Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival (10 page)

Bachman keyed his mike and said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, you’re gonna have to widen out just slightly to your left, sir, ah, to make the turn to final, and also it’ll take you away from the city.”

Haynes was quick to respond, “Whatever you do, keep us away from the city.”

Fitch continued to work the throttles as Haynes coached him with remarks such as, “Back! Back!” and “Level, baby, level-level.”

Bachman told Haynes, “You’re currently, oh, one-seven miles northeast of the airport. You’re doing good.”

Dvorak offered Fitch his seat. Fitch had been standing the whole time, but he would not have any hope of surviving if he stood during the landing. Fitch took the engineer’s seat to run the throttles for the final minutes of the flight. Dvorak strapped himself into the jump seat behind Haynes.

At seven minutes before 4:00, Bachman said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, been advised there is a four-lane highway, ah, up in that area, sir, if you can pick that up.”

“Okay,” Haynes said, “we’ll see what we can do here. We’ve already put the gear down, and ah, we’re gonna have to be puttin’ on something solid if we can.” Half a minute passed in static incoherence and then Bachman said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, if you can hold that altitude, sir, the right turn to one-eighty, ah, would put you on about, oh, ten miles east of the airport.”

“That’s what we’re tryin’ to do,” Haynes said.

Dale Mleynek received a call from one of the flights of A-7 Corsairs that had not yet landed. The pilot said, “If that DC-10 needs an escort, Bat Eight-One could help him. . . . I thought with our BMDS
*
map we could help him find the airport.”

“I don’t think his problem is finding the airport,” Mleynek said. “It’s just gettin’ here.”

“Okay,” said the A-7 pilot.

“Thanks anyway,” said Mleynek.

“All right, thanks.”

“You bet,” Mleynek said.

Fifteen seconds later a woman called Mleynek and asked, “Are you guys taking any media calls?”

“Uh, no,” Mleynek answered. “Not really.”

Another flight of A-7s had landed, and Mleynek heard, “Bat Forty-One, a flight of two Alpha-Sevens, de-armed to the Guard ramp.”

“Bat Four-One, Sioux City Ground. Taxi to the Guard ramp.” A minute later another flight of two, Bat Eight-One, called, and Mleynek gave the pilots permission to follow Bat Four-One.

In the cockpit, Fitch asked Haynes, “Now where do you want to go?”

“Want to keep turning right,” Haynes said. “Want to go to the airport.”

“You want to go to the airport?”

“I want to get as close to the airport as we can.”

“Okay,” Fitch said.

Dvorak announced to the passengers, “We have four minutes to touchdown, four minutes to touchdown.”

Records looked out and saw the airfield sweep into the frame of his windscreen.

“United Two Thirty-Two Heavy,” Bachman said, “the airport is, ah, oh, about, ah, eighteen miles southeast of your position about two-twenty on the heading. But we’re gonna need you southbound away from the city first, if you can hold one-eighty heading.”

Records responded, “We’re tryin’. Tryin’ to get to it right now.” The reason that they were farther from the airport than they had been about three minutes earlier was that the plane made an unexpected tight right turn, and that turn took them about three miles back to the northeast, away from the field. As it happened, that was another crucial maneuver. The plane had now descended to an altitude that would allow it to reach the end of the runway.

“United Two Thirty-Two Heavy,” said Bachman, “advise if you can pick up a road or anything where you can, ah, possibly land it on that.”

Haynes replied, “Okay, we’re, ah, we’re a hundred-eighty degree heading. Now what do you want?”

“United Two Thirty-Two, if you can hold the altitude, the one-eighty heading will work fine for about, oh, seven miles.”

“Okay,” Haynes said. “We’re tryin’ to turn back.” Then Haynes said to Fitch, “Back. Back-back-back. Forward-forward-forward! Won’t this be a fun landing?”

“United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, can you hold that heading, sir?”

Haynes had begun his announcement to the passengers, so Records responded, “Yeah, we’re on it now for a little while.”

“United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, roger,” Bachman said. “That heading will put you, oh, ah, currently fifteen miles northeast of the airport. If you can hold that, it’ll put you on about a three-mile final.”

