Michael Crichton - Airframe

"Amos," she said, coming up to him, "it's me. Casey Singleton."

He blinked myopically. "Oh. Casey. Didn't recognize you." He squinted at her. "Doctor gave me a new prescription… Oh. Huh. How are you?" He gestured for her to walk with him, and he headed toward a small building a few yards away.

No one at Norton could understand how Casey was able to get along with Amos, but they were neighbors; he lived alone with his pug dog, and she had taken to cooking him a meal every month or so. In return, Amos regaled her with stories of aircraft accidents he'd worked on, going back to the first BO AC Comet crashes in the 1950s. Amos had an encyclopedic knowledge of airplanes. She had learned a tremendous amount from him, and he had become a sort of adviser to her.

"Didn't I see you the other morning?" he said.

"Yes. With my daughter."

"Thought so. Want coffee?" He opened the door to a shed, and she smelted the sharp odor of burned grounds. His coffee was always terrible.

"Sounds great, Amos," she said.

He poured her a cup. "Hope black is okay. Ran out of that creamer stuff."

"Black is fine, Amos." He hadn't had creamer for a year.

Amos poured a cup for himself in a stained mug, and waved her to a battered chair, facing his desk. The desk was piled high with thick reports. FAA/NASA International Symposium on Advanced Structural Integrity. Airframe Durability and Damage Tolerance. Thermographic Inspection Techniques. Corrosion Control and Structures Technology.

He put his feet up on the desk, cleared a path through the journals, so he could see her. "I tell you, Casey. It's tedious working with these old hulks. I long for the day when we have another T2 article in here."

"T2?" she said.

"Of course you wouldn't know," Amos said. "You've been here five years, and we haven't made a new model aircraft in all that time. But when there's a new aircraft, the first one off the line is called Tl. Test Article 1. It goes to Static Test-we put it on the test bed and shake it to pieces. Find out where the weaknesses are. The second plane off the line is T2. It's used for fatigue testing-a more difficult problem. Over time, metal loses tensile strength, gets brittle. So we take T2, put it in a jig, and accelerate fatigue testing. Day after day, year after year, we simulate takeoffs and landings. Norton's policy is we fatigue test to more than twice the design life of the aircraft. If the engineers design an aircraft for a twenty-year life span- say, fifty thousand hours and twenty thousand cycles-we'll do more than twice that in the pit, before we ever deliver to a customer. We know the planes will stand up. How's your coffee?"

She took a small sip, managed not to wince. Amos ran water through the same old grinds, all day long. That was how it got this distinctive flavor. "Good, Amos."

"Just ask. There's more where that came from. Anyway, most manufacturers test to twice the design life. We test up to four times the spec. That's why we always say, the other companies make doughnuts, Norton makes croissants."

Casey said, "And John Marder always says, That's why the others make money, and we don't."

"Marder." Amos snorted. "It's all money with him, all bottom line. In the old days, the front office told us, Make the best damn airplane you can. Now they say, Make the best airplane you can for a price. Different instruction, you know what I mean?" He slurped his coffee. "So. What is it, Casey- 545?"

She nodded.

"Can't help you there," he said.

"Why do you say that?"

"The plane's new. Fatigue's not a factor."

"There's a question about a part, Amos," she said. She showed him the pin, in a plastic bag.

"Hmm." He turned it over in his hands, held it up to the light. 'This would be-don't tell me-this would be an anterior locking pin for the second inboard slat."

"That's right."

"Of course it's right." He frowned. "But this part's bad."

"Yes, I know."

"So what's your question?'

"Doherty thinks it failed the aircraft. Could it?"

"Well…" Amos stared at the ceiling, thinking. "No. I got a hundred bucks says it didn 't fail the aircraft."

Casey sighed. She was back to square one. They had no leads.

"Discouraged?" Amos said.

"Yes, frankly."

"Then you're not paying attention," he said. "This is a very valuable lead."

"But why? You just said yourself-it didn't fail the aircraft."

"Casey, Casey." Amos shook his head. "Think."

She tried to think, sitting there, smelling his bad coffee. She tried to see what he was driving at. But her mind was blank. She looked at him across the desk. "Just tell me. What am I missing?"

"Were the other locking pins replaced?'

"No."

"Just this one?'

"Yes."

"Why just this one, Casey?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Find out," he said.

"Why? What good will that do?"

Amos threw up his hands. "Casey. Come on, now. Think it through. You have a problem with slats on 545. That's a wing problem."

"Correct."

"Now you've found a part that's been replaced on the wing."

"Correct."

"Why was it replaced?"

"I don't know…"

"Was that wing damaged in the past? Did something happen to it, so that this part had to be replaced? Were other parts replaced as well? Are there other bad parts on the wing? Is there residual damage to the wing?"

"Not that you can see."

Amos shook his head impatiently. "Forget what you can see, Casey. Look at the ship's record and the maintenance records. Trace this part, and get a history of the wing. Because something else is wrong."

"My guess is you'll find more fake parts." Amos stood, sighing. "More and more planes have fake parts, these days. I suppose it's to be expected. These days, everybody seems to believe in Santa Claus."

"How's that?"

"Because they believe in something for nothing," Amos said. "You know: government deregulates the airlines, and everybody cheers. We got cheaper fares: everybody cheers. But the carriers have to cut costs. So the food is awful. That's okay. There are fewer direct flights, more hubs. That's okay. The planes look grubby, because they redo the interiors less often. That's okay. But still the carriers have to cut more costs. So they run the planes longer, buy fewer new ones. The fleet ages. That'll be okay-for a while. Eventually it won't be. And meanwhile, cost pressures continue. So where else do they cut? Maintenance? Parts? What? It can't go on indefinitely. Just can't. Of course, now Congress is helping them out, by cutting appropriations for the FAA, so there'll be less oversight. Carriers can ease up on maintenance because nobody's watching. And the public doesn't care, because for thirty years this country's had the best aviation safety record in the world. But the thing is, we paid for it. We paid to have new, safe planes and we paid for the oversight to make sure they were well maintained. But those days are over. Now, everybody believes in something for nothing."

"So where's it going to end?" she said.

"I got a hundred bucks," he said, "they'll reregulate within ten years. There'll be a string of crashes, and they'll do it. The free marketeers will scream, but the fact is, free markets don't provide safety. Only regulation does that. You want safe food, you better have inspectors. You want safe water, you better have an EPA. You want a safe stock market, you better have the SEC. And you want safe airlines, you better regulate them, too. Believe me, they will."

"And on 545…"

Amos shrugged. "Foreign carriers operate with much less stringent regulation. It's pretty loosey-goosey out there. Look at the maintenance records-and look hard at the paper for any part you're suspicious of."

She started to leave.

"But Casey…"