Historical Note: On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, on route to Chicago, crash-landed in Sioux City, Iowa, after the tail engine exploded. Fragments of the engine ruptured all three hydraulic systems leaving the plane with virtually no flight controls. One hundred and eleven passengers died that day, many of them children. Beyond that, this is a work of fiction.

Jo-Anne Wiley

Chapter One

 

"Chicago O'Hare- Chicago Control- this is United Airways flight 232. I am declaring an in-flight emergency. This is a Mayday- Mayday- Chicago do you copy. Over."

"Flight 232. We have you on radar. Please state your emergency."

"Chicago. I am Captain Irene Ross. I have lost engine number two. And hydraulic pressure is dropping. Request an emergency landing. Over."

"Hold, Captain Ross."

 

United Airways regularly scheduled Flight 232: On route to Chicago. The plane: A MacDonald Douglas DC10-10. Captain Irene Ross at the controls: Fifty-two years old with 26,000 hours of flight-time. A veteran. Cool, calm, collected. Her First Officer: Co-pilot Brad English, 14,000 hours. Two hundred and ninety-six passengers onboard, mostly children. It's Fun Day at United and children fly for a penny.

 

"Flight 232; this is Chicago Control. We have a team of engineers standing by. Please give particulars."

Irene exhaled. If she died, they would want information on the demise of her aircraft. "Chicago. There was a violent vibration shortly after takeoff. We ramped-up to forty-thousand and engine number two blew. Hydraulic pressure has been dropping. My Flight Engineer tells me we have lost the fluid. I am losing control of my aircraft. Over."

"Thank you, Captain. We are working on it. Suggest emergency landing at Sioux Falls. Heading 2-40. Do you copy?"

"Roger Chicago. Give us a moment."

"How is it handling?"

"I'm losing it, Brad. You got Sioux Falls up on the computer?"

"Heading 2-40. It's our best bet, Irene. About fifty-five miles out."

"Roger- Chicago do you copy?"

"Go ahead Captain."

"We are diverting course to Sioux Falls. Over."

A new voice blustered in: "Captain Ross. This is Ernie Dymes. I'm Senior Aeronautical Engineer with the NTSB. You have three separate hydraulic control systems on that bloody aircraft. You haven't switched over. Use one of the alternate systems, for christ-sake. That's what they're there for. Don't make me fly all the fuckin' way out to god-damned Sioux Falls to investigate a crash just because you forgot to throw a switch. Get on the ball."

Irene fought for composure. "Mr. Dymes. I assure you that I have manually shuttled back and forth, several times, between all three systems. And the fact remains: The hydraulic flight controls are inoperable. I am losing control of my aircraft, sir. The elevators, ailerons, spoilers, horizontal stabilizer, flaps and the slats are all inoperable. I am attempting to steer with the engines. So, Mr. Dymes, being you are comfortably on the ground, while I am currently flying directly at it, I would- respectfully- enjoy any further suggestions you may have for me. Over."

There was a very long and empty silence.

"Captain Ross. This is Chicago Control. The approach to Sioux Falls has been cleared. Good luck, Irene."

"Thank you, Chicago. Flight 232, out."

"Flight 232. This is Sioux Falls Gateway. We have you on radar. You are losing altitude. Bring the nose up, Captain."

"Roger, Sioux Falls."

Irene checked the altimeter. She had lost thirty-thousand feet and the nose of the aircraft was below the horizon. She struggled with the control column, the sinew twisting like root beneath the pale skin of her forearms, but the aircraft failed to respond.

"We have to get the nose up."

Brad was focused on the instruments. "More power?"

"Go. Our only option."

"But we're dropping so fast."

"Yes- throttle it up."

Brad inched the controllers forward. The two remaining wing-engines spooled and Irene clutched her breath as she watched the nose of the aircraft inch up past the line-of-horizon. The right wing started to dip. "Throttle that damned starboard engine."

"Roger."

"Sioux Falls, this is flight 232. How is our vector?"

"You are coming up, Captain, but still off course. Steer left, bearing 2-40."

"Roger, Sioux Falls." Irene worked the rudder controls but they were unresponsive. The plane droned on without turning and the right wing began to drop. "Lord. We've lost the barn door," Irene said.

"Negative, Sioux Falls. We can't steer left."

"We'll have to haul her around with the engines," Brad said.

"Increase power to the starboard side. Now."

Brad slid the controller forward. "Anything?"

"Try decreasing power to the port side."

"Anything?"

"Nothing. Christ. Let me think... Can we steer to the right?"

Brad went back to the controllers. "How's that?"

"Yes," Irene responded. "She's coming around. We can steer to the right. Steady now. We'll go full circle until we are on course for Sioux Falls."

"Gotcha. Watch the nav-computer and I'll guide you in."

The plane did a complete circle to the right and came up on heading 2-40.

"Flight 232, this is Sioux Falls. We have you twenty-six miles out. Can you reduce air speed. Over."

"Negative. Not without losing altitude. We need to maintain air-speed, presently."

"Roger. Dump your payload."