“Okay, we’re givin’ it heck.”

Half a minute later, Bachman said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the airport’s currently twelve o’clock and one-three miles.”

“Okay,” Records said, “we’re lookin’ for it.”

I asked Records why he had seen the airport before and now had to look for it again. He said, “We were at a very low altitude at eighteen miles out, and the airport looked much different than normal, especially since it was also shorter and narrower than the usual picture seen from a DC-10. When told we were at thirteen miles, we were preoccupied with vertical speed and heading problems, and it took a few seconds to relocate it.” Ordinarily, they could have easily located the airport with a radio navigational aid called a VOR. But the facility was out of service for maintenance that day.

“We’re startin’ down a little bit now,” Haynes told Bachman. “We got a little better control of the elevator. It’s not full, but a little bit.”

“United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, roger,” said Bachman. “Ah, the airport’s currently at your one o’clock position one-zero miles.”

Out on Taxiway Lima, the pilots of the last four Corsairs to arrive began to move toward the ramp.

Haynes looked out on a sea of green. The crash was 144 seconds away, but he still could not see the slim runway in the vastness of the American heartland.

Then Fitch said, “I got the runway if you don’t.”

“I don’t,” Haynes admitted. Then to Fitch, “Come back–come back.”

“It’s off to the right. Over there.”

Records said, “Right there.”

The compass showed a southwesterly course. Haynes, for one, had been convinced that they would never make it to any runway. Yet here they were, pointing right at the Sioux City airport and a usable stretch of cracked and weedy 1940s concrete.

Dvorak recalled, “We’re coming down final. I was more afraid at that time that we were going to go off the end of the runway and be in a ball of fire.”

Bachman now said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, if you can’t make the airport, sir, there is an interstate that runs, ah, north to south to the east side of the airport, ah, it’s a four-lane interstate.”

Haynes said, “We’re just passin’ it now, we’re going to try for the airp—” He cut the word
airport
in half by releasing the microphone button on the yoke too soon. He peered out into the bright sunlight and asked, “Is that the runway right there?”

“Right.”

Elated, he told Bachman, “We have the runway in sight!”

“Two Heavy, roger.”

Haynes was so excited, in fact, that he transmitted on top of Bachman and obscured whatever the controller said next. “We have the runway in sight!” Haynes said again as if he couldn’t believe it himself. Bachman and Haynes transmitted over each other for a few seconds. Then Haynes said it a third time: “We have the runway in sight! We’ll be with you very shortly. Thanks a
lot
for your help.” You can hear the relief in Haynes’s voice. They had rolled wings level, and all at once Haynes saw the sight that for decades had represented for him the accomplishment of the ultimate goal of any aviator: To return safely. To bring your people home.

The control tower fell eerily silent. The controllers had brought the flight in, and now they could almost hear the applause. Bates and Zielezinski and Bachman all looked out the window and saw the festive red and white and blue and yellow lights sparkling across the field and still streaming down the highways from all directions, as if the whole green world had decided that Christmas should come in July. All they needed now was a snowstorm.

Dvorak announced to the passengers that two minutes remained before touchdown. Nearly two hundred feet behind him, his friend Susan White was wondering how on earth she was going to protect all her passengers, that boy in the Chicago Cubs hat behind her jump seat with his mother, and a few rows ahead of them, pretty thirteen-year-old Cinnamon Angelina Martinez.
Cinnamon was traveling alone
. At the beginning of the flight, she had talked to White about her ambition to become a flight attendant. White had pinned plastic United Airlines wings to her shirt. After the engine exploded, White had asked the man sitting next to Cinnamon to make sure that she escaped. He promised that he would.

A hundred and twelve seconds remained in the flight when Bachman said, “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind’s currently three-six-zero at one-one. Three-sixty at eleven. You’re cleared to land on any runway.”

Haynes laughed and asked, “You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?” In the control tower, some of the men chuckled, their tension dissipating. Everyone knew that November 1819 Uniform had made it. Maybe it would roll off the end of the runway into the corn. The crew would deploy the evacuation slides. The fire engines would respond. But in that moment of levity, they were convinced that the crippled McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was going to land safely.

