Avvies Reading Corner........

[avi-addict]

Note by Avvie: The description of the “inner soul” and skills of the “AG-PILOT” is beautifully ‘worded’ by the author in this book.

The Pilot (film)
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The Pilot [a.k.a. Danger in the Skies]
Directed by Cliff Robertson

Written by Robert P. Davis

From Starring Cliff Robertson
Diane Baker

Release date(s) 1980

Country USA

Language English


The Pilot is a 1980 film by director Cliff Robertson and is based on the novel of the same name by Robert P. Davis.
The main character, Mike Hagan, is a pilot in passenger service and a candidate for the honor of Best Pilot of the Year. There's only one problem -- Mike is an alcoholic. As the disease tightens its grip on the main character, he faces an increasingly tough battle to conceal his problem and maintain his personal and professional life. After an incident in which he jeopardizes the lives of his passengers and crew, Mike realizes he needs help to keep things from spinning out of control.
The film provides an interesting character study of an alcoholic working in a profession that carries great responsibility. Aviation buffs will enjoy the film because of its realistic depiction of commercial flying, and though the airliners used in the movie may be outdated (DC-8), the movie still captures the essence and intensity of an airline pilot's daily life.
The Pilot – Robert P. Davis.

Note by the author: “Many will ask, even pilots? Could there possibly be an alcoholic airline captain? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. There have been some. Readers might then infer that there are many ‘Mike Hagens’ sitting in the cockpits of commercial airliners….but this is not true.
The chances now of finding another Hagen on the flight deck are infinitesimal. All carriers, large and small, have the highest and strictest standards for pilot proficiency and conduct. Every day in his life, on and off the job, the pilot’s career is on the line – more so than in most other professions. But pilots, like anyone else, have certain weaknesses and emotions. Mike Hagen’s story is not one of defeat, but of an ultimate victory over a devastating problem, because in coming to terms with himself he discovered a new identity, a truer one.

Although the incidents in this book are based upon fact, the characters and the airline for which Mike flew are fictitious. This is a story of a pilot…not an airline.



Mike Hagen was one of the safest of men – an experienced airline pilot. With a faultless record and more than twenty-six thousand flying hours to his credit he was now captaining sophisticated DC-8s for Intercontinental Airlines. He was good with the passengers. He was good with the planes.
But…..Mike Hagen was also one of the most dangerous of men – an experienced drinker. His speech was never slurred. You never saw him falling about. He flew like a dream. Not one of his fellow crew members ever guessed that when he left the flight deck for brief intervals he was taking quick “spookers” of whiskey from the thermos flask he had with him. Like all experienced drinkers, Mike believed that he had his habit strictly under control. He never believed that the time would come when it might cause him to endanger the plane and everyone on it. And….if that time ever did come, he told himself, he’d quit….either the drink, or the job, or both.
But things didn’t work out that way. Quitting wasn’t easy, and the battle Mike had – with the survival of himself and his crew and his passengers at stake – makes a tension packed story.



CHAPTER ONE:

In Winter it was always dark when he got up, but Mike Hagen hadn’t been asleep very long. He didn’t remember whether he had passed out when the late movie started or finished, but the booze had gotten to his head and he woke up at 3:00 a.m. looking straight at a TV test pattern, hearing the buzz from the set. He glanced around the small study on the first floor of his Ridgefield, Connecticut, house as he eased his feet to the cold floor. He always slept downstairs when he was going out early. He brought his stocky frame upright, feeling the stiffness in his neck and the hot dryness in his mouth.
Padding across the scatter rug to the small bathroom off the kitchen, he hit a roller skate and bumped hard against the doorjamb. He stopped to listen for Jean to open her door or for one of his two children to awaken, but the stillness remained, so he continued to the bathroom, where he flicked on the light and looked at himself in the mirror.

He did not look forty-two, he thought. Although his eyes were puffy and there were dark circles under them, his hair was still abundant and amber brown, not dull or streaked with grey. Mike thought he looked a little like a young John Wayne, but there was a bit more of the Irish in his face, and a ruddiness crisscrossed by rivets of minute blood vessels, the tiny damning evidences of a man who has drunk too much for too many years.

When Mike awoke prematurely, he had three choices: take sleeping pills; take a drink-but never both-he knew that much; or just go back to bed and toss around for an hour or so until it was time to prepare for his trip. He hated this extra hour.

On mornings like this he would allow himself one drink, and the closer to 7:00 a.m. he could take his “spooker,” the better it was. But if he started at 3:00 in the morning, he would need another by 7:00. And if he took a couple of pills to go back to sleep, he would have to drive the sixty-one miles to JFK airport with a barbiturate hangover. He decided to do nothing, and went back to the study, tried to read for a while; then he put down the book and listened to an all-night radio show.
Finally, after an hour or so, he got up again, made himself coffee and started the bacon. Hot bacon and eggs eased the empty feeling in his stomach, and greese, lots of it, made a large slippery coating. His father, a hearty Irish drinker who had worked as a carpenter in Florida, always told him to “butter up before the sauce”. He never forgot that, because his father had escaped liver problems and died at seventy, sitting in the shade of the front porch, still pouring down the Paddys.

After breakfast, Mike put on his dark blue pants, white shirt and a mechanic’s jacket marked EL AL. Shortly after 5:00, he gathered the things he need for the trip, and then went to the desk in the living room and wrote:

Dear Jean,
Please see that the bills on the right pile are paid. I think we’re behind – there’re some dunning letters. See you soon. Kiss the girls for me.

He stepped outside into a slashing, windblown rain. He openedthe garage door and put his bags, uniform jacket, and black raincoat into the Nova. Suddenly he remembered his cream. He returned to the house and slipped the half-pint of heavy cream he had bought the night before into the side pocket of his jacket. Then back to the car to start toward Kennedy International Airport.
Driving down the New England Thruway, Mike thought about his wife, Jean: the way she squandered their money: her room littered with every cosmetic on the market, and expensive dresses tossed aside unworn. Everything that had once been beautiful and gay about this woman was now gone. The love they had shared had evaporated long before they started to use separate bedrooms. Mike often asked himself why he put up with the situation, but he was prone to holding things in, and every time he thought of confronting Jean with those four well-rubbed words, “I want a divorce”, he would think of his daughters, Karen and Debbie, and something would stop him.

He felt like hell this morning, but then it was always the same: the first part of the drive was the worst – with the alcoholic fatigue, the dull hangover one gets after years of constant drinking. Then came a feeling of blankness, and finally an out-of-sorts sensation that could lead to a minor panic when, at times, he felt his head was coming off. This didn’t happen too often. Mike tried not to drink too much before a working day.
The empty feeling usually returned to his stomach during the last five miles of the drive, when the greasy bacon and eggs finally let the pain through. It was at this time that Mike started counting the minutes to Ellen’s Place, a drab, half-hidden bar and grill about nine blocks from JFK. Mike had selected Ellen’s carefully. It was far enough away from the airport so the cargo handlers, mechanics, and other airline people wouldn’t use it: and most of Ellen’s early morning customers were from the milk-distribution plant on the next street.

Mike had been coming to Ellen’s for two years. Once he realized that he needed the morning spooker, he had gone on the search for the shabby bar, his launching pad. Finally, one hot summer day after work, he walked into Ellen’s and had a drink. He told her he was an El Al mechanic and she laughed at an Irishman working for the Jewish carrier. Now when he walked in there for that first spooker of the morning, he hated himself because he knew he was over the line.

Mike had made up a whole false life for himself for the benefit of Ellen and the customers at the bar who nipped before going to work. The imaginary existence included a wife who taught school and the sons he wished he had. He also talked about how he went to Mass and Communion, which he wanted to be true; how he worked in the Little League and took vacations with his sons out west. Ellen, a buxom, lighthearted widow, listened and never asked too many questions that Mike couldn’t answer.
He liked his fantasy life.

The rain seemed to be letting up a bit as he pulled into Ellen’s back driveway. Mike stuffed his small thermos into a pocket, drank his half-pint of cream, and moved toward the rear door. The place opened at 6:00 a.m. Mike never got there later than 6:30.
Ellen made him the large cold drink in a special glass with his initials. He looked lovingly at the amber liquid flowing from the bottle of one-hundred-proof Old Grand-Dad over three cubes of ice, and he could already taste the bourbon. The second Mike brought the drink to his parched lips, his world changed. His mind and stomach seemed to ease; the edge was off. He knew there were twenty-three sips to a four-ounce drink the way he took it. One time he had ordered another, but it was too much and he was afraid of the smell, even though he could pack five away by this time without visual effects. Mike had devised a much better way: he gave Ellen the thermos he always carried, which she filled with Old Grand-Dad. Then she put tiny ice cubes in a plastic bag and slid the pouch into the thermos, where it bobbed on a small sea of bourbon.
“Damned smart,” she had told him. “They could knock yuh for drinkin’ on the job.”

Mike had wondered what Ellen would say if she really knew.
Ten minutes later, in the morning of December 10, 1974, Mike reached the Intercontinental Airways building, where he changed into the deep blue jacket with the four gold stripes ringing each sleeve. Over this went the raincoat. He put the thermos in his flight bag. His eyes were slightly gazed, but he had a solution for that also. His captain’s hat was one-eighth of a size too large. It slipped down deep on his forehead, so that the visor cast a shadow across his eyes.
As a precaution, Mike took a small pouch from his flight bag – his “survival kit” – which contained a very sharp men’s cologne, Sen-Sen, which worked better than the breath sprays or garles, Visine for his eyes, and a bit of cover-stick make-up that he applied to the side of his left cheek where the blood essels were beginning to appear like lazy red rivers.

This furtive deception was necessary before he entered Flight Operations – the sterile green-and-white room at JFK which served as a weather-dissemination, flight-plan, and crew-scheduling center. Mike loathed the harshly lit room as much as he loathed the mechanized matter-of-fact quality that characterized modern flying: buttons, numbers, procedures, cockpil challenges and responses, checklists, and rules written by zealous little people in little offices who, according to Mike, neither understood the fine points of aircraft operation nor, more important, human nature.

Mike had started as an agricultural pilot – a crop duster – letting down foul-smelling, eye-blinding fetilizer or pest killers while trying not to hit trees, electric lines, poles, water towers, windmill pumps, all the enemies of low-level precision “row” spraying. Now he thought he could outfly anyone on the Intercontinental Airlines payroll except, perhaps, for a few of the senior captains who had flown by the seats of their pants in DC-3 days before WWII. But they were rapidly disappearing from the business.
In Mike’s mind one needed the sense, the feel of flying, to be really good. He had it. When a guy can twist an “Ag” ship in and out of tree-lined fields, he thought, and not break it up, that’s flying – a special perception one learns when the pilot sits in the open and feels the hot clay dust of an Alabama cotton field. That was his kind of flying.
Now he had a small, complicated office that went up in the air. The plane could almost fly itself; it all came down to numbers. Judgement was something else. Mike knew he shouldn’t be drinking, but he figured his ability wasn’t impaired; he still had air instinct, perception of the skies, a co-pilot, and a big, well-designed plane that flew on an autopilot, which was backed up by another autopilot. At the thoutht of that, he laughed. It summed up the magnificent sophistication of modern commercial flying: the autopilot that didn’t trust its autopilot. But it wasn’t the equipment that was bothering Mike.
He had to get in and out of Operations without detection. IA had the same regulations as most of the other carriers; flight personnel had to sign in one hour before departure. The sheets were constantly monitored to make sure that every flight had a full crew. If a crew member was more than ten minutes late, a reserve pilot or stewardess would be called to cover the trip.

