Air Disaster 2: The Jet Age by Macarthur Job

Author:Macarthur Job [Job, Macarthur]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Monday Books
Published: 2014-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE:

‘Hey -- What’s happening here?’

- Tristar captain to crew a moment before impact

‘Because of the nail, the shoe was lost. Because of the shoe the horse was lost. Because of the horse, the battle was lost. Because of the battle… the war was lost.’

EASTERN AIR LINES, a major and long-established US company with a history dating from the pioneer years of commercial aviation, was justifiably proud of its new 254 passenger, Rolls-Royce-engined Lockheed L-1011 Tristars.

The launch customer for the widebodied design, which had flown for the first time in November 1970, Eastern had ordered no less than 50 of them, to serve as flagships of its huge fleet.

‘The quietest, cleanest plane in the skies,’ an Eastern executive had enthused, extolling the name ‘Whisperliner’ – which each of the company’s white and blue Tristars bore on the massive air intake for the tail-mounted centre engine. Not only did the giant trijet offer domestic passengers a superior standard of comfort, spaciousness and quietness in flight: its highly sophisticated Lockheed Avionic Flight Control System (AFCS) provided its crews with the latest in autopilot technology, permitting the aircraft to be flown in different ‘modes’ or degrees of automatic flight.

N310EA, one of the 12 Tristars so far delivered to Eastern, was the aircraft scheduled to operate Flight 401 from New York to Miami on Friday night, December 29, 1972. Only four months old, it had not yet logged 1,000 hours in the air and was in superb condition.

The three flight crew members rostered to take Flight 401 to Miami were as competent as their age, background and experience would suggest.

Veteran Captain Robert Loft, a married father of two in his middle 50s, and one of Eastern’s most senior captains, had been an airline pilot all his adult life, and had accumulated the astonishing total of almost 30,000 hours. First Officer Bert Stockstill, 39, also highly experienced and a light aircraft enthusiast, had more than 300 hours on the new Tristars. Flight Engineer Don Repo, 50, a former airline ground engineer who himself held a commercial pilot’s licence, was a perfectionist with a great admiration for the Tristar and its advanced systems.

With New York in the grip of midwinter cold, the Christmas holiday season had ensured the Miami bound flight was fully booked – so much so that company technical officer Angelo Donadeo, returning to Miami from an assignment in New York, has to settle for the jump seat on the flight deck if he is to travel on the flight at all. He didn’t mind – he was an expert in the Tristar’s systems, and the jump seat was a far more interesting place to travel than the passenger cabin.

In the event, not all of those booked had arrived by Flight 401’s departure time of 9pm, and as the cabin crew were securing the doors only 162 of the Tristar’s 254 passenger seats were filled.

In two of them were Lloyd Bearman and his wife, Adelaide. The Bearmans’ son had a friend who was working at the Eastern ticket counter that evening: she had helped them get on the flight as stand-bys.

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