Representatives of the NTSB, Boeing, ALPA, USAir, the FAA, and the machinists and flight attendants unions crowded into the conference room as Haueter explained the rules and how he was organizing the investigation. The place was so packed that people sat on the floor, stood around the back of the room, and crowded in the doorway. The parties stuck together, like teams getting ready for a big game. In one clump sat ALPA, in another sat Boeing. The conference room had been stripped of any evidence that it belonged to USAir. The walls were bare.
First Haueter explained how the investigation would be organized. Groups with representatives from the parties would look into different factors that may have played a role in the crash: weather, air traffic control, and operations, which covered such areas as fueling and cargo. Other groups would study the plane—its structure, engines, maintenance records, and the systems that moved the flight controls. Additional groups would interview witnesses, listen to the cockpit voice recording, analyze the flight data recorder, and study the pilots, even reviewing the details of their lives for the few days that immediately preceded the crash to see if they showed any signs of fatigue or depression. The group would even track down what Emmett and Germano ate for dinner the night before they died.
Next Haueter went over the rules. The parties were to provide technical help. They would also be in a position to respond quickly if the investigation uncovered a safety problem that needed an immediate remedy. But they could not discuss the accident publicly or talk with the press. He warned them even to be careful what they said if they were out for dinner. “I don’t want to hear from Mary, the waitress at Bob’s Bar, what the NTSB thinks the cause is,” he said.
Haueter, who was sensitive to complaints that he looked young, was pleased that he got an opportunity to assert himself and show he was in charge at a progress meeting that night. As he went around the room asking everyone his or her role in the investigation, USAir vice president Bruce Aubin responded that he was “observing.”
“Please leave,” Haueter told him.
“I’m not going,” Aubin said.
“Yes, you are,” Haueter said.
“Our company rules require that a senior…”
“No,” Haueter said. “Your company rules are in conflict with my rules. Please leave right now.”
5. THE FIRST CLUES
The morning after the crash, the two “black boxes” from Flight 427 arrived at the NTSB’s laboratories in Washington, D.C. The boxes weren’t really black, they were bright orange, but they had earned the nickname because of their mystique. They survived accidents that humans could not, allowing investigators to hear the voices of the dead.
The boxes survive partly because they are in the plane’s tail, the section of the aircraft that usually has the least damage. They also are extraordinarily strong, resembling steel toolboxes from Home Depot painted with the words FLIGHT RECORDER DO NOT OPEN. Inside are steel cocoons to protect the audiotape or computer chips. They are built to withstand an impact of 3,400 Gs and a 2,000-degree-Fahrenheit fire for thirty minutes.
The cockpit voice recorder, or CVR, runs a continuous-loop tape of the last thirty minutes before a crash. The tape from the USAir plane had four channels of sounds—one from a microphone in the cockpit ceiling, one from each of the pilots’ headsets, and one from an oxygen mask in the jump seat. The CVR tapes are tightly controlled. Transcripts are released to the public, but only investigators are allowed to hear the actual recordings. The only exceptions are the rare instances when the tapes are played in court.
The tapes are creepy, like a cross between a horror movie and the Nixon White House recordings. They allow the listeners to eavesdrop on people going through their daily routine. Pilots talk about the “cabbage patch” (the airline’s headquarters) and “putting down the girls.” (Pilots still refer to flight attendants as girls. “Putting down the girls” refers to the point during final approach when pilots ask flight attendants to be seated.) They say things in a cockpit that they would never say in front of paying customers—they talk about turbulence so rough they’re afraid passengers will start vomiting and they make wisecracks about urinating. More than three-fourths of pilots are heard whistling or singing on CVRS. (Bob Rudich, the father of cockpit tape analysis, once wrote an article titled “Beware the Whistler,” contending that the whistling was a sign of complacency.) They chat about birds, food, weather, union work rules, and football scores.
The tapes can be embarrassing to airlines, revealing amazing sloppiness in the cockpit. Pilots of a commuter plane on a training flight in Nebraska, for example, sounded like teenagers out for a joyride. “Ye bo, look at all those Softball fields. I can really groove on them,” one pilot said. “We’re just like cruisin’ along here, aren’t we? We’re just, like, toolin’.” They talked about trucks and a prank where one pilot had used a Mr. Potato Head as a hood ornament. The captain said he wanted to pull another prank, using a front-end loader to place a friend’s Jeep on top of a fuel truck. A few minutes later, they apparently tried to execute a barrel roll and crashed in a field.
The pilots on Eastern Airlines Flight 212 in 1974 made racial slurs and gabbed about politics. “Well, hell, the Democrats, I don’t know who in the hell they’re going to run,” the first officer said. “If they’re going to run Kennedy, that’s…”
“That’s suicide,” the captain said.
The political gabfest went on for thirty minutes. The pilots talked about busing, the Vietnam War, Arab investments in the United States, President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, and the implications of Chappaquiddick on the political future of Senator Edward Kennedy. They were so deep in conversation that they silenced the warning systems on the airplane, ignored standard procedures, lost track of their altitude, and crashed short of the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport.
“Hey!” said the first officer right before impact.
“Goddamn!” said the captain.
When pilots realize they are about to die, their reactions vary. Some plead with the airplane. “Up, baby,” begged the captain of an American Airlines jet as it was about to plow into a Colombian mountain. Others are resigned to their fate. “We’re dead,” said the first officer of a Southern Air Transport cargo plane just before impact. A few shout final messages to their wives and girlfriends. “Amy, I love you!” cried the pilot of an Atlantic Southeast commuter plane just before it hit the ground. Many pilots curse, although the words have changed over the years—they used to nearly always say “shit,” but now a growing number say “fuck.”
The orange CVR box from the USAir plane was badly mangled, but the tape inside the steel cocoon was fine. In fact, it was one of the clearest the safety board employees had ever heard. Both Emmett and Germano had worn “hot” mikes—headsets similar to the ones astronauts wear. The mikes were so close to the pilots’ mouths that they picked up every word clearly. They even recorded the pilots’ breathing.
The room where the NTSB played tapes of pilots dying was the size of a small bedroom, with a conference table at the center and six chairs around the edge. At the end of the table were a computer and a small mixing board that allowed NTSB technicians to isolate sounds. Cockpit posters were tacked to the walls so team members could look at the switches and gauges that the pilots were using.
The job of the voice recorder team, which included representatives from the NTSB, Boeing, ALPA, the FAA, and the other parties, was to compile a transcript of the full thirty-minute tape, from the routine chatter at the beginning to the dramatic final seconds. The tape indicated that the pilots were fighting for control, but they never talked about what was happening. Germano said “Hang on” four times but never said why. Emmett cursed but said little else. The most haunting comment came just as the plane’s stall warning sounded, when Germano asked, “What the hell is this?”