As Mike opened the heavy, unmarked door, he looked at his watch – 7:20. He was ten minutes early. To the left, as one entered, were the sign-in counter and a rack where the crews put down their flight kits and overnight bags; to the right, a sagging leather couch and a bulletin board. In the center of the Operations area was a large wraparound counter; inside it were banks of Teletypes, desks, and computer terminals. On one side of the counter were row upon row of terminal and area forecasts for every U.S. and foreign station served by IA and cities used as alternate airports. On the other side were winds aloft charts, the “progs”, storm warnings. And other weather data.
After signing in, the flight personnel were supposed to check their mailboxes. Mike went to get the “garbage”, as he called it: updates on procedures, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety directives, union notices, junk from IA’s executive suites in New York City.

Most of the route planning, overhaul and maintenance, traffic, and other procedures of running the giant carrier were handled from the Third Avenue office, but the airline also maintained offices at La Guardia Airport. These included personnel and payroll records, additional stewardess supervisory and credit union offices, plus the headquarters of the chief pilot, Joe Barnes, and his five check pilots. Joe Barnes reported to Cliff McCullen, vice-president of the Flight Department, and Cliff McCullen reported to the vice-president of Operations, a Mr. Fitzsimmons.

Mike threw the junk from his mailbox into the wastebasket and went over to say hello to the senior stewardess on today’s flight, Nancy Halloway, a tall slim blonde, about thirty-seven. Once, years ago, Mike had gotten Nancy out of a jam and she had never forgotten; she always had a warm smile for Captain Hagen.
They chatted for a few minutes, and Mike had just stepped over to the weather counter when his co-pilot, Jim Cochran, approached. Jim was a short, wiry man in his early thirties who had flown carrier-based jets in Vietnam. As did Mike, he broke the airline rules and drank during the twenty-four hours before a flight, but he was far from being an alcoholic, limiting himself to one or sometimes two drinks on a layover. Mike and Jim had found out about each other in Houston one night, and it had been a small joke at first, because they said they had to protect themselves. Since then they had bid all their flights together. In addition to the drinking problem, Jim knew Mike had a girl friend in San Diego. Their route was woven around Mike’s special needs: flight 467, JFK-HOU, with a three-hour, fifteen-minute layover in Houston; then 221, HOU-SAN, with an overnight layover in San Diego; and 602,SAN-JFK nonstop service, the following morning. Mike, having been with the line for fifteen years, could have flown co-pilot, perhaps captain, on the overseas routes that were operated with 747 equipment, but he had the Houston routine worked out with Jim Cochran and they always received their first-bid preference.
“What’s it look like today?” Mike asked Jim.
“Sort of wild, a lot of wind moving up there.”

Mike, who always paid special attention to the weather because he had begun in an open-cockpit plane, looked at the Houston terminal and area forecasts of the Flight Advisory Weather Service (FAWS). The terminal forecast was okay, but the real story that December morning was high above thirty thousand feet, and Mike studied the winds aloft chart; as he did, the second officer-flight engineer, a youngish black man, came up and introduced himself. The third occupant of the cockpit was different each trip and he was the one Mike had to guard against. The reason for using the thermos.

There was a deep aggravated low-pressure system that day, just north of Nashville, moving fast, with severe thunderstorms and icing conditions associated with a cold front; another, less aggravated front was pushing off into Pennsylvania.
There were weather advisories out for light aircraft, and special interim warnings (sigments) for all aircraft operating in the area of potentially hazardous weather conditions. Mike flipped through the pile of storm warnings; company advisory 39 caught his eye; so did Sigmet Charlie 4. Both indicated light to moderate CAT around Shreveport, Louisiana.
Then he studied the winds aloft charts again, comparing them with the pressure gradients at various altitudes. The wind shear was there. Small arrows showed tangential wind directions along the sharply defined front which, combined with the location of the jet stream, seemed to set up a much stronger genesis for CAT than the advisories indicated.
Mike’s route would take him directly into the core of the turbulence over Shreveport, and he thought there must have been an update not yet posted. He walked over to the dispatcher. “Any updates on advisory 39 or Sigmet Charlie 4?”
The dispatcher looked at the printout in the still clicking machine. “No, nothing new.”
“Do you have my machine flight plan?” Mike asked.
“Here it is, Captain Hagen,” the dispatcher said, handing Mike a printout. The MFP, which came in from the IA operations center in Kansas City via a Detroit-based computer, indicated the best route from JFK to Houston, considering meteorological conditions, load factor, and other data. All routes were designed to keep schedule and conserve fuel within the existing weather pattern.
While the crisp, sterilized exactitude of Flight Operations was first on Mike’s list of things obnoxious, the MFP, which took over much of the captain’s preflight work, was certainly next. “How dare some machine tell me what to do!” he had said four years earlier when the chief of the Flight Department directed that the plans would henceforth be handled by the IA computer.
In the beginning most of the IA pilots had distrusted the machine flight plans, but as the quasi science improved, they began to rely on the MFPs, which for the most part were quite accurate. Mike was different; he still disliked the MFP. The IA computer, the cockpit autopilot, and the flight director were all chipping away at the pilot’s traditional role of flying the plane.

Mike Hagen had first learned about turbulance in his open-cockpit plane. He respected its power. There have been bizarre accidents in which modern radar-equipped jets, guided by highly qualified pilots with correct turbulence warnings clipped to their dispatch papers, somehow got tangled up with turbulence and were torn apart in midair by the shearing winds.
Mike knew about the accidents that involved turbulence. He sat at home with his bourbon and read the National Transportation Safety Board accident reports, trying to establish a pattern of what to do, what not to do. The facts were shocking in this day of sophisticated forecasting and highly developed airborne radar. All the reports confirmed his suspicions: don’t go near that stuff and it won’t get you, but the problem was that although you could see a well-developed thunderstorm on the airborne radar, CAT was different. The radar didn’t pick it up. Yet when this turbulence grabbed a plane, it could lead to a structural breakup, with the aircraft disintegrating in flight.

Mike walked along the jetway to his plane, a DC-8-61, the familiar “Stretch-8,” license number N8907C. It was a long-bodied plane configured by IA to seat 29 passengers in first class and 175 in coach. Mike trusted the Stretch-8. He had 4 878 hours “in type” of his 26 756 hours overall. For his age, this was “high time,” but he’d logged over 9 000 of his hours in Ag flying, where a seventy-hour week was usual in the dusting season.
Now, as Mike boarded his plane, he needed a drink, but it wasn’t time yet. He went into the cockpit, his office, and sat down at his desk – a vertical board jammed with instruments and switches.
Settled in the cockpit, Captain Hagen could get on with his thermos routine, which he had down to a finely practiced art. The flight engineer would be outside walking around the plane’s under-carriage for his visual flight check, and the co-pilot, Jim Cochran, always made a special effort to look away when Mike opened his black flight bag, slipped out the thermos, and then lifted his heavy frame from the cockpit to move to the lavatory. On the DC-8-61, just aft of the cockpit, there were two forward lavatories, a coat closet, and the forward galley, serving first-class passengers. Mike could hear the clatter of catering equipment being loaded, so he knew that the stewardesses would be busy and would not see him.
In the lavatory, he slid the spooker inside the small flap door marked DISPOSABLES. There he had hunks of an epoxy adhesive that did the job; the spooker never came loose. Mike pressed the adhesive against the stainless steel sheet on the upper side of the bin, then, when he was sure the thermos was fast, he looked at his face in the mirror. He was amazed how well the Visine worked. The glassy, reddish look of his eyes was almost gone, and when he smiled, his fleshy face seemed to blend evenly into the bags under his eyes. He put Sen-Sen in his mouth, splashed on a small bit of after-shave lotion, and returned to the cockpit, where he took off his coat, hung it up, and slid into the left seat, fastening the belt lightly around his thick stomach. The rain continued to fall, creating small beads that padded against the front windshield.
As Jim, in the right-hand seat, was going through his paperwork, Mike picked up the phone and pressed the stewardess call button. “Nancy, could I see you for a moment?”
“Be right up.” A minute later she appeared. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“Tell the other stewardesses we’re going through rough weather this morning, so delay your food service until we find some reasonably smooth air.”

One of the passengers taking Intercontinental Airways flight 467, was Peter Hanscom, executive vice-president of IA’s marketing division, who was going down to Houston for a meeting with the southwest sales chief. Hanscom had been in the airline business for twenty-two years, but he didn’t like flying. He couldn’t explain it, nor did he ever tell anyone.
Peter Hanscom arrived at JFK just before 8:00 a.m. and went directly to gate 9. He was allowed to board early, along with an elderlly lady in a wheelchair.
At 8:14 the rest of the passengers began to board. The invalid had been taken to seat 29-A in the aft section and Pete Hanscom to 6-D in first class. The aircraft door was closed, and 467 was signed off just before 8:30.

In the cockpit, the crew began their preflight checklist, which, according to the manual, had to be read aloud – the captain, first officer, and second officer-flight engineer each resiting the procedures from a prepared page in IA’s DC-8-61 handbook. This never failed to bring a small grimace to Mike’s lips, because in the old DC-3 days the checklist was a routine – mostly common sense – lodged in the pilot’s head, but now a script had been written for the men in the flight deck. On the left side of the page was the heading, CHALLENGE-THE READOFF; on the right side, the response. Jim Cochran played the challenger. “Windshield heat.” he began.
“Warm up,” Mike answered.
“Cabin signs,” Jim continued, and thus they went down the eighteen items on the list; then Mike began his “engine start”. Even this had to be in sequence: number 3 engine was usually first, followed by 4, the outboard turbine; then on the other wing, number 2, and finally, number 1.

Mike waved at the lineman below his window, then he nudged the thrust levers forward and the DC-8 rolled away from the gate. He was feeling better; the pains in his stomach had eased, and his head, although slightly light, now felt attached to his neck.
Ground control cleared 467 to runway 31-Left, and Mike taxied out to the active runway. The ceiling at 8:40 was nine hundred feet overcast with two miles’ visibility in light freezing rain.
Mike pressed his PA button and began his customary announcement. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hagen. Welcome to Intercontinental’s nonstop service to Houston. We’re about eighth in line for take-off. Things are a little slow this morning because of the weather. The rain we’re having here is associated with a deep depression down over Nashville. Our flight plan calls for us to divert north of our usual route, but we still might experience some turbulence. I’ve asked our stewardesses to delay food service until we see how conditions are. In the meantime, sit back and relax. It’s a pleasure to have you on board.”
Mike’s PAs were about the best in the airline, some said; he had a friendly, convincing voice and often made scenic announcements, which few captains bothered to do. The federal air regulations do not require a pilot to make any announcements unless a safety meassure must be initiated, but Mike felt that PAs were good public relations.

As the plane slowly taxied toward 31-Left, Mike silently cursed himself for having let the spookers take him prisoner, making his life into a series of small deceits. He often felt deep regret.
When the plane was near the threshold of the runway, Jim informed the tower that they were ready. The tower acknowledged, and when its turn came, the DC-8 turned onto 31-Left, pointed its nose into the wind, and was cleared for take-off.
Mike eased his feet off the brakes, made a slight directional correction, and the plane picked up speed as the four turbines sucked in the damp morning air. At 153 knots he eased the nose up so that the wings would attain their needed lift. Moments later the plane entered the low-flying scud. Everything went black in the cockpit except for the red light illuminating the instruments. At two thousand feet they came out into a broken layer of fast-moving clouds, and five hundred feet higher they entered another, darker layer.
The air was smoother than Mike had figured. They trimmed up the ship at three thousand feet, and after being cleared to the Robbinsville, New Jersey, VORTAC radio beacon, they punched in the automatic flight director, which would take them over the station by homing in on the ground transmitter signal.