Irene looked down through her windscreen and saw a town. She was so low she could see the upturned faces of startled children in a schoolyard. "Negative, Sioux Falls. Over an urban area."

"Roger. Keep her coming, Captain. You are cleared to land on any runway."

"Thank you, Sioux Falls."

"I'll buy you a beer if we get past this," Brad said.

"Make it a vodka and soda, if you're still around to pay for it."

"Why is the right side rolling under?"

"Increase thrust to the starboard engine."

Irene thumbed the sweat from her eyes. She pressed the intercom switch. "This is Captain Irene Ross. As you've probably guessed, we are having some difficulties controlling the aircraft. We have diverted our course to Sioux Falls and have requested an emergency landing. The flight-crew is fully trained for this eventuality. Please follow their instructions. And understand, this is a trying and unusual situation for all of us, but we up on the flight-deck, will do everything possible to get you safely on the ground. I will update you again just before landing. Thank you."

"Jesus," said her co-pilot.

"Sioux Falls. Flight 232. How are we looking?"

"Still too low. You need to get the nose up, Captain Ross."

"Roger. Increasing air speed." She notched the throttles forward and watched the nose of the aircraft sway and lift.

"God. We're coming in awfully fast." Brad started to sound shaky.

Without hydraulics Irene couldn't drop the wing flaps to reduce air speed. "Can we lower the wheels in back. The drag may drop the tail down."

Brad went to work but the hydraulics were completely unresponsive. "I'll have to do it manually."

"Go on then," Irene encouraged him with a weak smile and pointed to the panel in the cockpit sole that housed the cranks.

Slick with sweat, she readjusted her grip on the yoke but it was the souls of two hundred and ninety-six passengers that she held in her hands. She looked up though the windscreen and was chilled by the sight of the Sioux Falls runway stretching out in front of her. "Sioux Falls. I have you in sight."

"Roger Flight 232. You're too low Irene. You're coming in short. And way too fast. Rein that puppy in."

Irene checked her air speed and realized her dilemma: She was coming in at three-hundred miles per hour with little or no flight controls. To reduce speed would mean landing short of the runway- increase speed and scream in at over twice the velocity of a normal landing. No jetliner had survived a landing at three-hundred miles per hour but she had little time to ponder the logistics. Her only concern now was putting her aircraft onto the runway. That's where the emergency response vehicles would be waiting: The medical technicians, the ambulances, the fire department, the trained disaster response personnel. Above all else, she had to put her crippled aircraft down onto that runway. The survival of her passengers depended on it.

Decision time.

She hit the intercom button. "This is Captain Ross. Please ready yourself for landing. We are about two minutes out. Please be advised that this will be a crash landing. I'm doing my best. Your God be with you." Irene reached out and pushed the throttles forward, felt the engines respond and watched the nose lift through the windscreen. Jesus Christ, she thought as she roared down toward the runway. "Everyone strap in." She hit the intercom switch once more: "Brace- Brace- Brace-"

As she gripped the control column, she felt the effect of the landing gear. The wheels in back were lowered and the resulting drag and air turbulence suddenly dropped the tail section. It was what she had prayed for but it came a second too soon. She felt the plane suddenly dropping, tail down, a mile short of the runway. In a desperate, last minute bid to pluck salvation from the jaws of certain disaster, Irene jammed the throttles wide open.

The engines screamed, seemingly intent on wrenching themselves free of the wings.

The nose lifted violently and for a long moment she thought the aircraft might turn-turtle; flip completely over and land on its back. Those watching from the ground later swore the plane was flying belly forward, like a demented demon; a huge flying crucifix. Irene lying on her back in the control seat, was only aware of the bright blue sky filling the windscreen and the sound of the screaming turbines.

Chapter Two

 

Pull up. Pull up. Pull up... the automated alarm droned on. If only, Irene thought, her mind blurred in fear. She was going down, she realized, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

Just when she thought she had lost the gamble, the tail hit hard; so mind-crushingly violent that at first, Irene thought the jolt had broken her back. She screamed, more out of fear and frustration than pain as she felt the tail of the aircraft crumple where it smashed into the pavement at the end of the landing strip. Just before the aircraft slammed down, the right wing rolled under. Irene saw the runway again, the white hatch marks blurred by the mind-numbing speed. She managed to apply reverse thrust with the engines still shrieking. The brakes were gone. The forward section of the plane crashed down. It was like riding an express elevator straight into hell. All ten tires exploded and the struts and hydraulics that supported them were sheared away in a shower of burning metal.

With the collapse of the landing gear, the airliner sheared sideways on its belly, folding the right wing under. The vibration rattled Irene's eyeballs in their sockets. The plane's backbone fractured; ruptured just where the forward doors weakened the fuselage and the nose section of the airplane broke free with the gut-wrenching screech of torn metal.

"Oh Jesus... no!" The cry came from behind, from the service area; followed by a chilling wail, the sound drifting away like someone falling into an abyss.

