Author's Note 1: So okay I'll start first with a freaky paranormal experience just a few hours ago… I walked towards my treadmill at 11:00pm to fold it up and unplug it. As I was walking, I saw a bottle of my bro's machine oil on the right side of the pathway. After I folded up and unplugged the treadmill, I turned around to go back to my room, and I saw the fucking bottle suddenly IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATHWAY! Maybe it's that fucking spirit again that the paranormal investigators saw back in 2008 that kept following me… But anyway, enough of my own experience LOL. Here's the next chapter to Terror and Truth in the Sky. I hope you'll enjoy it! :3
Author's Note 2: By the way, to make things more fun, I kinda made a photo reference blog post on my Tumblr, which you can access in the link below (just replace the dash between btrandkittens, tumblr and com with periods, coz FF keeps removing those parts :3)
btrandkittens-tumblr-com/post/99339042127/photo-references-for-terror-and-truth-in-the-sky-kogan
TERROR AND TRUTH IN THE SKY
Part 4
As the aircraft continues its descent towards the ocean, Captain Kendall and First Officer Logan release their clasped hands and proceed with their pre-ditching procedures. Logan gets the QRH (Quick Reference Handbook by Airbus) and flips through to the checklists for ditching. The brunette first officer then proceeds to call out challenges to the blonde captain, who responds if the checklist item has been complied with or not. However, since majority of the checklist entries involve parts of the cockpit controls that are now useless, Kendall has to declare them as "Negative" since even if he pushes the buttons and spins the dials, it's no use. They then arrive at the portions of the checklist about preparing the passengers, the cabin crew and the flight crew (themselves) by wearing their life vests and instructing the passengers to brace when the aircraft is close to impact with the water.
Logan wipes his face with his handkerchief to remove the tear stains, then wears his Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses (so that the cabin crew will not see his red eyes), stands up and proceeds to the cabin area to talk to their senior purser to proceed with the life vest procedure and the brace instruction. He tells them that when the aircraft is around 3,000 feet above the water, he will come out and yell "Brace!" at the crew and cross his arms as visual signal for the crew in the middle and the rear of the cabin, and the cabin crew at the front will continue shouting "Brace!" and repeat the arm signal so that the passengers will hear them and see them, and the cabin crew at the back can relay the brace announcement as well. Logan then thanks the purser and returns to the cockpit.
Kendall and Logan decide not to let the cockpit doors remain open as the aircraft begins ditching to avoid any panic-stricken passenger from barging in and potentially delaying Logan's brace signal or any other safety threat, and also so that they can have their final moments as a couple in private in case they do not make it when the plane finally crashes into the water. But they hope that maybe the aircraft will impact the water in such a way that it can still float intact, or at least break into large pieces that will make sure that a lot of the passengers and crew will survive. But with controls totally inoperable, the aircraft can also do a steep dive towards the ocean and disintegrate, killing everybody on board. It is up to Mistress Fate to decide how their aircraft will fall into the ocean.
Kendall and Logan look at each other again, hold their hands, and engage in a third passionate kiss. They might as well enjoy their remaining minutes on earth as a couple this way, they thought. As they pull away from their kiss and clasp, they both look at the battery-operated altimeter, the analogue instrument that tells them how high they are right now…
8,100 feet… A few more minutes to go before impact.
Kendall's face then becomes crimson with rage at their predicament.
"There is something fucking wrong with this aircraft, and those motherfucking maintenance bastards didn't see it?" Kendall asks angrily. Logan pales as he looks at his boyfriend with shock, and realises that Kendall is right.
But they aren't aware that the maintenance employees are forced to disregard safety and correct maintenance procedures at the prodding of their cold-hearted maintenance bosses and upper management.
"And now you, Logie my boyfriend, and I, and the rest of the passengers and crew will die because of their motherfucking mistakes?" Kendall continues, his crimson face contrasting with the green iris of his eyes and the wide black pupils.
"Kindle, relax! Calm down. We might be able to survive this so please calm down!" Logan tries to reassure his boyfriend captain.
Kendall tries to calm down for his boyfriend first officer, but the rage in him is just too great.
"Those fucking assholes! If we survive this, I swear I'm gonna rip their heads off with my own hands!" Kendall angrily resumes his tirade as he clenches his right hand into a tight fist and slams it onto the centre control console.
"Those motherfucking assholes! I swear I'm gonna kill those motherfucking sons of bitches!" Kendall yells as he slams his fist again onto the centre control console.
"I swear to god… I'M GOING TO MOTHERFUCKING KILL THEM!" and Kendall slams his fist again onto the centre console.
As his fist hits the centre console for the third time, they hear a loud electrical sparking sound…
And suddenly, the entire cockpit lights up. All their displays suddenly flicker back to life.