Bates recalled of those moments, “We were just waiting to see the aircraft lift up over the bluffs.” Bates and the other controllers listened quietly as Bachman talked to Haynes in those final seconds. In his jubilation at seeing a runway, Haynes was so excited that he had to ask for the wind speed and direction three times. The wind was at his back, not ideal.

A few seconds later, the aircraft lifted up over the bluffs, into a blue sky now populated by an afternoon buildup of cumulus clouds that had appeared like great white schooners as the sun baked the rain off the land. At that moment, the Air National Guard chaplain, Gregory Clapper, stood in the parking lot of the Southern Hills Mall, holding the hands of his little girls and watching the great ship pass overhead.

Zielezinski later said, “Quite honestly, we had very high hopes, because the aircraft looked fairly stable on the final [approach].”

Gary Brown stood beside his white Woodbury County rescue truck on the airport ramp and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The
press later reported
that he could see Haynes’s face through the windshield, his eyes, his whole countenance, as he wrestled with the controls. The
Sioux City Journal
even quoted Brown as saying, “Probably the toughest thing was when I had eye contact with the pilot. . . . He didn’t see me, of course, but I could see his face through my binoculars. His face looked busy.”

Two decades later, Brown said, “That was not true. I could see that there was a crew in there, but I was looking at the plane, really, just to see what I could tell about the damage.”

On the Air National Guard ramp, Al Smith and his wingman Ben Bendixen had climbed down from their cockpits, drenched in sweat, and were crossing toward the maintenance control room to get out of their flight equipment. Although they couldn’t see 1819 Uniform, the air traffic controllers high above them could. As they watched, the aircraft seemed to be screaming toward them. “The speed was extremely high,” Bates said. “There was a very small amount of vapor coming off the wingtips, which could have been condensation, could have been fuel.” Otherwise, he said, “It looked like a normal landing. It started settling down.”

Bachman stood up from his position and yelled, “He’s gonna make it!”

*
Take a spray can of anything that’s pressurized and spray it for a while. The can will get cold. If you keep spraying, it will get so cold that ice will form. That’s the opposite of what happens in the compressor section of a jet engine. Compress a gas and it gets hotter.

*
Ballistic Missile Defense System.

CHAPTER FIVE

I
t had rained a bit earlier in Washington, D.C.
, barely enough drizzle to raise the humidity. Cloud cover had begun moving in as a fresh breeze picked up from the south. Robert MacIntosh, in his early fifties, sat in his office across the street from the Smithsonian Institution, and worked on a report in his role as a major aircraft accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
At about 4
:30 in the afternoon, the director of the Bureau of Accident Investigation at the NTSB, Terry Armentrout, rang MacIntosh’s phone and said, “You’d better come in here.”

MacIntosh went down the hall to Armentrout’s office. “Bob, it looks like we’ve got a DC-10 in trouble,” Armentrout said, nodding at the speakerphone in the center of a conference table. A disembodied voice explained that Minneapolis Center had the plane and was about to pass it off to the Sioux City Approach Control. As the two men listened, people began entering the room and taking chairs. The voice described the situation that was developing. As MacIntosh listened and more and more people arrived in Armentrout’s office, it became clear that the person speaking was upstairs in the tenth-floor Command Center. Someone up there was summarizing what was being said by an air traffic controller and a pilot on board the aircraft. They learned that the plane had lost all its hydraulic power. The crew was having trouble with directional control and could make only right turns. Everyone in the room was expert enough in matters of aviation to know that this spelled disaster. Indeed, they knew that
in 1985 a Japan Airlines 747
had lost all of its hydraulic systems. The crew was able to steer with the throttles for a while, but the plane eventually crashed into Mount Ogura, killing more than five hundred people.

MacIntosh later described the eight or so people in Armentrout’s office as “a kind of war room setup.” Then, as word spread, people began converging on the director’s office from all over the building. “It got real crowded,” as MacIntosh put it. The more they heard, the darker the collective mood grew. Everyone had the same thought: Somebody’s going to die. Maybe everybody. They listened as long as they could stand it, before Armentrout turned to MacIntosh and said, “
Bob, this is a big one
. Do you think you can handle it?”