Chapter 42: Fireflash
Chinese Airspace, approaching Tibet-
Most aircraft aloft that day survived the sudden loss of Braman. Fireflash flight 211 did not. The high-altitude light commuter shuttle had set off under ordinary enough conditions. She carried fifteen sleepy salarymen and office girls from one sprawling mega-city to another, with an experienced flight crew of three. Eighteen people, altogether.
Flight 211 departed Peking, China at 5:30 AM local time. With an average cruising speed of 2500 knots and a flight path that cleared most of Earth's atmosphere, 211 should have arrived at New Delhi's Gandhi International in little more than an hour. It was partial space flight, but so comfortably routine, by now, as to be almost boring.
Captain Walter Petty was the pilot. Early in the flight, he switched to left autopilot while First Officer Jae Benning went aft to visit the head. Stewardess Angel Martinez was making her rounds, handing out magazines and plastic cups of strong tea. She smiled a lot, but most of the plane's passengers were too bleary to notice. Early flights were often like that. Later, on the tourist routes, things would liven up a bit.
Up in the cockpit, a relatively relaxed Captain Petty went over the day's 12 hour schedule, subconsciously feeling the plane's transition from flight to programmed parabolic drift. Control surfaces hummed and altered. Wings folded into their compact delta configuration. Stars and darkness filled the view screen, marking Flight 211's passage into the ionosphere. There would next come a moment of stomach-fluttering weightlessness, during which drinks must be lidded and items secured. Smiling, he triggered the 'Fasten Seat Belt' sign, repeating the command aloud for good measure.
At the appointed moment, the jets cut off, replaced by a short thruster burst. Attuned to his plane, the captain listened for the jets' ghostly, fading scream, at length experiencing smooth silence followed by a shuddering rumble and sudden acceleration. Again, perfectly routine. The joke among engineers, in fact, was that the computerized Fireflash A-500 could just about fly itself… though her pilots knew better.
When things began to go wrong, it was dead sudden and bewilderingly total. Jae (a solid woman in her mid-forties) had just started forward when Braman went down. Power failed all over the plane, killing cabin lights and heating, and plunging the flight deck into tomb-like blindness. Worse, towers and nav beacons shorted out world-wide, leaving 211, and thousands of similar flights, without guidance.
Jae hauled herself along, nearly colliding with Angel. The petite stewardess took advantage of micro-gravity to swing herself out of the way and then snapped an emergency glow stick, flooding the cabin with soft green light. In a calm, soothing voice the young woman reassured her confused charges.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, please tighten your restraints and remain in your seats. Power will be restored shortly. In the meantime, please refrain from smoking, or using personal electronic devices, and listen for further instructions."
Well accustomed to the occasional glitch, most of the business-class passengers stowed their darkened laptops and tautened their restraints. A few even joked a bit, though rather uneasily.
Up on the flight deck, Jae shut the cabin door, then returned to her seat, frowning worriedly. A glance at the instrument panel showed that they'd lost information on all six electronic displays. Total cockpit power-down,possibly caused by an operating system live-lock. She'd heard of such things, and dreaded them.
Wielding a flashlight, Captain Petty flipped three switches in rapid succession, cycling the circuit breakers, or trying to. He gave Jae a distracted nod as she attempted to raise the comm and declare an in-flight emergency.
"Dammit," he muttered, when nothing happened. With instrumentation and avionics out, the controls were locked. He tried again, auburn brows nearly meeting above the bridge of his aquiline nose.
"Second attempt, cycling breakers," he said, over the first officer's crisp, unheeded mayday. This time, it worked. Announced by blaring alarms and warning lights, power returned.
Unable to sort commands, the computerized auto-throttle initiated a horrific cascade of thruster firings. Flight 211 rolled violently to starboard, completing a full 360 degrees in noisy, rumbling seconds. Crew and passengers were hurled against their straps. Unsecured items shot through the air like shrapnel.
Petty heard screams from the cabin, then Angel's raised, authoritative voice. They were terrified back there, but calming panic was her job; flying the plane was his, and Jae Benning's.
He transferred autopilot to the right seat, letting the First Officer shut it down while he struggled to regain control of the plane. Fireflash began to pitch, all at once dropping 60 degrees nose down and diving for the distant Tibetan Plateau. She spun, as well, still trapped inhigh-altitude configuration.
There was a brief, staticky contact from the Peking tower,
"Fireflash Flight 211, understand you are declaring emer…"
…then power went down, yet again. Stuck in a dive, they had nothing; no traffic alerts or ground proximity warning, no weather radar and, as they plunged into the heavy clouds over Tibet, zero visibility.
Throat tightening, Jae continued to struggle with the right yoke, as Petty did what he could on the left. But it was hard; the controls were sluggish and the plane unwilling, her jets cold and silent. Buffeting winds and groaning metal were an unwelcome exchange for engine noise.
"Angel, have the passengers assume crash positions," Petty shouted over one shoulder. Without main instrumentation and GPS, he had only the plane's standby altimeter, airspeed indicator and artificial horizon to work with… and no way to tell how far they'd drifted from the planned flight corridor.
The plane dropped well below 28,000 feet before her Captain and First Officer were able to pull out of the dive and ignite her jet engines. As they coughed to life again, Petty gasped,
"Altitude 27,528 feet and climbing… air speed 1200 knots… heading 175 degrees south- south east…"
They were too low, moving too fast, and he knew it. Surrounded by milky-pearl snow clouds, aware that the Himalayas were somewhere before him, Petty pulled the plane into a sharp, banking turn; eastward, and hopefully away. High winds and mountainside turbulence fought the effort's of Flight 211's crew to save their plane. She shuddered and pitched, battered violently from all directions at once. A shrieking headwind took hold, abruptly slamming the plane below stall speed.
Jae throttled up, heart thudding so loudly that she couldn't hear her own muttered prayer, nor Petty's brief call to International Rescue. They never saw the mountain. Instead, at the apex of her turn, the plane's belly brushed the icy flank of Sagarmatha. She skidded, bounced into the air briefly, then came apart, nose burying itself in snow while her ruptured tail section came to rest a few hundred yards away, just below the Northeast Ridge.