Rain pelted the plane as it struggled up through light to moderate turbulence over Pennsylvania. Then, just before they reached their cruising altitude, when they were close to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, VORTAC, 467 picked up the severe turbulence. The plane bounced twice and then dropped rapidly. Mike felt his stomach jump into his throat. The autopilot returned the plane to her course, but the air continued to be choppy and the aircraft shook violently.
“We’d better take her off the altitude hold,” Mike said.
Jim snapped off one axis of the autopilot and curled his hands around the wheel. Moisture appeared along Mike’s brow; it was not fear but what he’d come to know as the “mean reds”. He pressed the stew call button. “Nancy, this choppiness might continue for a while. Worst air I’ve seen in a long time. Keep everyone in their seats.”
Then Mike made another PA. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hagen again. The rough air we’re having might give some of you concern. Please understand that these conditions are not unusual and our aircraft is stressed for anything the sky has to offer. It’s uncomfortable, but the flight is proceeding routinely. We hope to begin our breakfast service as soon as possible; in the meantime, please remain in your seats with your seat belts securely fastened…..thank you.”
The plane was tossed about in the air, but most of the passengers felt no fear; they were comforted by Captain Hagen’s deep, reassuring voice; some, however, began to associate the plane’s shuddering. Racking motion with danger. Peter Hanscom, the marketing executive, for one, sat petrified by the turbulence.

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER TWO:

Flight 467 was handed off to the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center, and Mike asked for another altitude. Cleared to thirty-five thousand feet, where the turbulence was worse, he requested thirty- one thousand – flight level 310 – and went to it. Mike took the wheel. Even though he felt his spooker wearing off, his touch – the practiced dexterity- seemed to settle the plane down. He had an almost perfect sense of the ship’s controls, knowing when to force them, when to nudge them, and when to let the plane take care of itself. Some IA pilots let the autopilots run even in turbulence, but Mike felt that the gyros were slower than a good pilot’s reactions. This theory was controversial, and there was only so much even the most skillful pilot could do to smooth a plane’s path through disturbed air.

Half an hour later Mike felt the need for his spooker, gave the controls over to Jim, and left the cockpit. He took a paper cup from the dispenser beside the lavatory door, then went inside. The stewardesses were sitting in the jump seats opposite the lavatory. Usually when he went in for his spooker, they were serving. He reached into the dispoal unit, felt the thermos, and eased it through the door. He unscrewed the top and poured the bourbon into the paper cup. He wanted to bring a slight dignity to his closet nipping and he thought the tiny paper cup was less degrading than drinking out of the thermos. He lifted the cup to his lips, drank hurriedly, and poured a second drink. The plane took a hard bounce and part of the bourbon sloshed down on the counter. He wiped it up, replaced the thermos, and returned to the cockpit.

At 9:55 a.m. Mike called Cleveland again and requested pilot reports on various fligh levels; he was advised that none was reporting smooth air, but that the latest weather prog indicated improvement after 10:00 a.m.
Mikes spooker brought a calm to his head; his shoulder and neck pains eased, as if a giant masseur had worked the kinks out. He looked over at Jim and smiled. It was a bold, confident smile that said to the younger man, ‘you’re doing fine.’

The plane went into a gradual bank and started south, the turbulence at thirty-one thousand feet having subsided. At 10:55 Mike told Jim they could go back on autopilot. Streaks of fluffy clouds began to slide by the plane as it entered the back, or receded side of the Tennessee low. The air was now velvety smooth.
The passengers felt they had been rewarded for their bravery. Mike instructed Nancy to begin the meal service, then slipped on his headset and called the dispatcher in Chicago.
“Flight 467. Do you have an update on Sigmet Charlie 4?”
“Affirmative, 467. Sigmet Charlie 4 is canceled. Sigmet Charlie 5 indicates light turbulence over north-east Texas and Shreveport.”
“Are you sure that says light?”
“Yes sir. I’m reading it off the Teletype.”
Mike clicked off the transmit button.
“Would you say that wind shear and the position of the jet stream on the board this morning indicated light, moderate, or severe turbulence?” he asked Jim.
“More like severe.” The co-pilot had guessed what the captain wanted to hear.

Mike was about to lash out at the company meteorological department, but he checked himself. Every flight deck is equipped with a voice recorder, and nothing can be said in the cockpit without its being taped. “Those creeps”, Mike had told Jean when he came home after his first trip in a bugged cockpit, but actually he knew the recorder was installed because federal air regulations required that tapes be submitted in crash situations.

Mike gazed at the crystal skies around them. The fear of hitting the turbulence haunted him. He remembered the statements of one particular airline crew that had told investigators that immediately before it happened, the outside temperature dropped about ten degrees. Now Mike kept his eyes on the outside temperature gauge, and when it began to slikde, he called Little Rock, Arkansas, asking for pilot reports from the Shreveport area.
“IA 467, I have three pilot reports,” replied Little Rock, “A Gulfstream II at flight level 210 over Clarkdale, Arkansas, reported light turbulence. An American 727 at flight level 350 near Hot Springs reported light to moderate , and the third, a corporate plane, 280 over Fort Smith, Arkansas, reported light turbulence.”
Mike looked at Jim, who shrugged his shoulders.
Mike wathed the temperature drop, sure now that something was out there. He slowed the plane down to its turbulence-penetration speed, which on this day was 245 knots. Then he retrimmed the plane and pressed the stew call button. Seconds later Nancy Halloway entered the cockpit.
“I believe we’re entering an area of severe clear-air-turbulence, Nancy. I want the galley secured, all trays off the tables, everyone belted in, including you girls.”
She left, and Mike started his PA: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hagen again. We might be penetrating an area of turbulence, and as safety measure I am suspending meal service. I’m also putting on the NO SMOKING and FASTEN SEAT BELT signs. No one is to leave his seat under anly circumstances. We apologize to those who did not receive our usual good breakfast, but this is a precautionary procedure initiated for your safety….thank you.”

Besides the temperature drop and the apparent indicators on the IA weather map, something else told Mike Hagen they were heading for an upset… his intuition. Some pilots get premonitions about the skies, just as sea captains possess an unexplained sense of their universe. As he looked out into the morning light, Mike was certain they would hit CAT. It was just a matter of when, but they were prepared. The jet was down to her rough-air speed; everyone was securely fastened in.
The flight deck became very still as they wated, but nothing happened.
Forty miles southwest of Shreveport, Mike began his descent into the Houston terminal area. He debated whether to turn off the seat-belt sign or not, give the passengers a chance to go to the lavs; the plane must be past the area of turbulence, or maybe it was never there and Sigmet Charlie 5 was right.

When Mike had made his PA about the possible turbulence, a few well-traveled businessmen remained totally blasè, but others in the cabin had become alarmed in varying degrees. The passengers were very quiet now, as the low whine of the four turbines eased off.

The first jolt snapped everyone’s head. There was an upward acceleration, a buffeting, and then the jet began to shake. In an extremely turbulent situation passengers suffer complete spatial disorientation, thinking they’re upside down when they are not, that the plane is diving when, in fact it is going up. Peter Hanscom believed they were in a steep bank; the jet was actually pitchingon the flanks of a violent updraft. As Hanscom looked out of the window, he saw the wings shanking. He dug his fingers into the arms of the his seat.

There was a crash. It came from the aft galley, but Hanscom thought the wings being ripped off. His panic became even more intense. He closed his eyes and started praying, thinking of his wife and children.

A sequence of critical events took place in fragments of seconds. As the shock wave darted through the aircraft, it began to climb, borne upward by violent vertical currents. For a few seconds the men in the cockpit had no idea of their attitude, heading, or airspeed. Pencils, papers, charts, and jackets spun crazily in the air, and the instruments vibrated so violently that the numbers and needles became fuzzy white streaks, impossible to read. The trembling young flight engineer sat with his eyes glued to the board in front of him as the racking and the noise intensified.

Mike gently, cautiously removed a little thrust; the climb was arrested and he nudged the wheel forward just a bit. It took eleven seconds to bring the plane under control, but it seemed much longer to its occupants.
The plane had ascended fifteen hundred feet in the climb and was far out of its assingned altitude. Once he had adjusted the speed, Mike regained his proper flight level, which returned them to smooth, velvety air. The cockpit was silent; everyone’s heart was thumping wildly.

Jim peered over at Mike; he could not understand how a man who was drinking could have forecast the CAT turbulence and handled the plane the way he did. The co-pilot chalked it up to experience. Mike was a high-timer. Jim’s own flight time was under five thousand hours, and he had never witnessed anything like what just happened. He knew, though, what the consequences would have been if meal service had been going on when they hit the CAT: hot drinks would have been tossed around, there would have been injuries and, possibly, deaths. Jim’s feelings for Mike Hagen were mingled. He felt sorry for the man – his desperately unhappy marriage, his drinking problem, and yet he admired the captain – his air sense was almost uncanny…or was he extraordinarily lucky? The co-pilot didn’t know.


It took several minutes for the passengers to get their balance back. The screams that had filled the cabin turned to cries of joy at being alive, but the passengers were still apprehensive. Why hadn’t the captain made a PA? Was he injured….but Mike was busy talking to Fort Worth Center.

“What’s happening up there?” the controller asked. “We’ve just gotten a bunch of pilot reports on extreme turbulence.”
“Copy this. IA 467 hit extreme clear-air turbulence at flight level 290, sixty miles north of the Lufkin, Texas VORTAC. Get it on the machine right away. CAT almost broke us up.”
“Roger. You ought to read some of the others.”
“Can’t wait.”

As Mike clicked off the transmit button, the cockpit phone rang. “Wow!” Nancy said. “It’s absolute shambles back here. Nobody’s hurt but someone better check the aft galley because it came apart, and please say nothing to these poor souls – they’re out of their minds.”
“Okay, I’m coming.” Under the circumstances, Mike thought it advisable to reassure the passengers personally.
As he passed the first lavatory, Mike wanted to duck in for a big, cold spooker. He felt he deserved it, but when he looked at the chaos of magazines, books, attachè cases, and pillows strewn about the cabin, he decided to talk to the passengers immediately. They were looking up at him wide-eyed and nervous.
He spoke to those in first class. “Everything’s all right now folks. We’ve just experienced what is called clear-air turbulence, and while this has been extremely uncomfortable for all of us, we never exceeded the limitations of the aircraft. As I said, everything is fine now, and we should land in Houston very soon.” Then he moved to the coach section, where he made the same speech.
Finally, he looked at the aft galley and, seeing that nothing was structurally wrong, returned to the cockpit as Jim Cochran was letting down into the Houston terminal area.

Nancy Halloway had been sitting in the forward jump seat when the shock wave hit the plane. She had heard a crash inside the nearest lavatory. After everyone had settled down, she checked the lav. An overhead compartment had come down and towels were piled up on the floor. She bent to pick them up and was struck by the pugent, unmistakable smell of bourbon. Odd, she hadn’t noticed anyone going into the lavatory; the passengers had been under seat belts most of the morning. She glanced out at the catering section. The suitcase with its rack of little bottles was still locked; that was for the snacks on the next leg. Maybe someone had brought his own. Sometimes a nervous passenger wanted a nip early in the morning but was too embarrassed to ask for it. Then, realizing that they would be on the ground in a few minutes, she hurried away to complete her prelanding duties.

Mike’s pilot report, among others, set into motion a string of events. The terminal and area forecasts for Houston were immediately amended. The turbulence messages went on the line to a high-speed computer in Kansas City and were relayed out on the circuits. A new sigmet was prepared.
At the same time, control positions working traffic in the affected area began to divert aircraft. A total of twenty-nine planes slowed to their turbulence-penetration speeds. A few let down to the lower skies; others gradually banked away from the murderous CAT.
Flight 467 touched down in Houston. Many of the deplaining passengers paused on their way out to thank Mike. Peter Hanscom approached the pilot, showing his company ID. “That was some ride, Captain.”
“It was,” Mike said with a victorious smile.
“Ever happen like this before?”
“Not exactly.”

