Equal Time Point Read online

  HARRISON • JONES

  EQUAL

  TIME

  POINT

  A NOVEL

  Equal Time Point

  Copyright © 2009 by Harrison Jones. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities, and incidents included in the story are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Av Lit Press

  Visit the author at www.harrisonjones.org

  Dedication

  For Diane

  She continues to remind me that tomorrow’s

  vision is not limited by today’s horizon.

  Acknowledgments

  This project would never have left the ground without the contributions of hundreds of aviation professionals who unselfishly, and sometimes unwittingly, enriched my career and my life. We shared tears, laughter, and views of the earth rotating miles beneath us that left no doubt that God is a wonderful creator.

  I am most grateful for the support and encouragement of my family and traveling companions extraordinaire: Diane, Susan, Madison, Harold, Colton, Kyle, and Cason.

  I also wish to thank my editors, Emily Wilson, and Stephen Carradini. Your talent and patience is most appreciated.

  Chapter One

  The captain glanced down to see the number one engine fire light glowing red. The warning bell was so loud that it left no doubt there was a serious emergency.

  “Silence the bell and declare an emergency,” said the captain.

  The first officer pushed the button to silence the bell and prepared to tell the tower that they had an emergency. The bell continued to ring.

  “Silence the bell,” the captain angrily repeated.

  The bell continued to ring. He turned to yell at the incompetent copilot but blinked his eyes when he found himself in total darkness. His heartbeat raced and he felt helpless in panic and confusion. How could this be happening? It was pitch black and he could no longer feel the familiar yoke and throttles in his hands. Is this how it all ends? In the darkness, he could hear a voice competing with the noise of the bell. The words grew louder, and he began to understand. He recognized his wife’s voice.

  “Charlie, turn off the alarm clock before it wakes up the entire neighborhood!”

  He blinked his eyes again and found himself sitting in his bed with beads of sweat running down his face and his old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock ringing on the nightstand.

  He shut the alarm off and his wife said, “Thank God. Charlie, that thing could wake the dead.”

  “Sorry, honey, I guess I was out of it.”

  “What were you mumbling about anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” he lied, “Must have been dreaming.”

  “Well, now that our day is off to a ringing start, why don’t you shower and I’ll get the coffee going.”

  Charlie Wells ambled barefooted into the master bath and began his morning routine. He bent to touch his toes and began his stretching exercises to work the kinks out of his six foot frame. He was only six years away from the mandatory retirement age for airline captains and not as flexible as he once was. His aching back reminded him that he was scheduled for another eight hours of ground school today, and the stiffness would only increase sitting in a classroom. He looked longingly at the Jacuzzi tub and promised himself a nice soak if he survived the day.

  He shaved his slightly weathered face, ignored the gray that had infiltrated his stubble, and convinced himself that his hairline had stopped receding. The scalding shower at full blast rejuvenated him, and he emerged from the steam wrapped in a towel with the scent of coffee in the air. Following his nose to the kitchen, he found Patti pouring two cups. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and placed his chin on the top of her blond head. “Sorry about the rude awakening.”

  She turned and smiled with sleepy brown eyes. “Coffee’s ready. Would you like Cheerios with milk, or milk with Cheerios?”

  “Coffee sounds good. At the risk of being predictable, I think I’ll have the Cheerios with milk.”

  “Charlie, you’re a lot of things, but predictable isn’t one of them.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “Did you read the entire airplane manual last night? How late were you up?”

  “Not very. I was just going over some things the FAA thinks I should know for my annual training.”

  “If they knew how cranky you were during these three days every year, maybe they would lighten up.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention that. Can I quote you?”

  “Not if you want dinner tonight. What time will you be home?”

  “I’ll be in the classroom again today from eight to five, and the flight simulator tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Does this mean I won’t have to hear Mr. Bojangles alarm the neighborhood tomorrow morning?”

  “Leave my alarm clock out of this. I haven’t been late in twenty-six years.”

  “Do you think you might be a little paranoid about it?”

  “You know the airline pilot’s motto, ‘In God we trust, everybody else is suspect.’”

  “Are you referring to the few that don’t think they are God?”

  “There is that, of course.”

  Charlie took pride in being punctual and arrived at the training center thirty minutes before class time, despite the morning rush hour traffic around the Atlanta airport. The facility included several multi-story red brick buildings that contained classrooms as well as the flight simulators. Each building prominently displayed the Tri Continent Airlines logo. Tri Con, as it was called, had evolved from the merger of several smaller carriers and initially served North America, South America, and Europe. They now flew to Asia and Africa also, but the name had not changed.

  He decided he had time for coffee and dropped his flight kit on a rack designed for that purpose outside the cafeteria. The black leather bag weighed about thirty pounds and contained aircraft manuals, charts and maps for airports and airways around the world, as well as other paraphernalia required for his flights. Pilots referred to it as their brain bag. The cafeteria was crowded with pilots and flight attendants scheduled for training, and he joined several of them waiting in line for coffee.