"God! That was one of the flight-attendants," Brad shouted above the sound of shrieking metal. He strained against his seat restraints and was horrified to see daylight through the cabin door in the flight-deck bulkhead.

Tears welled up as Irene envisioned the torn floor opening up beneath the poor girl's feet. She imagined a blue uniform tumbling down to disappear under the grinding fuselage as the plane skidded on its belly at three-hundred miles an hour; the girl's body turned to pulp; a bloody smear across the asphalt.

The nose section of the plane broke off like a pencil-point with Irene and her crew inside and spun to one side. The nose seemed to trip, tumbled end over end once, twice, before spinning crazily along the apron of the runway. Irene, realizing she was still alive, watched through what was left of the windscreen and was horrified at the sight of the main section of her DC10-10, with all two hundred and ninety-six passengers inside, slide past her field of vision.

In a dozen windows she saw faces. Hundreds of tiny hands on the glass, reaching out for her.

She watched the left wing collapse and fold under, and then the starboard-side fuel tank erupted with a violent shudder; a massive fountain of flame and smoke. The reek of burning aviation fuel assaulted her sinuses and the heat scorched Irene's face through the smashed windscreen, but she couldn't close her eyes against the sting of horror. The port wing tank exploded, sending a plume of black smoke with orange flames crackling, skyward; lifting like a rolling volcano. And thankfully, the windows and little faces were suddenly gone, consumed in bellowing smoke. The entire passenger compartment was fully engulfed in greedy flames.

But the flames couldn't conceal the shrieks of horror.

Oh Jesus Christ almighty. All those children!

 

Irene bravely walked across the tarmac to survey the burnout hulk that just minutes ago had been a sleek, forty-five million dollar aircraft; a beautiful piece of engineering. She didn't know it yet, but miraculously, one hundred and eighty-six had survived the crash, even though the plane had been totally destroyed.

Irene staggered to breath when she saw the body litter being passed down to the men on the ground. She had to force herself to look again; to look at the blue uniform. It was one of her flight-crew.

Fearful of what she might find, Irene pushed herself forward, by-stepping the teams of rescue workers. She was conscious of heads turning, the sight of her four Captain's bars betraying her rank and responsibility. And the reason she walked among the dead and dying. No one met her eyes as she focused on the stretcher.

As she got closer her insides emptied and she stifled a cry into a cupped hand. She saw the red hair. Susan. Her head flight-attendant and closest friend of some twenty years.

Susan lay lifeless, the right-half of her face was gone, shredded away, the left-half looking amazingly serine. Her arms stretched out, the ligaments distorted by the heat, looking like two blackened sticks; the branches from some burnout tree. It appeared as if she had been climbing out when the flames overtook her. Susan's wedding band was melted into the flesh. She gazed up at Irene, peacefully, relieved perhaps, that the searing pain and suffering was over. Someone flipped a blanket across her face and the rescue workers hauled Susan's body down.

Irene staggered back, her knees giddy. There was a wheel lying on its side, torn from the undercarriage and Irene managed, just in time, to drop her haunches onto the rubber sidewall.

Sharon. Gone.

The sight of Sharon's misshapen wedding ring was searing the fabric of Irene's brain. Christ, what was she going to tell Ted? She had stood at their wedding, less than three years ago; watched as Ted slipped that ring onto Sharon's finger.

"Captain?"

The word cut into her thoughts. Captain- she didn't feel much like a Captain. Not now.

Irene looked up, saw a young flight-attendant, saw the blue jacket across her arm and the four gold bars.

"The photographers have started arriving," the girl said. "I brought you a clean jacket. Where's your flight bag?"

Irene stared back at the girl, her mind clouded and empty. She fought to understand. Photographers?

"Captain. Your flight-bag."

Irene hardly had the strength to raise an arm. "Somewhere, there." She waved a hand toward the pile of crumpled metal that had once been her flight-deck.

The flight-attendant pulled a hair brush from her own bag and taking Irene by the chin, started working the tangles free.

"Who are you?" Irene asked.

"It doesn't matter. Slip into the jacket."

Irene shrugged on the clean uniform coat. "Where are they taking the bodies?"

"One of the maintenance hangers."

"I have to go..."

The flight-attendant touched Irene's cheek. "I know. Take my arm."

"Who are you?" Irene asked again.

"Really. It doesn't matter."

Gathering her strength and trying desperately hard not to cry, Irene allowed herself to be escorted into the maintenance hangar that had been converted into a temporary morgue.

She tried to stand straight. They'd want the photographs for the six o'clock news: Captain Irene Ross, in her uniform, grieving over the children she had killed.

Irene was stilled by the sight of row upon row of yellow body bags; most appeared partially filled. Children, she realized. The pathetic bags were filled with the bodies of children. Then straight from her deepest, blackest nightmare, the body bags were moving. Writhing like seething yellow maggots. Internal organs coming back to life; hearts pumping, lungs filling, hands clawing, tearing the yellow vinyl. Breaking the zippers. Bodies forcing themselves back into the world of the living to rip at her legs and drag her down. She screamed. And screamed and screamed.