“There’s a lesson here,” Hanson said. “If this kind of thing can happen, perhaps there should be a safety rule to keep everyone in his seat as much as possible.”
“CAT’s difficult to forecast precisely. I wasn’t even sure we would hit the stuff. I had a strong hunch, that’s all. The weather map back at JFK didn’t quite agree with the turbulence advisory. Only one chance in a hundred that we’d hit the center of it.”
“Well, I’m going to report this to Fitz. The vice-president of Operations ought to know what a fine job you did.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When Peter Hanscom left the cockpit, Mike went into the lavatory to retrieve his spooker. Luckily, the thermos had not been unleashed by the turbulence. He often wondered what would happen if the termos came loos and fell to the bottom of the diposal bin. How would he get it when he needed the spooker? He sometimes saw himself clawing away at the bin, ripping it open like a starved animal going after a trapped piece of meat.

Mike had a layover routine in Houston. Flight 467 normally arrived there at 11:00a.m., giving him over three hours before the Houston-SanDiego leg, which wnet out at 2:15 p.m. Most of the pilots hung around the pilots’ lounge, a gloomy place where a TV set was always blaring away. The captain picked this flight sequence because it would allow him enough time to check into a room at the airport hotel for a light lunch, a cold drink from his thermos, sometimes a bath, and a nap. The rest helped him to feel relaxed and lifted enough to guide the DC-8-61 over the south end of the Rockies, across the desert to San Diego. A three –hour and five-minute flight, it usually put them on the apron at Lindbergh Field, San Diego, around 3:30 p.m. Pacific time.
Today however, flight 467 arrived in Houston almost an hour late, and Mike knew his time in the hotel would be limited. He was exhausted. At first he thought of telling Operations he’d had enough – logical, acceptable – but that would be a tacit admission that he had gone too far, and he earnestly believed that the spookers didn’t affect his job performance.
Mike realized he had crossed one line – daytime drinking – and he knew there was another line out there someplace. How far away it was, he didn’t know; yet he was certain he would not come near it. He had his own guidelines; the first day he called in sick after a night of drinking, if his hands began to shake, if his flying was in any way impaired, he would stop. Up to now, none of these things had happened.
There was another reason why Mike didn’t want to deadhead back to JFK: he had a date with his girl friend, Pat Simpson, that evening, and he really wanted to see her. He suddenly decided to delay the flight. Yes, that would be wise, conservative, and pilotlike.
“How are the control surfaces?” Mike asked the young flight engineer as he re-entered the cockpit.
“No damage, sir.”
Mike then felt the trim tab wheel. He nursed it back and forth. “Don’t like the feel,” he told his co-pilot.
Jim felt it and shrugged his shoulders.
“I want this checked.” Miked said. “Call dispatch.”
The captain’s authority was supreme. All he had to say was, “I don’t like it,” and the flight would be delayed while the mechanics crawled over the equipment. And if the captain said, “I still don’t like it,” new equipment would be pulled in. The inspection would take an hour and a half – enough time for Mike to enjoy his spooker.

When they reached Operations, Mike told the chief airframe mechanic to check everything out and to examine the trim tab cables. Then he picked up his flight bag and moved toward the door. Jim followed him out, and they stood in the bright, warm Texas sun. Jim touched Mike’s arm. “There’s nothing wrong with those cables, is there.?”
“You never know,” Mike said, looking at his feet.
“Take it easy, Mike, we still have the West Coast leg.”
“I’ll be in the hotel foom. I need a little sleep, that’s all. Bad experience – that damn CAT!”

Mike walked through the main terminal to the International Hotel, where he checked into a small single room. No one, except Jim, knew where he went between flights, not even Nancy Halloway, who, because she had friends in San Diego, turned up on Mike’s schedule more often than anyone else.

The DC-8-61 was hauled away from the loading gate with the group mechanic in the right seat and Jim in the left. They taxied the plane to a hangar on the far end of the field, where six airframe mechanics were waiting.

When he reached his room, Mike flung his coat on the bed, dip into his flight bag for the icy spooker, got a glass from the bathroom, and poured himself a drink. As he gulped the bourbon, his nerves immediately calmed down. Then he dialed room service for a melted cheese on rye and a bowl of thick onion soup.
At the knock on the door he pushed his drink under the bed and jammed the termos back in the flight bag. He signed for the food, ate, took a hot bath, and crawled into bed.
About an hour later the phone woke him up. “Mike, you okay?” Jim asked.
“Sure, just sleeping.”
“Funny thing. There was some sloppiness on one of the trim tab cables. I don’t know if it was the dive this morning or not.”
“Find anything else?”
“No, we looked over the whole undercarriage, all the control surfaces, spoilers, flaps. The flight’s scheduled to go out at 3:30 local time.”
“I’ll be over.”
Mike put in a call to San Diego. Just the sound of Pat’s voice made him feel happier. He told her the flight was delayed.
“I’ll work late at the office. We’re behind anyhow,” Pat said.
“I can’t wait to see you,” Mike said. He dressed, studied his face carefully, and applied just a bit of the cover stick. Then he rinsed his glass with mouthwash, went downstairs, and paid his bill.

Mike sat in the cockpit and felt the trim tab cable and the tension of the other controls. Next to turbulence, he thought control failure was one of the worst hazards facing heavy aircraft operation. Many times he imagined a cable coming off a pulley, and the feeling the pilot must have with a wheel in his hand connected to nothing while the plane went into a graveyard spiral.
Mike asked the flight engineer to check the position of the trim tab on the tail assembly. As the engineer left the cockpit, Mike slid the thermos into his coat and made his way to the head. Inside, he opened the disposal door and shoved in his spooker, his icy umbilical cord. He returned to the cockpit and asked Nancy to bring him coffee before they were airborne.
Jim handed him a wire from New York Operations.

ADVISED BY HOUSTON OPERATIONS THAT FLIGHT 467, JFK-HOU, EXPERIENCED EXTREME CLEAR-AIR TURBULENCE. FAA REQUESTS COMPLETE PILOT REPORT. PLEASE COPY OPERATIONS NEW YORK. DO NOT SPEAK TO PRESS ABOUT INCIDENT. FITZSIMMONS RECEIVED WIRE FROM HANSCOM, VP MARKETING, ABOARD 467. SAID YOU HANDLED SITUATION EXTREMELY WELL. GOOD WORK MIKE.

JOE BARNES, CHIEF PILOT.

The flight engineer returned, saying all was well. The turbines were spun up, ignited, and the plane proceeded to the active runway. They were cleared for immediate take-off. Mike fed in the power and felt the jet surge ahead as Jim read off the knots. The DC-8-61 climbed smoothly into the bright, warm Texas afternoon. The autopilot was activated, and Mike sat back and relaxed.

Around 4:30 the hollow empty feeling returned to his stomach. Mike excused himself and left the cockpit. Nancy was preparing her serving car and happened to notice him take a paper cup and enter the lavatory. Ordinarly she would have thought nothing of this, but she remembered that Mike had done exactly the same thing on the morning flight, and she couldn’t understand why he didn’t simply take a drink of water from the spigot.
Mike entered the lavatory, removed his thermos from its hiding place, and poured the bourbon into the cup. He leaned against the bulkhead and felt the liquor running into his stomach, bringing the nice warm feeling with it. He replaced the thermos, left the lavatory, and used his key to unlock the cockpit door.
He took his seat and leaned back and relaxed. This was the time of the flight day he waited for; the spooker refreshed him, and the air west of Tucson was usually tame. He could look into the lowering sun hovering over the southern end of the High Sierras; to the south, Mexico, with it’s lemony light and the outline of the Sierra Madre rising out of the burnt-sienna plains – the beauty of flying. Mike also liked the last part of the leg because he would be seeing Pat Simpson within a couple of hours.
He’s eyes became heavy as the warm rays sifting through the tinted Plexiglas window, bathed his face. He laughed silently to himself. Six hours earlier this same plane had nearly been shaken apart. New he felt drowsy. What a job, Mike thought. Sometimes he was grossly overpaid for doing nothing – like this afternoon – but this morning, no amount of money could have paid for his expertise. It was worth much more than the $55 000 he received annually. He had saved lives this morning, of that he was sure. But this did not make Mike any more satisfied with his job. He remembered as if it were yesterday, flying junior routes in a DC-3 back when the VOR stations were just coming in. The autopilots were cranky, and one had to fly to a great extent by visual landmarks. He had been in touch with the earth he loved; he had watched the seasons change and he knew his waly around the clouds because the old bird could not fly much above ten thousand feet….he just loved contact flying.

Over Gila Bend, Arizona, they received clearance for San Diego, and less than an hour later they landed at Lindbergh Field.
As they taxied to the gate, Him looked at Mike’s face. He thought the pilot looked drawn and old. He wondered how far this man could go, or where he would go, how it would end. How many times could a pilot drink in the air before he misjudged or misread something and caused hundreds of deaths? Jim suddenly thought about his own family and decided to do what he had wanted to do for a long time.

Pat Simpson sat in her office at a San Diego advertising agency, waiting for Mike’s call. At thirty-two, tall, slender, and striking, she had been recovering from a broken marriage when she first met Mike Hagen. Now she thought she’d never been happier.
The phone rang and she smiled in anticipation of Mike’s warm voice. “Darling”
“Uh, this is Jim Cochran…Mike’s co-pilot.”
“Oh yes, of course.” She remembered the amiable sunburned young man. Her heart sank. “Is anything wrong?”
“Everything’s all right. We’re on the ground here, but I just have to talk to you about Mike.”
“What is it?” Pat asked, her voice rising with apprehension.
“Look, I’m awfully sorry to spring this on you, but I was hoping you might say something to him. Mike is a damned fine pilot, but he’s been drinking during flights.”
“You’re crazy.” She knew Mike drank illegally, on layovers, she drank with him. But on the job? The hand holding the receiver, began to tremble. It couldn’t be true, not Mike – he couldn’t do such a thing. “How?” she asked.
“He hides this thermos filled with bourbon in the lavatory. I saw him going in there all the time and I asked him about it because I thought he was sick.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“About a year, and it’s getting worse. You can’t hide something like this forever, somebody’s going to find out. If he gets caught, he’ll never fly for anybody again. Don’t tell him I called you, but I didn’t know what to do.”
Pat didn’t want to accept what Jim was saying, yet something deep down told her it was true. “When this started, why didn’t you say something? You’re as guiltly as he is.”
“I did. We talked, but Mike doesn’t believe he’s got a problem. He thinks he can stop anytime. Frankly, I think he’s lost control and it scares the hell out of me. There’ll come a time when the booze affects his flying, and I don’t want to be aboard.”
“I don’t blame you, Jim. I’m glad you called. I’ll speak to him right away, do what I can.”
She put the phone down. The significance of what Jim Cochran had said was tearing through her. She felt helplessness, then a rising panic. She thought back to the first time she ever saw Mike Hagen. She had set up an easel at the end of a pier in Coronado, just south of San Diego, and was finishing a watercolor of the harbor. She had stopped to rest a moment, and happened to look aside. Her gaze fell upon a roundish belly full of freckles. Her eyes slid upward and she saw another mass of sun-bleached freckles all over a big face with a pleasant smile. He was wearing a baseball cap and had a fishing pole in his hand.
“Am I making you nervous?” Mike had asked.
“No more than the painting,” she said.
“I used to sketch a little bit myself – airplanes, two-wing jobs. Teacher said I was pretty good.”
“Do you fly?” she asked, putting away her brushes.
“I’m a captain with Intercontinental.”
This surprised Pat, because the man standing in the hot sun looked like a farmer, a Texas cattleman.
They sat talking on the end of the pier. She liked Mike Hagen from the start – the outgoing way he spoke, his earthiness and openness. They continued their conversation at a small seaside restaurant where she often went. Mike had some drinks at lunch, but she hadn’t thought anything of it.
Later she was too much in love with this pilot to ever think about his drinking. He never seemed to be drunk; he drove her Jaguar with precision; he never stumbled, slurred his words, or forgot things. She thought alcoholics were disturbed, brooding people who sat alone in dark bars, but there was nothing outwardly wrong with Mike Hagen except his marriage, and he told her that it had gone downhill almost from the beginning.

