Klaus Schwamborn: Dreamland

First and foremost, to my lovely wife, Francesca, who suffered reading through many of the revisions. A special thanks to ’Nette, who should be an editor, not just an avid and informed reader. My close family, Loren, Gina, Lisa and Jenny, who enjoyed the storyline and plot but were a little mystified with all the technology. All my friends who read various draft versions and provided encouragement for me to send it for publication review and consideration. Lastly, a very special thanks to the Editors and Production Crew at Olympia Publishing for taking a leap of faith in a new author.

Trans-Commercial TC761 had started its descent from thirty-six thousand feet on a routine flight from Denver, Colorado, to Las Vegas in Nevada. Captain Angela Rothman flipped the autopilot of the Boeing 737-700 twin-jet narrow body aeroplane to manual flight mode and made her announcement to the one hundred and thirty-eight passengers on board. They were precisely on schedule and twenty minutes to landing. Local time in Vegas, two forty-five p.m., clear sunny skies, and temperature, a warm ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit. She hoped they had a pleasant flight and would choose Trans-Commercial again in future.

A few older passengers set their wristwatches back one hour.

On the right-hand side of the flight-deck, First Officer Mateo Rodriguez throttled back marginally, applied five degrees of flap and adjusted the trim as Captain Rothman lined up the passenger jet for preliminary approach to runway 25R at McCarran International Airport.

Flight attendant, Carolyn Stratton, walked from the rear of the passenger compartment asking people, in her usual polite and professional manner, to put their seats in the upright position, secure trays, turn off all electronic devices and fasten seat belts. She picked up trash along the way, depositing it into a large disposable plastic bag. Carolyn could never figure on how much garbage people could produce on such a short two-hour flight. She couldn’t begin to imagine how they managed on those seventeen-hour non-stop flights between London and Perth recently put into service by Qantas. Garbage collection would be an almost full-time job for the attendants.

In the left aisle, Christa and Brian Everett, who had yet to strap themselves in, were glad they were coming home after an enjoyable, yet exhausting two-week vacation in Aspen. They handed their plastic cups, paper napkins and a handful of candy wrappers to Carolyn. Five-year-old Lauri, with all the energy and enthusiasm about everything, was standing in her seat, face pressed firmly against the Plexiglas cabin window. She looked with wonder at the dappled landscape far below.

A metallic object, roughly the size and shape of a rock that could fit into the hand of a small child, hit without warning!

Hurtling from the ground at the speed of a bullet and too small to be detected by flight 761’s radar, the unknown metallic object curved towards the Boeing and was sucked into Trans-Commercial’s port-side Pratt & Whitney JT8D engine, breaking off several of the intake’s centrifugal impeller blades. The shaft in the combustion chamber sheared off instantly from the vibration, causing the high-pressure turbine housing to disintegrate. Large fragments were ejected in all directions from the momentum of the engine’s rotation.

The conic exhaust nozzle tore into the fuselage, creating a cavity almost three feet in diameter. Christa and Brian Everett, along with little Lauri, were killed instantly and sucked through the opening.

Like a champagne cork popping out under pressure, flight attendant, Carolyn Stratton, followed less than a second later, garbage bag still clutched firmly in her hand. She was not quite as fortunate as the Everett family. Alive, conscious and petrified beyond anything she had every experienced in her entire life, Carolyn plunged towards the earth for two and a half terrifying minutes, only to meet death when she plowed into the ground at over one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Unlike disaster scenes portrayed in movies, decompression of an airline’s cabin does not take a few minutes, during which time passengers and their movables get sucked out while others are hanging on for dear life, giving advice to those around them. With such a large hole in the side of the fuselage, decompression occurs in a matter of seconds and a dense fog instantly fills the entire cabin. Most passengers do not run around screaming while others carefully rationalise the situation. Passengers and crew alike are all instantly numbed by inexorable fear, not knowing what’s happening or what fate awaits them.

At such high altitudes, air is extremely thin and lacks enough oxygen to sustain human life. Temperature within the compartment immediately equalises itself to that outside◦– roughly, minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.

On flight 761, oxygen masks were instantaneously discharged from beneath the overhead baggage compartments. Passengers, too shocked and confused, took a moment to understand what they were expected to do; having paid little or no attention to the pre-flight safety demonstration. A few individuals with enough presence of mind, reached for the masks which were flapping back and forth like flags in a windstorm. This prompted a few others to grab their own masks, but most passengers simply looked around in confusion, expecting an attendant to materialise out of nowhere and provide personal attention and direction.

Visual and audible alarms burst into activity throughout the flight deck, making it seem to the crew as if they were in the middle of Times Square at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Captain Angela Rothman, through years of flight experience and rigorous training, reacted instinctively. She reduced all engine power to minimum and put the Boeing-737-700 into a controlled dive. Rothman then tightened her shoulder harnesses which she had thankfully clipped into place just five minutes before during preparation for landing.

First Officer Mateo Rodriguez hit the Mayday button. An SOS signal and current GPS location immediately transmitted repetitively on multiple wavelengths. Having entered McCarran’s airspace a few minutes before initial approach, the 737 had already established direct communication with the tower. Rodriguez had also strapped himself in just moments before.

There were no verbal exchanges between Rothman and Rodriguez; no immediate choices to be considered, and no conflict of opinions that needed deliberation. Captain and First Officer knew exactly what was expected of them and what they had to do.

The steel security door leading into the passenger compartment prevented instant decompression of the flight deck, giving Rothman and Rodriguez a few moments to slip on their own masks before the air seeped out. Their masks were attached to portable oxygen canisters held in place by release clips on the sides of their seats. This was by design. Pilots could do without masks flapping around in front of their faces during such an emergency, and it also gave them the flexibility to move around if required.

Sluggish but responsive, ailerons, elevators and rudder appeared to be functional. Rothman breathed a momentary sigh of relief and then killed the audible warning. Now she had some immediate choices to make. If she descended too slowly, those passengers who hadn’t yet secured their oxygen masks would be unconscious in minutes. If she descended too fast, the aircraft was at serious risk of breaking apart. Rothman chose to descend slowly.