But when investigators arrived in Seattle for the tests in the first week of June 1997, Boeing shocked everyone. For the first time, company engineers acknowledged that a jam and a reversal in the PCU could match the kinematic estimates for Flight 427. Until that point, Boeing had adamantly resisted any suggestion that a reversal caused the crash. The Boeing position had been firm: The pilots screwed up. But new estimates by Boeing’s engineers provided a surprisingly close match between Flight 427’s rudder and results from the jam/reversal tests. Boeing stopped far short of saying the plane was to blame, but just an acknowledgment that it was possible was a huge step. It was like Ronald Reagan saying nice things about communism.
Boeing’s new position won Haueter’s admiration. “Holy mackerel, I’m shocked,” he said. “They have been fairly up front lately.”
Cox also praised his rivals from Boeing for being so honest with data that appeared to indict their product. “The entire week was a night-and-day difference,” Cox said. “They were very forthright, there was not any of the partisanship.”
The flight test was uneventful. Boeing pilots compiled new data about the crossover point and hardovers and did not crash in the Pacific. But the most revealing event came when the plane returned to Boeing Field for a ground demonstration of a rudder reversal. The plane, which had just come off the assembly line for Southwest Airlines, was fitted with the special rig in its tail to jam the valve.
Haueter had asked for the demonstration to show what a rudder hardover would have felt like to Emmett and Germano. It took two steps to cause the reversal. You pressed down with one foot to move the valve’s secondary slide into position, and then you had to stomp quickly with the other foot, which resulted in the second rudder pedal’s snapping back, as if it was trying to throw your foot off.
It was a warm, sunny day in Seattle, once again proving that the city’s reputation for rain was a myth perpetuated by natives who didn’t want anyone else to move to their beautiful city. It was so bright that people standing on the pavement beneath the plane had to wear sunglasses. In the cockpit, Brenner sat down in the right seat beside Mike Carriker, the Boeing test pilot. The six-foot-three Brenner was the same height as Emmett, and he had to put the seat all the way back to be comfortable. He slowly pushed each rudder pedal as far as it would go, as if he were doing a routine check of the rudder before takeoff. He then jammed his foot on the left pedal, causing the reversal. The left pedal began coming up, pushing relentlessly against his foot, fighting him all the way until it reached the upper stop. He did the test a dozen more times and found that the rudder pedal overpowered him every time. He was amazed by the force. In a fight with a jammed PCU, a human could not win.
Brenner had spent two and a half years trying to understand what had happened in 427’s cockpit. He knew the pilots so well that he knew their pant sizes. He knew their allergies, their marital histories, and what they ordered from room service. He had heard the cockpit tape hundreds of times, had spent hours in M-Cab and weeks poring over the flight data. But not until this moment, when the pedal came snapping back, did he truly understand what had happened. It was creepy. Brenner felt as though he was reliving those horrifying seconds at 6,000 feet. For a brief moment, he became Emmett. Oh, yeah, I see zuh Jetstream. He pushed on the rudder pedal to recover from the wake but felt it snap back. Oh shit. It was unrelenting. No matter how hard he pushed, the pedal Ohhh shiiiiiiittttt kept fighting back as the plane rolled to the left and then spun out of control God! toward the gravel road in Hopewell. Nooooo.
Brenner was convinced. The rudder had reversed.
Phillips had a similar reaction. He was still the most cautious investigator at the safety board. Long after Haueter and others had become convinced that a reversal in the PCU had caused the crash, Phillips was reluctant to draw a conclusion. Some people at the board thought he was a little too cautious and too protective of the airlines and the manufacturers. But after trying the demonstration and seeing Boeing’s new estimates, even Phillips seemed convinced that there had been a reversal.
Once again Haueter was working late.
Since his promotion, he’d gotten a better office with a sign beside his door that said NO WHINERS, but he had not bothered to get a nameplate with his new title. He had written his name on a piece of paper and taped it over the name of his predecessor.
He still had responsibility for the USAir investigation and often worked into the night. His wife, Trisha Dedik, had grown accustomed to his calls saying he would be an hour or two late, but she could never be sure exactly when he would get home. John Purvis, the head of accident investigations for Boeing, had just called their house to look for him. Dedik told Purvis her husband was still at the office, but then Purvis had called again, still looking for him. Dedik was fed up with the Boeing guys. They called at all hours and made it sound like everything was urgent. They treated her like she was Haueter’s secretary.
Though he had called Dedik to say he was headed home, Haueter ended up working for another hour before calling again to say that this time he was really leaving. Dedik was furious. She took a book into bed and read until she heard the thunder of their garage door when he arrived home. She switched off the light and pretended to be asleep. He came into the room and kissed her on the shoulder, but she was too mad to face him.
The next morning, she told him to call Purvis in Seattle, where it was three hours earlier.
“Trisha, it is five-fifteen or five-thirty in the morning out there,” Haueter said.
“So? He doesn’t care. He is calling here at ten-thirty or eleven o’clock at night. Call him right now.”
“Trisha, I’m not going to call him.”
Some days she wished that he would leave the NTSB and find a job that was less demanding, where he didn’t have to carry a beeper and work so late. She had never understood the whole preoccupation with beepers. Her office had given her one, but she stuck it in a kitchen drawer and promptly forgot the number.
“If I had to reach you, how would I?” Haueter asked her. “I can’t beep you. You can always beep me.”
“If it’s really important,” she said, “someone will find me.”
As the fourth anniversary of the crash passed, Haueter began plotting his strategy to convince the board members to approve a final report that would say the rudder had reversed. He knew that Bob Francis would be his biggest hurdle.
Francis, a tall, balding man known for wearing identical blue oxford shirts and khaki pants every day, was a former FAA official who had become something of a national celebrity after his nightly briefings on the TWA and ValuJet crashes. He considered himself the diplomat of the safety board and said he liked to work out disagreements behind the scenes. But the investigators disliked him because he did not attend their briefings or read their reports before he spoke to the press. They believed he was weak with the FBI during the TWA probe and had become too close to Boeing.
Francis had disagreed with Haueter about several of the 737 safety recommendations over the years and had not signed off on them until Haueter agreed to soften the language. In this case, Francis was not convinced that Haueter had enough proof to blame the 737 for the crash.