To her, Mike just drank a lot; she didn’t know how much was too much. Their love affair had been going on for almost three years, and they had never had a serious argument. She thought Mike Hagen was one of the most dependable, straightforward men she had ever met. The call from Jim scared her. What was she to do? When Mike phoned a short time later, Pat was still at a loss.

He looked the same to her, a bit tired perhaps. He told her about the day’s problem with the CAT. All through dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant, she listened and watched him carefully. His drinking pattern was no different – four bourbons, no trace of intoxication, but she decided she had to say something.
“Mike,” She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m worried. I think you drink an awful lot for someone who has to fly a plane.”
He smiled. “You’re right. I know I drink too much.”
“Why do you do it, Mike? Aren’t you jeopardizing your job?”
“Yes, but you know what I think about this kind of flying.”
“But what about the passengers?”
He grasped both her hands in his. “Pat, I really don’t think my drinking affects my flying. I’m sure I’ve saved some lives today.”
“Isn’t there an airline rule that you’re not supposed to drink twenty-four hours before a flight? You’ve had severalbig bourbons tonight and you have to fly in the morning.”
“But I’ve been drinking like this for years. I can handle it. In all the time we’ve spent together, have you ever seen me soused?”
“Darling, no one can drink as much as you do and not have liver problems or something. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“Okay, I’ll let up a little if it’ll make you feel better.”
Despite Mike’s response, Pat had to ask the question she’d been dreading. “Mike I want an absolutely truthful answer. Do you drink on the job?”
Mike Hagen didn’t say anything for a minute. “Yes, dammit! I drink on the job.”
They didn’t discuss it further until they reached Pat’s small, well-furnished beach house in Coronado. She made coffee and he took a brandy with it, as he always did.
“Mike, O wasn’t kidding about the drinking. Promise you’ll see somebody back east. Please, darling, for your own sake. This thing has got to be cleared up now. If you won’t do this for me, then I don’t want to see you anymore.” She was surprised at her sharpness.
At that moment the phone rang. Pat answered. It was Jim with a message for Mike. He was to call Joe Barnes.
It was almost 2:00 a.m. New York time, and Mike wondered about calling the chief pilot at that hour, but they were close friends, so he went ahead. “Hello Joe, sorry it’s so late.”
“That’s all right. You cerainly did a fine job yesterday. Did you hear about the Inter-Texas flight?
“No.”
“They were around Shreveport same time you were. The CAT caught ‘em and they dropped four thousand feet. Half the plane came apart inside. One killed, twenty-two injured. They made and emergency landing in Shreveport.”
“Wow! What kind of equipment?”
“Seven twenty-seve. The FAA called. They got the report on your experience. They want to know how you got through without even one injury when Inter-Texas got so messed up.”
“Almost twenty-seven thousand good flying hours in my book. That’s how.”
“I told the FAA that our Captain Hagen knew more about flying than half these clowns in the air today. Anyhow, here’s the point. They want to send out a team of experts from the safety board. They’re going to interview all the flight personnel and they want to go over the plane. Fitz says it’s a real compliment, and we’ve got you up for a safety award – maybe a thousand dollars. The first meeting is scheduled for 1:00 Pacific tomorrow. I’m coming out to San Diego for it. Oh, almost forgot, there was a report that you ordered the equipment checked during the Houston layover and that they found some problems in the trim tab cables. FAA wants to know how you figured that one out.”
“The wheel felt slightly different,” Mike said, telling a convincing lie.
“Well, it was a smart precaution. Nice going, Mike. I wish we had a hundred guys like you.”
“Thanks, Joe, I needed a boost tonight.”
“Well, you got one. See you tomorrow, Mike.”
A broad smile bloomed on Mike’s face. He walked over and kissed Pat. “The chief pilot is coming out tomorrow with an FAA team. An Inter-Texas flight his the same air – one killed, twenty-two injured – and you talk about me not being able to fly. Ask Joe Barnes it I can handle the equipment. Ask him.”
She was about to say something, but she remained still and shared the happiness of the moment. He filled their glasses; they took a blanket out to the beach and watched the bright moon sailing in from the sea.

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER THREE:

The jurisdiction for the incidents of CAT over Louisiana on that December 10, fell within the bounds of several agencies, among them the NTSB, the FAA and the aircraft manufacturers. Most critics agree that the NTSB is the best in the world when it comes to finding out what happened after acciddents, but some critics feel their procedures for preventing accidents leave much to be desired. The NTSB itself says that prevention is the FAA’s job. It has been suggested that too many bureauscontrol pilots and planes, and that a single superagency should take command.
Pilot’s reports were filed indicating that six planes had encountered turbulence on December 10, but only one pilot, Mike Hagen, apparently knew his aircraft would enter the core of extreme air movement. The others, with just as much available weather information, flew into the situation with no sense of what was about to happen. Why? What dit one pilot know that the others didn’t?
Further, the same plane was grounded in Houston by the captain. The other aircraft were sent on their way without control surface or cable inspection. What did the IA pilot suspect? The safety board, among others, wanted facts. They began by grounding every plane that experienced the identical air disturbance. Then they directed the local FAA branch chiefs to remove flight and voice recorders from the grounded planes.

The flight record keeps a log of a plane’s direction and inertial forces. In the case of the IA flight, perhaps the most important of the five indications recorded was the G-force indicator, which would tell what negative or positive gravitational forces had been exerted agans the aircraft. The recorder also indicated the aircraft’s magnetic heading, airspeed, altitude and recorded time. By feeding this data into a computer, the investigators might be able to piece together an explanation of what had happened.

At 5:00 a.m. on the day after the incident, while Mike was sleeping off seven outsize inputs of Old Grand-Dad, the IA flight recroder was taken to the FAA regional office fro readout plotting. The completed plot showed a very interesting pattern. The plane entered the climatic CAT at a reduced airspeed, 245 knots; during the maximum incremental G-forces were about 4.8, going from plus 3 Gs to 1.8 Gs negative. When the investigators compared notes with the Inter-Texas 727, her flight recorder showed a lower exertive G-force pattern; yet there had been a fatality on that plane and three people were on the critical list.
The NTSB wanted the answer to one question: Was there an operational lesson to be learned from the CAT incident? Their sophisticated recording and monitoring equipment would never reveal the most imperative factors in air safety – the strengths, wisdom, and weaknesses of the human who sits in the left cockpit seat of a giant flying machine. Investigators could not get inside the head of a man like Mike Hagen. And then, if they could, and if they had been able to see this pilot at Ellen’s Place, it would have been a bitter paradox.

Joe Barnes, IA’s CHIEF pilot, was a vibrant sturdy Midwesterner. He was a legend around the industry, because he was the only man left on the operational side of the airlines he had actually flown a Ford Tri-Motor on regular service. He was fifty nine – six months away from retirement – and he planned to return to the Midwest and buy into a small, fixed-base operation. He had grown up in the infant days of barnstorming, and he wanted to live out the rest of his life near a flying field.

He had met Mike on IA’s transcontinental service in 1968, when Mike was flying co-pilot on the senior flights. They had flown together several times before Joe asked the younger pilot how he got into flying.
“Crop-dusting in Florida,” said Mike. “Citrus spraying while I was going to the university.”
“I used to be a spray devil myself,” Joe said.
A fellow crop duster! In the eyes of the older pilot, Mike Hagen immediately gained enormous stature. An Ag. Pilot knew what it was all about: the small, private, closed world of those great half-crazy pilots who sprayed crops, (I always knew ‘our’ Bingo was a bit crazy!!!) followed the seasons, and saw some poetry and beauty in rural America – the taste of the earth, Joe called it.
“These big jets go too high,” Joe had said. “I like the low world.”
From that moment in the cockpit, the two former contact flyers shared a fellowship and respect for each other that rarely exists between modern airline pilots. When Joe became Chief pilot, he never allowed Mike any special breaks of preferential treatment, but because he shared with the younger pilot something very special, he began teaching Mike everything he knew, and in a way Joe thought of Mike as the son he never had.

When the reports of the December 10 incident reached Joe’s office, he had felt a warm, special pride. He’s student had saved lives and placed the carrier in a favorable light. This meant a lot to Joe, because unlike Mike Hagen, he was a company man all the way.

Before the hearing, Mike and Joe met for a quick lunch at the Del Coronado.
“Isn’t it strange how things come round,” Joe began. “Here we’re sitting on the edge of the field where Ryan built the ‘Spirit of St. Louis’. At Lindbergh Field, almost fifty years later, we’re talking about something that happened to a giant airplane in the crazy upper air.”
“That’s right, all those years, and we’re still experimenting. Probably we’ll keep right on.”
“I hope so,” Joe said. “But flying is getting so mechanical. You brought the human factor in yesterday. Level with me, how did you know you would hit that stuff?”
Mike hesitated and a smile crept across his red face. “I didn’t know. I just played a hunce, took precautions, and it paid off.”
“That’s what I figured.” The chief pilot laughed. “But this afternoon Fitzsimmons wants me to come on strong – act like we always tell our pilots to do more than necessary.”
“Am I supposed to say that?”
“No I’m going to give an opening statement on behalf of the company, then you tell them how you sensed the CAT and thought safety was more important than serving breakfast. Don’t lay it on too much, just enough for believability.”
“Joe, you know if we tried to keep passengers under seat belts all the time, they’d get pretty annoyed. That’s what the marketing VP I had aboard proposes.”
“Well, he was certainly impressed. Told Fitz you were a remarkable pilot. Don’t play it down too much, Mike. Remember, someone was killed on the other flight; you got everyone through. That’s what couts.”
“I’ll say my piece…. don’t worry.”
“The line always has its captains take every meteorological condition into consideration; something to that effect.”
“Sure, but you and I know every carried does the same.”
“Say it anyway. You could be chief pilot at IA someday.”
Mike did not answer.


The hearing was held in the FAA building adjacent to Lindbergh Field. The government safety officials sat around the long conference table waiting fo hear why the flight instruments could not tell them.
Joe Barnes gave his opening statement : Jim Cochran praised the work of the captain; the flight enigineer echoed the co-pilot’s testimony. Each stewardess told her story. Finally they called Mike.
“What was your clue that severe CAT was coming, Captain Hagen?” the official asked.
“At JFK I saw the position of the jet stream yesterday morning. I figured the relationship to the wind shear, and it seemed to me that Sigmet Charlie 4, the light moderate warning, didn’t reflect the situation , if the weather map was right. Frankly, I didn’t know which was correct, but then the temperature began dropping, as it does sometimes near turbulence.”
“I see. So you sensed that serious CAT could be in the region. How did you know the trim tab cable was loose?”
“It felt different.”
“You could actually feel it in the trim tab wheel?”
“Sort of,” Mike repeating his small lie.
“What recommendations do you feel we could introduce, based upon your experience?”
“I think the downgrading of turbulence sigmets should be handled very carefully,” he said. “That appeared to be the problem yesterday. If I had been the forecaster, I would have worded the updated sigmet differently. Maybe Charlie 5 was misleading in downgrading the turbulence from ‘light to moderate’ to just ‘light’.”

