Arthur Hailey: Evening News

While Rita hurried to a pay phone, Partridge, Minh and O'Hara moved quickly toward gate 19, looking for an exit to the air traffic ramp below. Graham Broderick, quickly sobered by what was happening, was close behind.

Near the gate was a doorway marked:

RAMP-RESTRICTED AREA

EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY

ALARM WILL SOUND

No official person was in sight and without hesitation Partridge pushed his way through, the others following. As they clattered down a metal stairway, a loud alarm bell sounded behind them. They ignored it and emerged onto the ramp.

It was a busy time of day and the ramp was crowded with aircraft and airline vehicles. Suddenly a station wagon appeared, traveling fast, with roof lights flashing. Its tires screeched as it halted at gate 19.

Minh, who was nearest, opened a door and jumped inside. The others piled in after him. The driver, a slim young black man in a brown business suit, pulled away, driving as swiftly as he had come. Without looking back he said, "Hiya, guys! I'm Vemon—Public Info.”

Partridge introduced himself and the others.

Reaching down to the seat beside him, Vernon came up with three green media badges. He passed them back.”These are temp; better clip them on. I already broke some rules, but like your girlfriend said, we ain't burdened with time.”

They had left the ramp area, crossed two taxiways and were traveling east on a parallel access road. Two runways were ahead and to the right. Alongside the farther runway, emergency vehicles were assembling.

* * *

Rita Abrams, in the terminal, was talking on a pay phone with CRA's Dallas bureau. The bureau chief, she had discovered, already knew of the airport emergency and had been trying to get a local CBA crew to the scene. He learned with delight of the presence of Rita and the others.

She told him to advise New York, then asked, "What's our satellite feed situation?”

"Good. There's a mobile satellite van on the way from Arlington.”

Arlington, she learned, was only thirteen miles away. The van, which belonged to a CBA affiliate station, KDLS-TV, had been setting up for a sports broadcast from Arlington Stadium, but now that story had been abandoned and the van dispatched to DFW. The driver and technician would be advised by cellular phone to cooperate with Rita, Partridge and the others.

The news excited and elated her. There was, she realized, now a good possibility of getting a story and pictures to New York in time for the first-feed National Evening News.

* * *

The station wagon carrying the CBA trio and the Timesman was nearing runway 17L—the figures denoted a magnetic heading of 170 degrees, almost due south; the L showed it to be the left runway of two that were parallel. As at all airports, the designation was in large white characters on the runway surface.

Still driving fast, Vernon explained, "A pilot in distress gets to choose the runway he wants. Here it's usually one-seven left. That baby is two hundred feet wide and closest to emergency help.”

The station wagon halted on a taxiway that intersected 17L and from where the incoming aircraft's approach and landing would be seen.

”This will be the on-site command post,” Vernon said.

Emergency vehicles were still arriving, some converging around them. From the airport's fire-fighting force were seven yellow trucks—four mammoth Oshkosh M 15 foam vehicles, an aerial ladder truck and two smaller Rapid Intervention Vehicles. The foam trucks, riding on giant tires nearly six feet high, with two engines, front and rear, and high-pressure projection nozzles, were like self-contained fire stations. The RIV's, fast and manoeuvrable, were designed to go in close and quickly to a burning aircraft.

A half-dozen blue-and-white police cruisers disgorged officers who opened the cars' trunks, pulled out silver fire suits and climbed into them. Airport police were cross-trained in fire fighting, Vernon explained. On the station wagon's DPS radio a stream of orders could be heard.

The fire trucks, supervised by a lieutenant in a yellow sedan, were taking positions on ramps at intervals down the runway's length. Ambulances summoned from nearby communities were streaming into the airport and assembling nearby, but clear of the runway area.

Partridge had been the first to jump from the station wagon and, standing beside it, was scribbling notes. Broderick, less hurriedly, was doing the same. Minh Van Canh had clambered to the station wagon's roof and now, standing, his camera ready, was scanning the sky to the north. Behind him was Ken O'Hara, trailing wires and a sound recorder.

Almost at once the stricken inbound flight was visible, about five miles out, with heavy black smoke behind it. Minh raised his camera, holding it steady, one eye tight against the viewfinder.

He was a sturdy, stocky figure, not much more than five feet tall, but with broad shoulders and long, muscular arms. His squarish dark face, pockmarked from a childhood bout with smallpox, held wide brown eyes which looked out impassively, unrevealing of what thoughts might lie behind them. Those who were close to Minh said it took a long time to get to know him.

About some things, though, there was consensus—namely, that Minh was industrious, reliable, honest, and one of the best TV cameramen in the business. His pictures were more than good; they were invariably attention—getting and oftentimes artistic. He had worked for CBA first in Vietnam, as a local recruit who learned his trade from an American cameraman for whom Minh carried equipment amid the jungle fighting. When his mentor was killed after stepping on a land mine, Minh, unaided, carried his body back for burial, then returned with the camera into the jungle where he continued filming. No one at CBA could ever remember hiring him. His employment simply became a fait accompli.

In 1975, with the fall of Saigon imminent, Minh, his wife and two children were among the all-too-few lucky ones airlifted from the U.S. Embassy courtyard by CH-53 military helicopter to the safety of the American Seventh Fleet at sea. Even then Minh filmed it all, and much of his footage was used on the National Evening News.

Now he was filming another aerial story, different but dramatic, whose ending had yet to be determined.

In the viewfinder the shape of the approaching Airbus was becoming clearer. Also clearer was a halo of bright flame on the right side with smoke continuing to stream behind. It was possible to see the fire coming from where an engine had been, and where now only a part of the engine pylon remained. To Minh and others watching, it seemed amazing that the entire airplane had not yet been engulfed.

Inside the station wagon, Vernon had switched on an aviation band radio. Air Traffic Control could be heard speaking with the Airbus pilots. The calm voice of a controller, monitoring their approach by radar, cautioned, "You are slightly below glide path . . . drifting left of center line . . . Now on glide path, on center line . . .”

But the Airbus pilots were clearly having trouble holding altitude and an even course. The plane seemed to be crabbing in, the damaged right wing lower than the left. At moments the plane's nose veered away; then, as if from urgent efforts in the cockpit, swung back toward the runway. There was an uneven up-and-down movement as at one moment too much height was lost, at the next retrieved, but barely. Those on the ground were asking themselves the tense, unspoken question: Having come this far, would the Airbus make it all the way in? The answer seemed in doubt.

On the radio, the voice of one of the pilots could be heard.”Tower, we have landing-gear problems . . . hydraulic failure.” A pause.”We are trying the gear down 'free fall' now.”

A fire captain, also listening, had stopped beside them. Partridge asked him, "What does that mean?”