We had lunch at a hotel close to the airfield. The girls, who had been showing signs of advanced boredom as we had droned over the English cloud, had come alive. We sat in the garden of the hotel, the heat of the sun tempered by a pleasant sea breeze, congratulating ourselves on not being in London. In the afternoon Guy planned to take us up between the Inner Hebrides and the mainland to Broadford, a small airfield on the Isle of Skye. We would spend the following day walking, before nipping over to Barra in the Outer Hebrides in the evening and then home the day after that.
I noticed that Guy drank a couple of pints and it made me uneasy. I also felt foolish. I knew Guy was an experienced pilot and I knew he could handle his drink, but I also knew that he was breaking the rules. Of course, that was the difference between him and me. He broke the rules and I didn’t. Although as a student pilot I wasn’t allowed to handle the controls without a qualified instructor, I restricted myself to a Coke, as if reducing the average intake of alcohol in the cockpit would help.
We returned to the airfield and refuelled. I checked the weather fax. I had just completed the meteorology paper in my pilot’s course and found the subject fascinating. What I read worried me. I went out to the apron and found Guy.
‘Here, come in and look at this,’ I said quietly.
He followed me into the caravan, which doubled as a control tower, and looked at the fax. Under Inverness it had the words ‘PROB 30 tempo tsra bkn0010cb’.
‘So?’ said Guy.
‘So doesn’t that mean thunderstorms?’
‘No, Davo, it means that in Inverness there’s a thirty per cent probability that for a temporary period there might be a thunderstorm. Inverness is on the east coast and we’re on the west.’
‘But isn’t Inverness the nearest place on the fax to Skye?’
Guy hesitated. ‘Maybe. But look outside. Where are the clouds? It’s a great day.’ He saw the doubtful look in my eyes. ‘They always say there’s a chance of thunder in the summer. It’s just the Met Office covering its arse. We see a thunderstorm, we fly around it, OK?’
‘OK,’ I nodded, reflecting how much happier I had been flying with Guy when I knew nothing about the subject myself.
We took off into clear skies and headed north along the craggy coastline, passing lighthouses, lochs, birds, crofts and castles. We nosed up the Sound of Sleat, past Mallaig towards the Kyle of Lochalsh. To our left were the dark mountains of Skye and to our right the Highlands. I looked over my right shoulder for Ben Nevis, which should have been about thirty miles behind us. I couldn’t see it. An enormous black cloud had suddenly appeared, rearing up over the mountains. It rose thousands of feet up into the sky, tapering into a tower that formed a flat white top. An ‘anvil’. It was a massive cumulonimbus. A thundercloud.
I had read about thunderclouds in my meteorology texts. They are a pilot’s worst enemy. Wind can make landing difficult, rain can make visibility tricky, but a thundercloud can shake an aeroplane to bits. In a big, mature thundercloud, warm air is dragged into the centre of the thunderstorm and thrust thousands of feet upwards, where it cools and rushes back towards the ground in a vicious downdraught. The resulting turbulence produces sudden shocks that an airframe is not designed to withstand.
I tapped Guy on the shoulder and pointed.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘You often get cloud over mountains. We’ll be all right down here.’
We were approaching the shoulder of a hill that plunged down to the sound. We passed it and turned northwards. Right in front of us was a wall of black. The aeroplane shuddered a little, as if in nervous anticipation.
Another one.
Mountains rose above us on either side. It was impossible to fly around this as Guy had promised.
‘What now?’
‘We go under it,’ said Guy. ‘There might be a bit of turbulence, but we’re nearly there.’
‘Shouldn’t we turn back?’
‘No, we’ll be fine. It’s just forming. It’s not even producing any rain yet.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ Guy said, irritation flaring in his voice. ‘Hold on back there, this might be a little bumpy.’
Guy descended to about four hundred feet, at which point it was possible to see underneath the cloud to the shoreline behind.
We approached the grey wall at a hundred and thirty knots. I was nervous. In front of us was what was increasingly looking to my inexperienced eye like a huge beast of a cumulonimbus, below was water, on either side mountains. Only behind us was safety. But glancing at Guy’s determined face, I could see there was no chance of us going that way.
He was an experienced pilot. I would have to trust him.
The air became bumpy, with jolts and lurches that prompted a cry of ‘Whoa’ from Mel. A bit uncomfortable, but easy to put up with, if that was all we were going to suffer.
Perhaps we would be OK.
We weren’t.
Suddenly the aircraft was slammed downwards as if a giant hand had slapped the roof. The water shot up towards us. Guy cursed, put on full throttle and tried to climb. The water was dark and choppy and only a few feet below us. Despite Guy’s efforts we weren’t going up. Another downdraught like that and we’d get very wet. Worse than that, the force would shatter the aeroplane against the surface of the water. But it didn’t happen. One moment the engine was straining to gain a few feet in altitude, and the next that great hand reached down and dragged us upwards. The water disappeared far below and after a few seconds we were enveloped in the cloud. Everything became very dark.
‘Jesus Christ!’ swore Guy as he wrestled with the controls. I didn’t know what he was trying to do. There was nothing he could do, the forces all around us totally overwhelmed any instructions Guy was giving to the airframe. I looked at the altimeter. We were being pulled up past one thousand and two thousand feet. Debris was flying all over the cabin: the map, a kneeboard, a flight guide. I felt a whack in the back of my head, and Ingrid’s bag flew upwards and hit the ceiling. I was totally disoriented as my insides were pulled and pushed in every direction. Outside, a sheet of water fell on us, flooding over the windshield. It didn’t matter. There was nothing to see but black cloud out there.
Mel started to scream. I turned. She was terrified.
‘Tell her to shut up,’ muttered Guy beside me. He was pale and sweating, straining hard at the controls.
‘Mel!’ I shouted. ‘Mel!’
It was no use. I couldn’t get the poor girl to stop screaming, but I could turn off the intercom to the rear seats. That helped.
There was a sudden flash of brilliant white light and then an explosion. It was as if we were actually inside a thunderclap. I looked out to check the wings. Unbelievably they were still attached to the plane.
‘What about the mountains?’ I shouted. There were mountains on either side of us. We couldn’t see anything. We could easily charge into the side of one at any moment.
‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘But look at the altimeter. We’re nearly at three thousand feet. We should clear most of them.’
I looked, and as I did so the altimeter started spinning the other way. We were going down. Two thousand. One thousand. There were plenty of hills that height within a couple of miles of our track. I peered through the rain into the darkness. They could be right in front of us, there was no way of telling.
Then the blackness ripped apart and we were out. Below us was water. Straight ahead was the brown flank of a mountain. The water split, one arm going to the left, one to the right. Guy had only seconds to decide. He took the right.