Weather forecasting, even in this day of advanced monitoring and reporting, is still an infant science. Pilots flying through the Texas-Louisiana area early that morning had reported no problems. Perhaps they were just lucky in not encountering the turbulence, or perhaps the CAT had yet not developed. In any event, the forecaster in the Houston area, seeing their reports, had seen fit to downgrade the sigmet.
To a pilot, light turbulence means small bumps causing slight discomfort; seat belts are not normally required. Moderate turbulence does call for fastened seat belts. With light to moderate turbulence, a pilot has some latitude. While one might snap on the seat-belt sign, another may feel it’s unnecessary. Clearly downgraded Sigmet Charlie 5 had not provided and adequate warning.

The hearing ended at 5:10p.m. Mike went immediately to his hotel room and took a long long drink from the thermos. It was just about time; he could feel that gnawing, familiar urgency coming on. Then he called Pat and told her about the hearing and the congratulations he’d received from NTSB’s administrator. She bit hard on her tongue, whishing the incident had never occurred. What irony, she thought.

That night, before dinner at her beach house and after, Mike drank heavily.
Angry, Pat said, “You’ve got to straighten yourself out. I’m not going to sit around worrying about you.”
“All right. I promise you I’ll go to AA when I get back. Don’t worry about it. I’m not that guy Ray Milland played. I haven’t dropped a weekend yet, baby, and I’m not going to start.”

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER FOUR:

The next morning, flight 602, IA’s eastbound SAN-JFK nonstop, took off from Lindbergh Field twenty minutes late. It was the same plane, N8907C; it had been inspected by the FAA, put back together, and signed off. Mike decided to deadhead back, and he was replaced by a captain from the carrier’s Los Angeles-based reserve list. Mike told Joe Barnes jokingly that he was goigng to relax and ride with him in first class on the way back, courtesy of IA.
Joe was pleased, because he wanted to talk company policy. He’d be able to go over the story with Mike again, to make sure that the brass would know what a splendid job the IA New York-based flight department had done. Joe saw the possibility of a bonus coming up for this.

Mike had slipped his refilled spooker into a coat pocket, and after boarding the aircraft, entered the second forward head, opened the flap door, and attached his lifeline. Thirty-five minutes after take-off, the stewardesses came by with the drink cart. Joe nudged Mike. “Come on, we’ll gas up.”
“No, thanks. Never drink during the day. I’ll have ginger ale.”
“Give me a double Scotch and soda,” Joe ordered.
The drinks were served. Mike excused himself and went forward to the lavatory, took a paper cup, and had his third spooker of the day, the first two having gone down in his hotel room.

The old chief pilot talked over the CAT business. Then all the way back east he rambled on about the early days in flying, spreading his joyous life out before Mike Hagen.

When the flight landed at JFK, Mike collected his spooker and said good-bye to Joe Barnes. He had agreed to write a memorandum for him in CAT and the measures the company could suggest to precautionary policy.
In the parking lot, Mike saw Jim moving toward his car; they waved, and then Jim came over. “That was some job you did the other day, but as a friend, Mike, I think you ought to cool the booze. I’m sorry to have say this, but it’s getting worse.”
“I realize,” Mike said solemnly. “I’m going to do something about it. Stick by me for a while, Jim, will you?”
“You know I will. Anything I can do, I’ll do, but I want you to know that I have a responsibility here – to the passengers and my family. We’re in the same cockpit, right?”
“Sure, Jim, sure. Thanks.”
Minutes later Mike waved as his co-pilot dorve by. Then he got into his Nova and put his head between his hands.
“What happened?” he said out loud. “How?”
He would begin by not stopping at Ellen’s Place.
That was the first step.
It was 8:30 p.m. and the traffic was worse than usual. This provided a good, practical excuse for Ellen’s Place, but as much as he needed to stop, Mike drove past the turn-off and felt a small victory. Then, as the Nova crawled along the jammed highways, he felt the empty, painful sensation in his stomach and head. He thought about stopping at a gas station, but drinking in a fetid men’s room revolted him, so he got off the New England Thruway at Pelham, New York, and pulled into a the parking lot of a place callet the Candlelight Club. He put on his dark raincoat and ran in. There he sipped the bourbon that a taciturn bartender poured for him and, refueled, set out again for Ridgefield.
He was disgusted with himself.
“I can’t even get home,” he said aloud. “I can’t even get home.”

Ridgefield, Connecticut, is one of a string of old pre-Revolutionary towns in Fairfield County. The pleasant, rolling terrain is dotted with magnificent houses dating back to the late 1700. Among the various affluent groups living there now is a new generation of pilots. Many captains chose the town because it is just above an hour away from JFK – if one drives at three in the morning in good weather – at the outer limit allowed by the air- for a pilot’s residence.
The Hagens had moved to Ridgefield shortly before a heavy influx of business executives drove up real estate prices. They bought a large place, said to have been built in 1781; it had almost three acres, and even the remnants of an old orchard, but age in a house, Mike found, has its drawbacks. From the beginning things went wrong; plumbing, shingles, wiring, rain gutters, rotten beams. Each year there was a project, and on his co-pilot’s salary, Mike fell behind, even though he did much of the work himself. When he became a captain, it was still difficult to tie all the financial ends together.

Jean. She was thirty-nine and aging unwillingly. She had met Mike one summer when he was crop-dusting , working the citrus groves around Indian River, Florida. At the time Jean was taking flying, waterskiing, and scuba-diving lessons at a woman’s junior college in Fort Lauderdale. Her father was a fairly successful real estate dealer in Jacksonville.
Life at the Ag strip was lonely, and to Mike, Jean seemed like a gift from heaven. She was blond and pretty, and before long, they were involved in a love affair. A few months later they were married, in a lavish wedding. Jean’s father was quite pleased, because he liked the young Ag pilot. Her mother, a snobbish woman, was not. “What’s the future for a crop sprayer?” she asked her daughter.
After Mike graduated from the University of Florida at Gainesville eith a degree in agriculture, he continued crop-dusting. Jean, who had quite a bit of artistic talent, designed exotic plants for an artificial-flower factory in Fort Lauderdale. She was no happier than her mother had been with Mike’s job and urged him to join a commercial airline, which would guarentee steady employment and some respectability. He resisted, but when he realized she’d never be happy as the wife of a crop duster, he gained an ATR and flew junior toutes as a DC-3 co-pilot with a national airline. He joined IA in 1957 and was transferred to the carrier’s New York base. Jean stated emphatically she would not live in Queens, where most of the younger co-pilots settled: so they moved to Ridgefield, and the pressure was on.
As the bills mounted, Jean said they needed supplementary income. Mike began teaching at the Danbury, Connecticut, airport, some seven miles to the north, but Jean felt that the additional money he earned was inadequate. “We need a steady business that will grow. We have to put the girls through college, and I mean good schools,” she said.
“You can always send them to your alma mater to learn waterskiing,” he said sarcatically. Jean ignored his acid comment.
“I’d like to start an artificial-flower business, mail order. It would cost about fifteen thousand to get going. I’ve been talking about it to Bill Cousins. He’s a chemist and he said he’d invest in it. We can borrow the rest. Bill has a marvelous gimmick, a spray that’ll make the flowers smell. Different jungle scents. You have a lot of time off, so you can help me. I’ll make the flowers and you run the business.”
“For heaven’s sake, I’m a pilot, not a florist,” Mike said, hating what she was trying to do to him, but Jean prevailed, as usual. Their synthetically scented artificial flowers were soon in production at a small office in Ridgefield.

When Mike reached home after the San Diego hearing, Jean greeted him with a “we’re behind at the office.”
He pushed past her to set his heavy bags down. Karen and Debbie had homework spread out on the dining-room table, and they both jumped up an hugged him. “Hi, Dad, where you been?” Karen said. “We were about to send out the Mod Squad.
Jean broke in and told the girls to go upstairs.
Mike threw his coat on a chair and went directly to the bar, poured some bourbon, and then turned to Jean. “My lovely, concerned wife. You didn’t even ask me what happened. Not where I’ve been, or the reason I was delayed. All you’re interested in is those stinking flowers!”
Their two daughters looked at each other resignedly and gathered up their books. They knew what was coming.
Jean started toward the den. “Well, well! The pilot of all time has come home in a mood. There’s a turkey TV dinner in the icebox,” she yelled, and slammed the door behind her.

The following morning Mike went to their office over the local hardware store. It was three rooms jammed with foul-smelling, exotic, outsize flowers, shipping boxes, and piles of orders that overwhelmed Mrs. MacGregor, the elderly retired schoolteacher they employed. Mike spent the morning shuffling orders, and by 11:00 he was ready for the spooker. He went to the small icebox and fixed his drink.
Mrs. MacGregor suspected he nipped now and then, but she didn’t particularly think anything of it. The pilot never changes his smile, raised his voice, stumbled downstairs – things she associated with those who drank heavily.
That was Mike’s problem. He drank too well.
As he brought the cold drink to his lips, he looked out the window at Main Street, at the women with their children and station wagons. For a split second he pictured a crop duster working a field somewhere south of the Indian River. A flick of a strange lens.
Bearing down on him was the promised telephone call to AA, an admission that he was in trouble. Was he? No, Mike thought, he didn’t need to hear a bunch of reformed drunks swap horror stories, holier-than-thous commiserating over coffee, telling it like it was when, but he knew Pat would question him, so he might as well get on with it. Where? He couldn’t go across to the Presbyterian Church, where a sign announced the AA meeting every Wednesday night; it would be only a matter of days before the IA flight department heard that one of their senior captains was so deep into the sauce that he needed Alcoholics Anonymous? Not in Ridgefield, or any of the towns nearby, for everyone knew everyone else in this part of Connecticut.
Then the idea came to him. He had a biplane at the Danbury airport. Why not fly to AA? The thought of a pilot showing up in his own plane for the weekly “drunk talk” amused him.
Mike studied the sectional chart of airports ringing the area: New Heaven’s Tweed Airport had landing lights, long hard-surfaced runways, and radio navigational aids. He would find an AA group that met near New Haven. Perfect strategy.
In the back of his mind he wanted something, anything, to come out of the meeting. He loved to drink and he’d never give the bourbon up, but he wanted to throw away the damned thermos, never see Ellen’s Place again, and make it through the day without needing a boost to get over the previous night. An obvious solution would be to knock off the nights before, but that he couldn’t do, at least not yet.
He knew that Brandford was near the New Haven airport. Maybe it was the kind of town that would have his sort of drunk. He dialed the Brandford AA.
“Alcoholics Anonymous,” a woman answered.
“I’d like some information. Where does your group meet?”
“At the firehouse, tonight at seven thirty. If you need any help before that, I could have someone call you back now.”
“I don’t need any help!” Mike slammed down the phone.
He wanted t fly. Immediately. The meeting wasn’t until 7:30, so he had plenty of time. He took another spooker, which cleaned out some of the anger.

