Dan asked incredulously. “Microsoft?”
“That’s right,” Dallas said. “It’s an airplane computer simulation program you run on your home computer. They even have a seven-forty-seven cockpit, but since it was an office computer, all I had for a control yoke was the keyboard.”
“Which is why you can read the basic instruments, right?” Dan asked.
“That’s it,” she replied. “And right now I read your left wing down. Roll right a little, nose back up a degree or two.”
“Lord, if you hadn’t been such a help, I’d throw you out of here. But if you can read the instruments, Dallas, you can fly the plane,” Dan said.
“Not only no, but hell no! I don’t want to die that fast. I’d probably have us upside down before you could scream.”
Geoffrey Sampson had quietly placed his hands on the control yoke. “Let me give this a go, Dan.”
“You mean, try to fly it?” Dan asked.
“Indeed. Ms. Nielson? Would you assist me with the readings?”
“You bet your British backside I’ll help you,” she said, as Dan took his hands off the yoke and retrieved the interphone handset, punching up the PA.
Folks, this is me again, your pilot, Dan Wade. Obviously… the landing attempt was a disaster, and I’m terribly sorry. There was a lightning strike just as we approached the runway, and it knocked out the instrument landing system… and, ah, the automatic pilot can’t land that way. We drifted off the runway and clipped the top of a radio tower and lost number-two engine on the left wing and now all of our radios are gone, and somehow… I’ve got to find a place to land and figure out how to do it without eyesight and without contact with the ground. I’ll… talk to you again when we’ve got a plan worked out.