Into the Abyss by Author

Into the Abyss by Author

Author:Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-06T00:00:00+00:00


Erik was running almost half an hour late and somehow he’d have to make up time. He clipped his lap belt and his eyes darted uneasily to the passenger in the co-pilot’s seat—a last-minute arrival for the flight. Erik offered a clipped hello, wondering nervously whether the official-looking gentleman next to him might be a government air safety inspector. Transport Canada occasionally had inspectors ride along anonymously to check on airline operations, and recently Wapiti Aviation seemed to have had more than its fair share of scrutiny.

Erik tried to put the man beside him out of his mind, and reached forward to grab his headset. He was stopped short by his shoulder strap’s broken recoil mechanism. It was just one of the small maintenance issues that irritated him. He flicked the useless strap from his shoulder, pulled on his headset, and radioed for clearance. Edmonton Departure gave him the go-ahead, and he taxied to runway 34. Above him the sky was black. Wet snow smacked the windshield and Erik felt his heartbeat marking time amid the roar of the engine. He checked his watch: 7:13.

“Wapiti 402,” a voice squawked into his headset. “Runway three-four cleared for takeoff.”

“Four-oh-two rolling, three-four,” Erik replied.

Within minutes, they were off the ground, climbing toward a bank of thick cloud.

As the plane flew north from Edmonton, Erik brooded. He needed to get a handle on what he was going to do. He had filed an instrument flight plan to Peace River, an airport 385 kilometres northwest of Edmonton that had an instrument approach. That meant that even if Erik could see only a few hundred feet in front of him, he could still get in safely. But Erik had to get in and out of the airport at High Prairie first. The runway there was a short, dimly lit strip of asphalt equipped with only a single non-directional beacon—a simple radio ground transmitter that did little more than help Erik pick out the airport amid a vast swath of snowy terrain. The only way he would be able to land was to drop below the clouds and try for a visual approach, a tall order considering the cloud ceiling there was 500 feet off the deck and broken, and completely overcast at 900 feet.

Erik was in the untenable position of trying to obey two masters. The first was Dale Wells, his boss at Wapiti Aviation. Erik felt pressured to get into his destinations even if it meant pushing the weather, though Dale never came right out and said it. Many bush pilots face direct pressure from management: “Do whatever’s required to get the job done, and if you have to bust the weather to land, don’t get caught.”

The second master was the Ministry of Transport, whose regulations stipulated that a visual approach wasn’t even legal on a night like tonight. In short, Erik needed to follow one set of rules without getting violated for breaking the other.

He felt like a condemned man. If he didn’t get in he could lose his job; if he did, he could lose his licence.



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