He knew the routine and limits of constant, experienced drinking; how far he could go, what he could do and not do. On his way to the Danburry airport, he stopped at a trucking diner and piled onto a large order of bacon and eggs, hot and greasy, to counteract the morning bourbon and line his gut for the next spooker. After two cups of coffee his head was clear, and he went on toward the field. As he drove along, with the windows down and the air hitting him in the face, his thoughts bounced back to his Florida childhood. He had spent every minute he could at the Ag field among the rough-edged flying cowboys, men who worked the crops down through Lousiana and Alabama for the various seasons, always ending up in south Florida for citrus dusting, the last stop before they would bing it, sober up, feel sorry, and fly north to repeat the crop cycle. Sometimes those cowboys would take him up.
By the time he was sixteen, Mike had saved enough money for flying lessons, but not in a Piper Cub trainer. He talked a citrus sprayer into letting him learn in a weathered Waco UPF-7. When he went up alone the first time, he was at the stick of that same old, but beautiful, rugged two-winger, one of the wire-and-cloth jobs, with a radial engine in front spitting out over two hundred horses. It was all there: the whistling air, the loneliness, and that great hungry sky he loved.
Years later, in 1971, when Mike bought a plane, it was an antique Waco, the very model in which he had soloed. It took seven months to locate it, for most Wacos had wasted away, rusting in cornfields; a generation of great planes was gone, except for a few sitting it out in air museums, or in the hands of antique plane colletors. Mike had placed an ad in Trade-A-Plane, a national weekly newspaper, and finally he tracked down the model he wanted on a Kansas farm. The old, faded UPF-7 needed work, thousands of dollars’ worth, but it could be done.
Mike and his older daughter, Karen – she was twelve at the time – drove all the way out to Kansas. Together they disassembled the plane, marking each part. Then they hoisted the old fuselage on a flatbed trailer, and fastened the wings to each side. They came east the slow way, making stops at the Edison Museum, enjoying their time together.
When he got home, Mike rented a corner of a hangar at the Danbury airport and installed the Waco on blocks. He worked on his plane whenever he could, removing the old fabric, taking out the rotted wing spars and replacing them with well- seasoned spruce. In his cellar he made a new instrument panel out of rare burled walnut, into which he set modern flight instruments ringed with highly polished, top-quality brass. It was a work of love, an odd kind of pilgrimage back to the Florida of the 1940s. Jean said nothing about the plane and never came to the damp, lonely hangar to see what was going on.
He sprayed the plane with orange lacquer, five times and trimmed it with a blue-and-white stripe, like the Waco he soloed in many years before, and he named her Alice after that first plane. When he finally rolled her out one spring day, it was doubtful that a more perfect Waco had ever emerged from a hangar. People around the airport – the “hangar rats” – gave a beer-and-hot-dog party for Mike that afternoon. His children attended, but not Jean.
The event had been capped off when Mike put on his old flying jacket, climbed into the cockpit, and fed in the power. The plane rolled down the runway, the tail came up, he held the stick forward for a moment, and then his beloved Waco lifted off. It went higher and higher over the green Connecticut hills. He had thought about pulling a few inside loops or Cuban eights, but he wanted to familiarize himself with the plane, so he just flew by the crowd and waved. When the Waco landed, everyone, including Mike Hagen, had been satisfied.

Mark parked the Nova by the side of the hangar, waved to one of the regulars, and pushed against the hangar door. As it slid back, a shaft of bright afternoon light touched the orange Waco. Mike put on his flying suit, not a mail-order variety but a real one, with a moth-eaten fur collar and cracked, oil-stanined leather. He had bought it for two dollars from an old crop duster who was about to stuff it in the ash can.
He climed in, put on his helmet and goggles, and hit the electric starter, one of his few concessions to progress. The engine choked, sputtered, and finally caught, knocking out a puff of blue-black smoke. He smelled the hot oil and his ear okayed the sounds as the engine warmed up and the tone evened.
He taxied Alice into position and fed in the power; the runway blurred under him and he brought the tail up, finally the wheels. The engine thundered and the chrome prop chewed the still air, taking the Waco higher and higher, up through the clouds, into the fresh, free world he loved. Clean air rushed past his face. Mike called it his air therapy; it dampened the flow of a new spooker and flattenedout the ache for another….higher and higher…
They were eating up the sky. With a close look at the airspeed, he pulled back the stick and the bird curved up into the deep blue of the higher sky; he fed in full power and the Waco set on her tail, going up and over. He cut it on top, hanging blissfully upside down. Then to complete the inside loop he worked the stick again and the Waco came around. He was laughing.
Mike went again, pulling her up with full power until he hit the top, and he curved off, performing an acrobatic maneuver, the Split-S. As he leveled the plane once more, he searched for a hole in the cloud cover. When he found it, he put the Waco in a spin.
“Don’t think I can fly, Jim Cochran? Very few guys can do this, baby, so whereveryou are, Jim Cochran, Pat Simpson, Joe Barnes, hope you’re watching.

This is dedicated to you, kiddies.”
Mike pulled a perfectly executed Cuban eight for them, for himself. Satisfied, he used the omni-frequency radio device to get the magnetic heading to New Haven. Then he banked around and flew off to his AA reconnaissance.
Twenty minutes later he was calling the New Haven tower for landing instructions. When cleared, he slapped down the heavy old Waco on the runway with an acute crop duster’s slip.

After he had the Waco parked by the New Haven terminal, he called Pat to tell her he was going to join the Branford, Connecticut, AA chapter. He didn’t tell her how he was getting there; that was his delicious secret. Then he called for a cab to the firehouse. Once there, he instructed the driver to return for him in about two hours.
As soon as Mike ambled into the meeting, a balding man with a large smile raced to him, his eager hand outstretched. “Welcome, good to have you.”
Mike wanted this friendly, self-satisfied ex-drinker to dissapear. He considered flying back to Danbury at once, but he stayed on.
The meeting was just as Mike had imagined. The first speaker, an elderly retiree, told funny stories of her intoxicated days: stepping on the dog, falling over the mailbox, clippipng zig-zagged hedges after a few in the kitchen. To Mike her talk was sad, for her former inebriated state seemed to have been the high point of her lonely life.
Next a man told his story. He had been fired from his job at a boat company in
Groton; his wife had left him; in the end he found himself strapped to a bed at the state mental hospital. After release he fought a losing battle with booze, in and out of hospitals, with no hope until he met another alcoholic, a once attractive, now ravaged woman. They had joined AA together and were finding new contentment.
The third speaker was a smartly dressed woman in her fifties.
“My name is Helen and I’m an alcoholic,” she began. “Unlike the other two speakers this evening, I didn’t know I was in trouble. Before marrying and moving to Branford, I was having a glorious time in Chicago as an account executive for a well-known advertising agency.”
Mike was interested in this speaker. She was obviously sophisticated and she seemed to draw a bead on his own problem. He somehow couldn’t identify with the devastated people who had preceded her.
“At the time I joined the advertising agency I didn’t drink during the day. In the evenings I had a martini, sometimes two, but there was no dependency, no habit, not even a bare hint of alcoholism. Then I started going out to lunch with clients and I would have a cocktail. Eventually I was drinking two martinis at lunch and three before dinner. Saturdays and Sundays became very difficult, because around noon my body and mind would say it was time for martinis. Saturdays I called up girl friends and we combined two-martini lunches with shopping trips, and on Sundas it would be one of the hotels that served brunch. It’s important to understand that I didn’t drink any more than two at lunch and three, possibly four, before dinner.
One everning a date and I were on Lake Shore Drive. A drunken driver swerved and hit us. True irony. I woke up in the emergency ward of a city hospital with a minor concussion. It was about eight o’ clock. I had missed my three martinis that night, but it didn’t bother me because they gave me a handful of pills and I slept until nine thirty the next morning.
About five that afternoon I began to feel dizzy and very strange. The intern said it was probably due to my head injury. He prescribed more pills, but by seven the dizziness was much worse. I became disoriented and my hands started to shake. The attending physician was called in. He took one look at me and asked, ‘You drink?’ I nodded. He wanted to know how much; and when I told him, he said, ‘You’re suffering withdrawal symptoms’.
The hospital had a general rule that all alcoholics or suspected alcoholics had to be sequestered in the ‘alkie’ ward. I protested and screamed, but still I ended up in that foul-smelling ward. They gave me pills, tied me down to the bed, and all that night I sweated, hearing the yells of the poor helpless women around me. It was a nightmare. When I was able to, I called my lawyer and doctor and was transferred to a small, private drying-out sanitarium. I joined AA and haven’t taken a drink since.
Later I learned that a good many people are borderline alcoholics. Some progress, others don’t, but anyone whose life has to be adjusted to alcohol, arranged around it, is in trouble. Finding out about myself the way I did was a terrible shock.”

The story depressed Mike. How did noe know where the border was beyond which one could hit bottom?
He had coffee with the man who had greeted him, then he looked at his watch, put on a small smile, and briskly walked out to the waiting taxi. It was past spooker time. He asked the driver if there was a bar on the way to the airport; the cabbie knew a place. Mike went in and ordered an Old Grand-Dad. He was about to push the glass over for a refill, but he caught himself. At the airport he had his retarder: a bacon cheeseburger with two cups of coffee.

A light rain had begun, and when he dropped out of the black sky at the Danbury airport, he was wet, cold, and tired. The landing was hard, followed by a bounce. He didn’t quite understand what had happened. It was probably the restriction of night vision. Of course, that was it.
AA wasn’t going to work for him.
Mike knew it as he went to the bar in the Ridgefield house.

The following week, just before his next San Diego flight, Mike drove over to an AA group in Stamford. Between the two meetings he experimented with his spookers. For five days prior to his trip he cut out the midmorning spooker, timing the rest of his intake precisely to a normal flying day. There were six and a half hours between the Ellen’s Place fill-up and the one at the Houston hotel. The first four days were difficult, but the fifth day he didn’t quite feel the nagging emptiness around 10:00 in the morning.
On the day of his flight Mike stopped at Ellen’s, but he didn’t leave the cockpit all that morning. He wasn’t ready for the afternoon withdrawal yet. When they left Operations in San Diego, Jim said softly, “Getting ahold of it, Mike?”
“Damned right. It’ll take a while, but I’m in AA now, cutting wasy back, Jim.”

That night at dinner Mike had two drinks instea of four, and he told Pat about AA.
“Aren’t you supposed to stop drinking?” she asked.
“Honey, I don’t want to stop entirely, I just want to drink less. I’m not an alcoholic in the real sense.”
Pat didn’t know what to say, but at least she knew he was easing off. He didn’t even take his usual after-dinner brandy.

The next few flights were routine. Mike skipped the midmorning drink, and on the third trip out to the coast without a problem, he decided to abandon the afternoon spooker, but the craving seized him before they got to San Diego. As soon as he left Operations, he raced for the men’s room and unscrewed the thermos. He didn’t sip, he gulped.
That evening he and Pat went to a beach party. It was the middle of January, but the weather was fairly warm. Steads, seafood, corn, and potatoes were cooking, and as the party got into gear, Mike began to drink. By 11:00 he had had four stiff bourbons. He was enjoying himself, but about 12:30 he edged over to Pat, who was a little into it herself, and suggested they cut out.
“In just a minute, darling,” she said.

That minute was an important one in Mike Hagen’s life. He went back and asked for a bourbon refill, and the salesman tending the bar poured the pilot a stiff one. He finished it off, then asked for another.

Mike went to bed at Pat’s at 4:15 a.m. He was not stumbling or wheeling about, but he was drunk. Pat woke at 8:00, looked over at Mike, sound asleep, then made sure that the alarm was set for 9:30.

As she dressed she realized that it had been a mistake to take Mike to the beach party. The buzz in her head had told her so, but she han an important client presentation that morning and her mind was on her job, not Mike. She wrote a quick note, put it on the kitchen table, and left for the office.