"What the…? What the fuck did I just do?" Kendall says as he stares wide-eyed at the cockpit displays.
Kendall doesn't know that Hawk Air's maintenance crew performed improper shortcuts in repairing the damaged wirings of the fuel pump switches. Instead of replacing the entire assembly containing the switches (similar to a desktop PC's DVD-RW drive being removed), they just tampered with the wirings and made sloppy rewiring to cut costs.
On their fateful flight, some of the electrical tape fell off from the wires and the exposed wires started touching other wires that were also sloppily "fixed" by the maintenance crew. The resulting short circuit was so severe when a high-voltage wire beneath the centre console caused a high-voltage surge, and it first knocked out the APU switches (APU start and APU ON), then the power switches of all the controls in the cockpit, and eventually the flight controls and all the display screens.
But when Kendall pounded so hard on the control console that the high-voltage wire touching the other exposed low-voltage wiring finally separated, and causing the circuit breakers of the high-voltage wiring in the avionics bay below to pop out, effectively disabling the high-voltage wires and preventing another possible major shutdown of all controls.
Because of Kendall's pounding, he inadvertently fixed the problem: A set of wires that kept shorting out and disabling the entire aircraft.
"Kendall, I think you fixed it!" Logan says as his eyes show a new glimmer of hope.
"I think you're right, Logie!" Kendall begins to smile as well as he steps on the rudder and moves his control stick sideways, and the aircraft is finally responding even with the engines still dead.
"Hurry! Let's start the engines!" Kendall excitedly orders.
"Yes, Kindle!" Logan excitedly acknowledges as he grabs the QRH again.
Logan then announces his steps to his captain as they try once again to restart their engines.
"APU start button – ON"
"Waiting…"
"APU ON button – ON"
"Waiting…"
"ECAM (one of the center display screens) shows APU available"
"APU is running!"
"Fuel pump switches 1 and 2 – OFF"
"Ignition crank switch – START"
"Waiting…"
"Starting Engine 2 – Fuel pump 2 – ON position"
Logan stops his announcement as they both look at the ECAM, and see that Engine 2's N1 reading is going up once again…
"5%... 10%... 15%... 20%... 21%... 22%... 30%... 50%!"
"ENGINE 2 STARTED!" Logan excitedly screams.
And he continues…
"Starting Engine 1 – Fuel pump 1 – ON position"
And they look at the ECAM again.
"5%... 10%... 15%... 20%... 30%... 50%!"
"ENGINE 1 STARTED AS WELL!" Logan screams anew.
"OH MY GOD WE DID IT LOGIE! I have control!" Kendall screams as well in joy.
"Roger, Kindle! You have control! I have communication!" Logan happily acknowledges.
Kendall then quickly pulls his joystick back and pushes the thrust levers forward to max. The aircraft obeys by climbing up and the engines roaring. They have averted disaster.
Logan then quickly radios Los Angeles Centre to update them on what happened and requested for an emergency heavy landing in LAX before something bad happens again. A heavy landing is when the aircraft lands with excessive weight: in this case, because they still have the remaining fuel for the 2/3 of the LA-Honolulu flight. But they need the aircraft down on the ground ASAP rather than circling to dump fuel over the Pacific and risk another shutdown.
LA Centre acknowledges and begins vectoring them (instructing them what heading, altitude and speed to set) for an emergency approach into Los Angeles International Airport.
As Kendall stabilises the aircraft at 15,000 feet, reduces their thrust to the normal engine power setting and engages Autopilot #1, he then enters the instructions given by LA Centre on their onboard computers. Kendall presses the buttons carefully to avoid starting another short circuit when something else touches and causes another high-voltage surge, but he has nothing to worry anymore since the high-voltage wirings (which were actually for some of the secondary radars of the aircraft) have already been disabled by the popped circuit breakers downstairs. The aircraft then automatically tracks the route and they will be beginning the approach to LAX in 30 minutes.
As the aircraft fully stabilises, Kendall finally breathes a sigh of relief and looks at his co-pilot/boyfriend. They then approach each other, with hands off the centre control panel this time, still paranoid about making the plane shut down again, and engage in their fourth passionate kiss. They then quickly pull away so that Kendall can make the announcement of their good news via the intercom. As Capt. Kendall finishes his announcements, he hears a new set of wild cheering from the passengers behind the cockpit. Even though the first reassurance failed them when the aircraft suddenly shut down for the second time, the passengers and cabin crew are still ecstatic, because they were desperate for any good news from the pilots. Just a few minutes ago, they were preparing to ditch in an aircraft with no power or control at all, and now they are almost safe and will be making an emergency landing at LAX.