  Someone stepped up behind him and said, “Hey Charlie, you’re just the man I need to see. Let me buy you a cup.”

  Charlie turned to find Colt Adams grinning at him. Colt and Charlie had been classmates when Tri Con hired them twenty-six years before and had been friends since.

  “Colt, whenever you offer to buy I know the hammer is about to fall.”

  “Well, actually I was going to approach you with a proposition.”

  “Thank you, Colt, but you’re not my type. We can still be friends, though.”

  “Very funny, Charlie. Seriously, I need to swap a trip. Actually, we’re flying the same trip, but I need to swap days. Would you be interested?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “I’ll invite you to my next wedding.”

  “Will it be different than the other three?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t met her yet.”

  “Well, you’ve piqued my curiosity. When would this big swap occur?”

  “This week. I’d like to fly your rotation on Tuesday and you take mine on Wednesday.”

  “Is this because you’ve alienated your crew and they no longer feed and water you?”

  “No, they love
me, but I need Friday off.”

  “You promise someone’s husband isn’t going to take a shot at me?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, Colt, I’ll check with Pattie and let you know at lunch.”

  “I appreciate it, buddy. Tell Pattie if I get married again she’ll be invited to the wedding too.”

  They took their coffee with them, retrieved their brain bags, and made their way to the lobby and the elevator. Charlie shortened his stride to match that of Colt, who was several inches shorter. The two friends constantly needled each other, but Charlie always enjoyed Colt’s outgoing personality and quick sense of humor. Both captains were confident and easy going, which endeared them to their copilots. The elevator was packed with pilots, all of them trying to balance brain bags in one hand and coffee in the other. The second and third-floor buttons had already been pushed, but predictably someone in the back said, “Ballroom please.”

  Someone else said, “Sorry sir, I didn’t know I was crowding you.” Charlie had to smile at the old joke. He’d decided long ago that pilots were the product of a depleted gene pool.

  On the third floor, they walked down the corridor, and everyone disbursed into various classrooms. Charlie and Colt found the one they were assigned to and met the four other pilots attending the class. They were all first officers that Charlie and Colt had flown with at one time or another.

  The copilots pretended that they were not concerned about the training session or having their knowledge and ability tested. Charlie found it amusing that they demonstrated their nonchalance in various ways. One read a newspaper, another sat with his feet propped on the table, and one appeared to be texting on his cell phone. It was just another routine day with your career on the line.

  Charlie thought of the training sessions as a necessary evil. The ground school classes tested a pilot’s knowledge and the four-hour simulator check-ride evaluated his actual flying skills and judgment under stressful emergency conditions. He often wondered if his proficiency and motor skills would deteriorate as he grew older. Many times, when a captain quietly took an early retirement, it was not because he wanted to, but rather because he could no longer achieve the minimum standards necessary to pass the check-ride. Most pilots knew that the ultimate test, if it ever came, would be in an airplane full of people and not the simulator. Charlie had attended too many memorial services for pilots to think otherwise. He hoped he would never be tested other than in the simulator.

  The instructor walked in with his arms loaded with books and stacks of papers and surveyed the room. The copilots simultaneously dropped their act and became attentive.

  Phil James was considered the top ground school instructor at Tri Con, and was well-respected as the resident expert on the aircraft. He had a knack for using common logic to explain complex technical information.

  He smiled. “Good morning, gentlemen. I’m glad I didn’t have to come bail any of you out to get you to class today.”

  Colt said, “We had you on speed dial, just in case.”

  Phil walked to the podium and unloaded the books. When his hands were free, he pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and smoothed the wisps of reddish blonde hair at the fringe of his baldness, an action he would repeat with regularity throughout the day.

  The pilots dug their manuals out of the brain bags and spread them out on the tables in front of them. The classrooms were modern and comfortable with desk chairs that had armrests. They were adjustable to rock or recline. Charlie assumed Colt would be dozing soon. He thought about the first Tri Con classroom they sat in twenty-six years before: a small, noisy room at the back of the hangar where they listened to rivet guns bang away all day, drowning out the instructor.

  Phil loosened his tie and then walked around the room, distributing the outline for the day’s class and explaining what he hoped to achieve. He grinned. “There will be a multiple guess written exam this afternoon, covering the aircraft’s systems and procedures. The crew concept is not allowed. You cannot cooperate to graduate.”

  The class groaned in harmony.

  By mid-morning they had analyzed the aircraft’s three hydraulic systems with all their reservoirs, pumps, accumulators, and backup capability. Phil could see that their saturation point had been reached and declared, “Let’s take a twenty-minute break before we discuss the fuel system and how rich the Arabs are becoming. Everyone’s cell phone came out immediately, and Charlie called Patti. “What would you say if I fly on Wednesday instead of Tuesday?”

