Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

The head steward worried about his dog, ensconced in a kennel out in Plano—certainly none of his friends were ready to adopt an Airedale with a curmudgeonly disposition and fur like a well-handled Steiff bear. 3A rattled a set of turquoise worry beads.

4A had a mortgage nearing foreclosure, 5E admired the color of the polish on her toenails (Decadent Rose), 8C scratched under his arm, 9D and E kissed feverishly, 11C worried about his recent loss of bladder control, 14A looked out his exit-row window and imagined himself on the tarmac, guiding passengers down the deployed emergency chutes.

16D was scheduled to have a pacemaker implanted on Thursday morning, 17E wished he had not been stuck in the middle seat between two corpulent seniors who smelled of moldy bread; 24A and B, two men traveling separately, held hands and whispered prayers without self-consciousness or embarrassment.

One of the flight attendants sitting in the rear galley secured the bathroom doors, while the other ducked around a cabinet, avoiding the sharp edge of the open door, and braced herself in the space behind a beverage service cart. On VFR approach, in the warmth of the early afternoon sunshine, conditions ideal, visibility unlimited.

The deadheading pilot in 3B imagined the stick in her own hands, heard a voice (the navigator’s) shouting, Up, up, go around. Full power. The captain’s hands fought against the stick shaker, its vibration part of the built-in safety measures against stall. A quintet of overhead compartment doors on the right side of the aircraft sprang open, scattering a few bags, foam pillows, blankets. The plane began a sudden leftward roll. A collision alarm and a stall alarm sounding in unison. The aircraft, left wing low, headed for slapdown. The cockpit voice recorder, from an area microphone, captured the inelegant last words of the first officer: “Oh, shit.”

Seventy-seven passengers and six crew.

Now and at the hour of our death.

EVERY TRAGEDY manufactures for itself a hero. Herewith the story of how Howdy Ard, chief of police at the Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, became the best-known celebrity from the crash of Flight 503.

Daley “Howdy” Ard Jr. got his nickname as a child, following an afternoon trip with his mother to the airport. Daley Sr. got off the plane, and in the sparse Love Field crowd, Daley Jr. picked him out easily; he wore a bolo tie and a Resistol hat, and everyone in the airport, the gate attendant and the shoeshine man and the redcap at the baggage claim and the valet who brought around his mother’s Plymouth, all greeted Daley Sr. with a cheerful “Howdy.” In the logic that only six-year-old boys can have, Junior decided that his father’s first name must really be Howdy. Which meant it was his name too.

Now, after twenty-seven years on the job with the Fort Worth Police Department, and two here at the airport, the only things in the world that identified him as Daley Ard were his laminated airport ID and his Social Security card; even his Texas driver’s license referred to him as Howdy Ard Jr.

At work, Chief Howdy Ard was the only cop who wore a white shirt, a thick elasticized double-knit polyester. Badge of office. Running the airport police was a cushy job, the easiest way to double-dip on his pension. Twenty-five years’ experience had earned him the right not to spend his retirement sitting at the front desk of an office building asking people to sign their names in a three-ring binder. Because his wife was out of town, Howdy had volunteered to work the holiday, double-shifting on New Year’s Day, covering for the family guys. It was easy duty, average passenger traffic and parking enforcement and swinging through the terminal every hour, his walk punctuated by the soundtrack of people calling out to him, Hey, Howdy, patrolmen tipping their hats to the boss.

When the plane hit, Howdy was at the food court in terminal C, which meant that he felt the impact before he heard it, a seismic event. His instinctive, spasmodic turn toward the sound knocked over his extra-large cup of coffee, light, with two sugars, sent it pouring across his white shirtsleeve. With the rush of adrenaline, he never felt its heat. Reflexively, he looked at his watch.

Seven minutes then at a near sprint from terminal C to the police garage on the air side, seven more by the time he’d hopped into his cruiser and driven the length of the two-lane limited-access road inside the fence that delineated the edge of FAA-protected property.

Of course, the aircraft rescue and firefighting personnel had already arrived; that was the whole point of being a first responder. Fire trucks sat motionless, emergency lights still blinking, sirens silenced. Howdy sped across the open tarmac, hoping to get as close as he could to the crash site. A firefighter held up two hands, and the chief parked his car, stepped out. The field had a slight crown to it, and the ruined tail section, Panorama Airlines’ red-and-white logo still visible, loomed above him at the horizon.

Howdy did not have to see the rest of the airframe to know how bad things were—the fire chief’s helmet was tilted back on the crown of his head; its protective visor hadn’t even been clipped on, and the chief was the kind of guy who liked to get his hands dirty. Howdy watched as more trucks arrived, moving with the urgency he expected. A half mile out in the flatlands, men from the pumper trucks sprayed the burning wreckage, then turned their attention to where the crash had ignited the field’s dry grasses. In the minute or so it took Howdy to walk over to the fire chief, Tommie Perl, Howdy realized the men were simply looking for something to keep themselves occupied. There was nothing to be rescued, just a fire to be contained and an investigation to begin. The coroner had already sent out the vans.

Tommie gave him a nod, and Howdy said, “Bad?”

Tommie offered Howdy a bottle of water from the seat of his truck. “Yep,” he said. They were natives, laconic in that Texas way, and Tommie motioned with his head in a manner that said to Howdy, Hey, look around.

It dawned on Howdy that he was looking for an airplane that wasn’t there. There was evidence of a plane, melted pieces that suggested one. Not much else. He didn’t have to be an engineer to know they’d hit hard and fast. “Shit,” Howdy said.

“That’s the word for it, all right,” Tommie Perl said. He turned to his lieutenant, giving orders; the lieutenant repeated them into a walkie-talkie; the echo Howdy heard was the squawk of his own radio, slightly delayed voices coming back at him through the tinny speaker.

He reached to his belt clip and turned the squelch knob and said “Shit” again.

The fuselage had come to rest in three large parts; the wings had yet to be found; the nacelle of the tail engine looked as if it had been shot through by artillery fire, and because the event was going to go out on live television, a cameraman was wandering too close to the smoldering site for the chief’s comfort. Howdy went to retrieve him. He put his hand on the cameraman’s shoulder and steered him back a respectful distance. The cameraman had something in his left hand, a stuffed animal, and he handed it over. Howdy examined it for a minute, then tossed it aside. The bear left a residue on his hand, something jelly-like, and the horror of it struck Howdy. Blood, or worse, but the mess was a strawberry color, maybe a child’s melted Fruit Roll-Up; it certainly smelled like fruit, and Howdy wiped his hand across his white shirt without thinking, leaving streaks of artificial color and soot.

Hours later, when the cameraman would return and ask for comment, when the pool reporters were assembled in a terminal 2 conference room, they would show a cover shot, Howdy Ard standing in the burned field, that same shirt stained with whatever had been smeared all over his hands and the rush of the coffee he’d spilled at the moment of the crash. As chief, he’d be the first to take questions, and the image was this: Howdy Ard backlit by temporary stage lights and in his stained shirt, tired from the events of the afternoon and unable to process the enormity of loss, and those millions watching continuous live coverage of the crash of Panorama Airlines Flight 503 would remember this as the moment that the grizzled police chief began to cry. He looked tough, too tough to cry like that, like some old Texas Ranger with that bushy mustache he’d cultivated in retirement, the sun-lightened hair and the reddened face and a distinctly nonregulation Resistol hat in the same style and color that his father had once worn. And because Howdy did not answer any questions, he never disabused the viewers of their erroneous presumptions. He’d already begun to walk away when he paused and, looking into the camera, said “What else is there to say?”