Kendall and Logan look again at each other and continue their kiss… They still have around 30 minutes and they use 5 minutes of the time to kiss as they celebrate their change of luck.
Kendall and Logan then proceed with the approach checklist procedures. They set the flaps to the landing settings, monitor the automatic speed and altitude settings of the jet, prepare the speedbrakes (parts of the wing that help slow the aircraft upon landing), set their automatic braking to MAX setting and lower the landing gear.
As they continue with the final approach, the phase of the approach that means they will be landing soon, Kendall and Logan begin to tense up, anticipating that the aircraft could betray them at this very delicate moment. If the aircraft shuts down at this exact timing, around less than 3,000 feet above the ground, they will crash in a huge fireball, since they still have a lot of fuel inside the wings and in the central fuel tank in the plane's belly.
"Logie, let's do a fully automatic landing. I don't want to risk a malfunction if we disconnect the autopilot and I hand-fly the plane to the runway," Kendall says.
"Roger, Kindle. It's fine with me," Logan answers.
"And one more thing, Logie"
"Yeah?"
"I love you, Logie…"
"I love you too, Kindle…"
As they continue with their approach on runway 7L, the same runway they took off from hours ago, the aircraft's computer announces "two thousand five hundred", indicating that they are 2,500 feet above the ground. Then the computer continues with the altitude report, while Kendall and Logan closely monitoring the systems. The computer must perform the landing correctly at the first attempt. If not, Kendall will have to manually override and force the aircraft to land hard on the runway. They don't want to perform a go-around and risk another shutdown. They're this close to being finally safe on the ground, Kendall thinks.
As the computer announces 100 (feet), Kendall and Logan brace for any possible problem.
50…
40…
30…
20…
Retard! Retard! Retard!
"Retard!" is the computer's instruction to the pilots to pull back the thrust levers from the normal flying position to IDLE. Kendall concentrates hard as he ignores the way the computer pronounces "retard"… Instead of the quick "retard" pronunciation which means to reduce, the computer announces it as "RE-tard", like the insult. During normal flight, Kendall sometimes chuckles because it felt like the planes are calling them retards during landing. But in this case, Kendall is gripped with tension, preparing for anything bad that could happen. Fate has been testing them for a long time already, and he won't be caught unprepared this time.
Upon hearing the "retard" computer voice call, Kendall quickly pulls back on the thrust levers to their IDLE position.
10…
5…
The aircraft then shudders as the main landing gears touch down, followed by the nose gear.
Kendall then flicks two switches on the thrust levers, enabling him to pull it back further to engage the aircraft's thrust reversers, which cause the force of the jet engines to shift from backwards to forwards, helping the aircraft decelerate more rapidly.
The thrust reversers engage without any problem, together with the autobrakes and the speedbrakes.
Logan announces the status of the aircraft. "Reversers green!" indicating that the reversers have activated properly. "Decel!" indicating that he is feeling the deceleration.
Despite the tension in their bodies, their eyes are showing signs of joy that they are finally on the ground.
As the aircraft decelerates from its slightly high speed of 150knots, another problem starts up. The aircraft is too heavy for a usual landing where much of the fuel has already been burned, making a jet lighter. And since Hawk Air's maintenance personnel are skimping on costs, the landing gears are actually severely weakened even with regular loads. In their case right now, the load is simply too heavy, and one of the main landing gear collapses and detaches.
In the cockpit, Kendall and Logan feel the strong shuddering of the aircraft, followed by a sudden drop to the right. Logan then looks at the ECAM
"Landing gear indications for right main landing gear are all zero. I think the right landing gear collapsed!"
"Shit!" Kendall mutters.
As he tries to make the plane stay straight and in the centre of the runway using the nosewheel, they feel as if the cockpit dropped and begins scraping on the runway. The nose gear collapsed as well.
Without steering, and with the nose gear and right main landing gear collapsed, the aircraft veers to the right.
Capt. Kendall tries to stabilize the aircraft by making the right engine shift from reverse thrust to max thrust forward. With the left engine still in reverse thrust, there is hope that he could make the aircraft swerve back on the runway. However, the engine does not respond, and Logan announces that the ECAM shows that the right engine is shutting down again. Unbeknownst to them, then the right landing gear and nose gear collapsed, the right engine impacted the runway so hard that it detached from the wing. As the engine detached, sparks ignited some of the fuel in the right wing. Kendall and Logan can only watch and brace in their seats as the aircraft veers off the runway at around 80 knots and continues dragging itself on the dirt and grass part of the runway.
As the aircraft departs the runway, the A330 shakes violently and knocks both pilots out of consciousness as the aircraft finally comes to a full stop on a grassy part of the runway.
To be continued...