  “I’d say, ‘Great, I’ll revise your chore list to keep you busy.’”

  “Hmm…maybe I’ll reconsider.”

  “If you don’t pass your check ride in the simulator, you won’t have a job on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  As Charlie was hanging up, Colt returned with two cups of coffee. Charlie told him that the trip swap was a done deal.

  Colt said, “I wish I had known that before I bought you another cup of coffee.” He took his own cell phone out and called crew scheduling to have the swap approved. The only part of the conversation that Charlie heard was when Colt said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll buy coffee when I see you on Tuesday.”

  He hung up the phone and said, “Man, everybody’s holding me up over a simple trip swap.”

  “You can afford it, Colt, even with all the alimony you pay.”

  “Next time a woman asks me to marry her, I’m just gonna buy her a house instead.”

  “Good idea. You can save the lawyer’s fee.”

  Phil came back in, signaling for class to resume. “Gentlemen, we’re going to talk about the fuel system, but first I want to set the stage. Our airplane holds about 285,000 pounds of fuel, depending on the ambient temperature and the way it affects volume. That’s about 42,500 gallons, at 6.7 pounds per gallon. Using a round number of three dollars per gallon, it costs Tri Con approximately $127,500 every time you say ‘fill it up.’ As you can imagine, the company would like for you to practice fuel conservation at every opportunity. It should be a factor in your decision-making process.”

  Colt spoke up. “Phil, I hear what you’re saying, but cost is not my top priority in making decisions about my flights. Safety, and particularly my own, is always the first consideration.”

  “That’s as it should be, Colt, and I’m with you, but the company wants us to emphasize the high cost of fuel and ask that you help save whenever possible. They just want you to know that when you take those three throttles in your hand, you’re dealing with a lot of cost.”

  “I think of it as dealing with three hundred butts sitting in those seats behind me and a billion dollars in liability if they don’t get home to their families, not to mention the hundred million dollar airplane and my precious butt. I’m just saying, saving fuel is not a big priority.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, my friend, and I agree with you one hundred percent, but let me give you a couple of examples that they have asked us to discuss. As you know, the heavier the airplane is, the more fuel it burns, and we certainly don’t want to reduce passengers or cargo weight. The only weight we can control is how much fuel we load. On international flights, federal regulations require that we have enough fuel to reach the destination, plus ten percent, plus fuel to reach the alternate airport if the weather is down at the primary, plus forty-five minutes of holding fuel if there is a delay. Of course, that’s the minimum required, but the company would like to stay as close to that number as possible. Any excess fuel means that we are burning fuel just to haul fuel.”

  Charlie said, “Phil, you realize that we are planning our flights based on what someone thinks the weather is going to be in a foreign country as much as fourteen hours after takeoff, and if the weather is bad, traffic stacks up and that ten percent contingency fuel goes away real fast. Any of us can give you examples of holding for two hours or having to go to a third alternate. Think about it: if traffic stacks up at the primary, ever
ybody goes to the alternate, and then traffic is stacked up there too.”

  Colt said, “It’s simple, Charlie. All you have to do is ask yourself what a pencil pusher would do in that situation.”

  Everyone laughed, including Phil.

  “Believe me, guys, I’m on your side. As long as you get the concept, I’m a happy camper, and I know you will always do the safe thing. If I’m sitting in the back, I hope you have lots of fuel.”

  One of the first officers said, “The only time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.”

  “How true,” said Phil. “And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the South American carrier that ran out of fuel in the holding pattern at JFK a few years ago and killed everyone on board.”

  “Fuel conservation in action,” said Colt.

  “There is one other situation the company would like for you to think about, and that is fuel dumping. If you have an emergency right after takeoff and need to return to land, you will normally be over the maximum certified landing weight for the airplane. Max takeoff weight is 625,000 pounds and max landing is 430,000. That means, in the worst case scenario, you would need to dump almost 200,000 pounds of fuel. That is certainly an option. The dump rate is 6000 pounds per minute, so you’re looking at a little over thirty minutes of dump time. Another option is to make an overweight landing, which is legal in an emergency. The airplane would have to undergo an inspection, but it would save a lot of fuel.”

  Colt said, “I’ve always wanted to be a test pilot and try weird things that nobody has ever actually done before.”

  Phil laughed. “Colt, I can tell I’m impressing you today.”

  “Actually I think you’re one of the sharpest guys around, so we both know there are not many runways in our system that would be long enough to accommodate a 600,000 pound landing, especially if it were wet. The approach speed would have to be close to 190 knots. At that speed the brakes would definitely overheat and probably blow a few tires. There are a lot of unknowns in that equation.”