John Nance - 16 Souls

A vague memory undulated in the back of her frightened mind, something about their landing gear being stuck down, and their radios gone. How long back?

Yes!

There had been a cell phone and she’d called… who? Maybe the controller, but the memory ended abruptly.

She tried to look in the shadows by her feet, but if a phone was down there she couldn’t see it… or reach it. Maybe Luke had one. Maybe one of the passengers did. Maybe people were trying to reach them right now to tell them to keep calm! Somewhere out in the darkness there had to be a rational answer, if only they could hear the instructions: “Stay put and we’ll get you!” They would expect the captain to lead, to make sure no one opened an emergency door or did anything stupid to make it worse. Whoever the pilots of this bigger plane were, maybe they were ready to open emergency doors and come get them. Or… or maybe they’d keep the 1900 attached and just land together. Could they do that, she wondered?

The last thought morphed into an icy feeling in the pit of her stomach as she felt the fuselage rock again. They had to stay attached! But how could she ensure it? The urge to reach someone… tell them she knew what was necessary… was becoming manic. Radio, phone, something.

Michelle looked back at those windows. The glow of the interior looked so warm, and it was so cold in here! There were eyes over there staring at her, too, and one had a face attached she could almost make out. A man with what looked like epaulets on his shoulders!

She scrambled with her left hand to find her flashlight in the left sidewall pocket, yanked it up and snapped it on, playing the beam toward the face in the window and raking it back and forth frantically as if to scream “We’re in here! We’re here!” The face in the window was still there, but there was no wave, no indication that he understood.

Michelle pulled the flashlight around and shone the beam in her face, relieved at last to see the man nod, then move away from the window.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she understood the impotence of that pilot’s dilemma — whether he was the captain or the copilot or just another airman. There were emergency exits on both airplanes, but a no man’s land in between — a wind tunnel — and Michelle suppressed the reality of what that meant.

Yet, there had to be a way. They were just a few feet apart!

The airspeed indicator on the forward panel of the captive Beechcraft was in darkness, and she tried to ignore it. But it was no use. She had to know the airspeed, and with the flashlight beam flipped forward, the gauge was visible and reading 250 knots.

Seven Months before — January 21 st

Regal 12

With the cabin full of anxious, frightened faces Marty had just seen — all pleading for deliverance — the act of selecting the PA position and preparing to speak to them brought its own level of terror. They would be listening to his words, and hearing reassurance, but was it enough? And how much of it would be true?

Marty clicked the mic button, hearing the corresponding sound of the PA transmitter through the open cockpit door.

Folks, this is the captain. I… there’s no way to sugarcoat anything. You know we’ve had a midair collision with another airplane, and you’re all aware by now the fuselage of that airplane has somehow become attached to our right wing, and as far as we know, everyone over there is alive. We are, of course, flyable, or I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. We can land back at Denver , and we’re making preparations right now to do that. Denver has closed all but the runway we used for takeoff because of the snowstorm, so… we’ll get on the ground as quickly as we can. We have a little under two hours of fuel on board, so it won’t take long. My plan right now is to try our best to land carefully and smoothly without letting those folks fall off our wing, but I’ve got to… we have to get some more technical help from our company on airspeeds and such.

Marty felt his finger weaken on the transmit button and let it pop out. Was he lying to them? No, at least not yet, but how the hell could they keep the same angle of attack and slow down? Chances were not good for landing and getting stopped before running out of snow covered concrete .

So far, no lies , he thought. He hated telling lies to passengers.

Once more he pressed the transmit button.

Okay, there are two things you need to know. First, as tempting as it seems, that we could just open a few emergency hatches and bring those people over here, that’s not possible. The wind is going over that wing at just under three hundred miles per hour, and there’s just no way. And I can’t slow us down enough. Worse, anybody exposed to even half that wind in below freezing temperatures would be hideously frostbitten within seconds, even if they weren’t swept off the wing. Now, we WILL need to slow down to land, but if we do it wrong and change the angle of attack… the angle of the airflow over the wing… we may lose them. I’ll try to keep you informed, but in the meantime, stay seated, stay calm, and a few prayers wouldn’t hurt… mainly for those folks on our wing.

He replaced the microphone and glanced at the copilot, who was grimly hanging onto the controls and doing a surprisingly good job of holding their heading and altitude at 9-thousand.

“You okay for a few more minutes, Ryan? I need to talk to the company.”

He was nodding. “Yeah. I’m getting used to her now. We’re gonna slow for landing, right?”

“We’ll do the best we can, Ryan.”

“Okay. Captain, I don’t know if our trailing edge flaps will still work, but we can’t even try the leading edge devices,” Ryan said, his eyes riveted on the instruments. “They’ve got to be mangled on the right side, that leading edge.”

Marty considered the incongruity of the F/O’s flaky, lackadaisical attitude as they left Denver and this sudden burst of cogent analysis. It was as if someone else had slipped into the right seat. Even the panic was gone, or markedly subdued.

“Good point,” Marty replied.

“When you’re ready to configure, we’ll need to deactivate the leading edge devices through the circuit breakers, and they’re right behind me, I think.”

“Got it.”

“And… one more thing, Captain. If the flaps are screwed up, the flap asymmetry protection may not work, so we’ll need to milk them down a few increments at a time and make sure they’re coming out exactly the same.”

“Absolutely. Hang onto her… I’ll be on the sat phone. Then we’ll brief what we’re going to do.”

Ryan nodded, his eyes glued on the instruments.

Two flight attendants had moved into the back of the cockpit and Marty turned to face them.

“Can you wait?”

“We’ve… yes, I guess so,” one of them said. “but everyone back there is using a cell phone.

“Let them. Can’t harm a thing, regardless of the propaganda they teach!” Marty said as a cockpit chime announced an inbound satellite call from Chicago operations.

In the coach passenger cabin of Regal 12 cellular phones had broken out like a rash in almost every row, some passengers powering them on with success and locking up a signal, and others looking with frustration only at red “no service” warnings. Text messages were streaming from the aircraft like contrails as wives and husbands and lovers and passengers of all ages rushed to reassure parents and loved ones below that they were going to be okay.

Twenty feet away in the unheated, freezing interior of Mountaineer 2612, the same attempt was already underway by three of the passengers as the copilot returned to the cockpit.