The alarm went off at 9:30. When Mike finally switched it off and sat up, he had that fuzzy out-of-sorts feeling he had experienced so many times. Still, his hangover wasn’t bad, considering the amount of bourbon he had consumed. He leaned back on the bed, thinking…call in sick? No. As always, Mike rejected that one easy phone call. His recipe for mornings like this was a very cold shower, the heavy breakfast, a bigger than usual spooker, three vitamin B complex pills, and a little oxygen when he reached the cockpit.
He entered the kitchen and read Pat’s note, then he put on the bacon, and went to the bathroom to take an icy shower. The cold water cleared his head, his “fat” breakfast calmed the shout in his stomach. He packed some ice in a plastic bag, slid it into the thermos, and poured in Old Grand-Dad. At last it was time for the vital lifeline spooker. He drank thirstily, then called for a cab, telling them to make it fast.

Fifteen minutes past sign-in time, Mike walked into Operations after his usual routine with Visine, Sen-Sen, and cover stick. He ambled over to the dispatcher to get his machine flight plan. Then he walked to the weather boards and looked at the prog, the surface charts, and finally at the winds aloft. He was satisfied with the situation, and went out to the DC-8-61.
He climbed the steps to the aircraft, said hello to Nancy, then concealed his spooker in the first head. When he entered the cockpit he told Him and the flight engineer to double-check some figures in Operations. After they left, he locked the cockpit door and slipped the oxygen mask over his mouth. He hit the switch and the cool, rejuvenating oxygen rushed into his lungs. He often did this to ease his head pains, and today, as usual, he felt much better in a matter of minutes. He put down the mask and unlocked the cockpit door so as not to arouse suspicion. Shortly afterward Jim Cochran and the flight engineer returned.

The Stretch-8 lifted off routinely at 11:38 that morning and climbed to three thousand feet on a course that would take the flight over Blythe, California, then up to northern Arizona. The purity of the morning light magnified the ground colors. Through the front windshield they could see almost a hundred miles – the rugged end of the High Sierras, the rough plateau country beyond, then the burst of yellow desert stretching before them, finally disappearing into the soft horizon. The plane was on autopilot, and Make sat back, feeling the first hunger of the day. He knew he would need two spookers – one at 12:30; another about 2:00 – and he wondered if he could wait until 12:30 without a third, a damned third!

Jim looked over at Mike. He saw his pouchy, heavy eyes and recongnized the signs of a hard night, even throught Mike’s cosmetics.
At last it was 12;30; Mike lifted himself out of his seat. Both lavatories were in use, and when the second became free, he pretended not to notice. It seemed to take forever for the sign on the first to switch from OCCUPIED to VACANT.
The cold bourbon tasted delicious that day, colder, nippier than usual. He almost saw the tawny liquid trickling down his gullet into his stomach, absorbed into his bloodstream, traveling up to his head to work the nerves. He stood there for a minute, took a refill, replace the spooker, and shoved Sen-Sen into his mouth.
When Mike returned to the cockpit, Jim had the New York forecast: Ceiling one thousand feet, light rain with two miles visibility.

It was now 3:40 p.m. in New York and the rain had started. A low-pressure center, predicted to sweep through the area around 4:00, had picked up considerable speed and was already over the Atlantic and deepening. As a young IA meteorologist later said, “She was a freaky low, without a constant rate of speed.” But the men in the cockpit of the DC-8-61 weren’t aware of the change in the weather until they reached their next checkpoint, southwest of Cleveland, just about the time Mike left for his second spooker. The theroms went dry on the second paper cup, and when Mike returned to the cockpit, Jim told him to call Chicago. Mike dialed the company frequency, and the chief dispatcher came on.
“Captain, we notice you’re behind on the check-in points.”
“Affirmative. There’s a bad head wind.”
“How many pounds of fuel on board?”
Mike asked the flight engineer, then answered, “Twenty-four thousand, two hundred.”
“That’s about what we show. Captain, JFK’s above minimum visibility for landing, but you can expect thirty to forty minutes of holding pattern near the airport. That’ll put you into your reserve. Would you elect Cleveland or Pitsburgh to take on fuel?”
“I’ll get back to you on that, Dispatch.”
Mike clicked off the button and leaned back in his seat. By the time they landed and took on the fuel, at least another hour and a half would have gone by, and this delay would put Mike close to the “mean reds”. He couldn’t leave the cockpit in Cleveland or Pittsburgh and shop in uniform for liquor. He felt like hell: he needed a drink and he couldn’t wait an extra hour and a half. Then he made a mistake. He told Dispatch the flight would continue to New York.
This was the first time that Mike’s decision making had been affected by the spookers. He knew he was over the line now.
Jim, meanwhile was doing calculations of his own. He found they might be pinched into a low-fuel situation if fog suddenly closed down JFK. “Mike, I think we should file for Cleveland,” he said. “We’re playing this too close.”
“We’re fine,” Mike told his co-pilot. Then he whispered, low enough to outfox the voice recorder, “Get the hell off my back!”

At t:30 New York time, JFK’s ceiling was down to five hundred feet and the incoming traffic runway’s visual range was about two thousand feet. Flight 602 was nine minutes late at the next checkpoint, the Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, VORTAC, but they pushed on. What was about to happen was not entirely Mike Hagen’s fault, although J` im Cochran and the flight engineer believed otherwise.
The mistake of not taking on fuel along the way was clearly Mike’s blunder, but this was compounded by the IA dispatcher working the flight, because he let the plane into the New York area when holding time was erratic. All that day, as the fog drifted in and out, holding time had alternately decreased and increased. Now, as Mike circled and circled, he was indeed cutting it close in his fuel, but he held on, hoping. The dispatcher finally had to say, “Captain, you’re going critical.”
“That’s affirmative,” Mike answered with an ease that Jim Cochran couldn’t believe.
“Name Philadelphia,” the dispatcher ordered, his voice edgy.
There was a pause.
“Philadelphia it is,” Mike said mechanically.
He made a PA. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have been diverted to Philadelphia, and we should arrive there in about twenty minutes. We will return to New York as soon as weather conditions improve. We apologize for this inconvenience. Thank you.”
Mike knew they’d be over Philadelphia with barely enough fuel. With fatigue creeping up on him, combined with self-disgust for not landing earlier and his belly’s futile scream for another spooker, Mike realized he was in trouble. He prayed silently…..”get me down on that strip, and I’ll do anything! Just get me down!
The cockpit was dark, except for the reddish glow rising from the instrument panel. Still, even in this dimness, Jim noticed Mike’s erratic hand movements as he fumbled about, adjusting knobs that didn’t need adjustment. The flight was descending routinely and the last of the fuel was being pumped to the slowly revolving turbines. The men in the cockpit understood the perils, but the sleepy passengers behind them were unaware of the problems, mechanical and human, that could effect their lives.
At 7:20 that night, as the DC-8-61 was descending rapidly from fifteen thousand feet, Jim contacted Philadelphia approach control, seventy miles away. He pushed the button on the transponder and the flight was identified on the radar in the tower.
“We have you, IA 602. Descend and maintain eight thousand.”
Nancy unlocked the cockpit door. She often sat down in the fourth seat to enjoy a sigarette before tackling her pre-landing duties. Ordinarily she found a relaxed, easy atmosphere on the flight deck. Tonight the men appeared tense, their movements jumpy. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“We have a problem, but we can’t go into it now, Nancy.” Mike answered. “Please return to the cabain…everything will be all right.”
Mike’s skull was pounding. For a second he thought of asking Jim to take over, but Mike was stubborn, and he had decided this was going to be his final landing before running for help.

When a large jet is being landed, everything – speed, horizon angle, sink rate, among other imperatives – must come together, and corrections cannot be made as quickly as they can in a heavy piston aircraft. All the way down the alley Mike was sweating, and when they broke out of the scud, about fifteen hundred feet from the threshold, he was about fifty feet too high and his target speed – which should have been around 140 knots – was reading 157.
“High and hot, Mike!” Jim yelled.
“There’s plenty of concret here.”
It was clearly a go-around situation, but Mike continued, determined to stick it on.
“We’re much too hot, Mike!” Jim yelled again as his hands reached out for the thrust levers.
“You touch those and I’ll break your butt!’
Some eleven hundred feet later they hit the runway. The noise sounded like an explosion. The plane bounced, then they were flying again, but they were fully committed to a landing. It was too late for a go-around.
The runway lights whisked by in a trail of blurs; the needed concrete was slippping away, rushing by under them, and they were still in the air. Mike drove it on again.
This time the big plane stuck. The spoilers went up. Mike flipped back the reverse-thrust levers, pushing down on the brake pedals as he saw the end of the runway appear out of the mist.
We’re going off the end! Mike thought in terror.
They started to slow; Mike had the brake pedals just about pushed to the floor. The reverse thrust screamed, and Mike was silently screaming too. Then they stopped, not forty feet from the fence. They were so close to the end that if the plane had had its proper fuel weight aboard, the momentum might have taken them off the runway….but they were on…safe and stopped….!
The passengers knew only that it was a hard landing, and most of them didn’t realize they had landed twice.
In a matter of seconds, as the big DC-8-61 turned off the last taxiway from runway 9-Right, Mike came on the PA. His voice was steady and he had regained his composure.
“Ladies and gentemen, this is the captain speaking. We apologize for that rough landing, but we had wind gusts on the way down and, as a safety measure, we kept a little more power on to better control the aircraft. This routinely results in hard landings, fully within the aircraft’s operational parameters. The continuation of your trip to New York will be arranged in the airport.”
The PA sailed over the passengers’ heads, but the men in the cockpit knew the announcement was bull. The DC-8-61 had been too high and too hot. Had the landing occurred on a shorter runway, they would plowed off the end. It was only the structural integrity of the giant plane that prevented the undercarriage from collapsing and spewing everyone out on the wet runway.
The plane and the passengers had survived the human factor…..this time.

Mike taxied to the gate. Then he went to the head and vomited. When he washed up, he saw what he never wanted to see again: a bloated face with puffy red eyes. He left the lavatory and went into the galley where Nancy was standing.
“New York’s reporting below minimums, Nancy. We’ll probably let the flight go here. That was a rough one. You got any of those little babies left?” Mike asked indicating the liquor locker.
She looked momentarily surprised. “I’ve already locked it up, but I think I can find a few bottles.” Nancy went out of the galley and returned in a few minutes, closing the curtain behind her.
“Here you go. Bourbon, right?” She handed him four of the small bottles and he stuffed them in his pants pocket.
“Thanks. I’ll take them to the Belvedere with me.”
“You’re staying in Philly tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m tired of traveling. I just want to put my feet up.”
Mike went back to the head, where he quickly drank two of the bourbons. He was bad off, and he knew it.
At 8:50 that evening the flight was terminated and the passengers were provided with ground transportation to New York. As Mike and his co-pilot make their way through the corridors of Philidelphia International Airpor, Jim said he wanted to have a talk with him.
“I’m going to the Belvedere,” Mike said. “We can talk there.”
They rode in silence to the hotel, where Mike checked into a room on the fourth floor. He ordered ice and poured himself a drink. He slumped wearily into a chair, waiting for the reprimand from Jim.
“All right. Spit it out.”
“Mike, until today I went along with you. I respected your flying and I thought you were really trying to lick the booze, but you’re not. This morning you looked like hell warmed over. I won’t sit in the same cockpit with you again. I feel sorry for you, but you have to pull yourself out. Can’t you see what’s happened? You have to get a doctor, Mike, and real quick!”
There was a long pause.
“Jim, please.” Mike got up and crossed to him, put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The co-pilot saw Mike’s bleary, pleading eyes. “Look at the job I did over Louisiana. My record is perfect. You know that Jim.”
“It’s not perfect! Drinking….”
“Don’t get sanctimonious!” Mike thundered. “You drink, too!”
“Sure, I’ve taken drinks on layovers, but I’ve stopped that…and I’ve never ever taken a drink in flight. Why didn’t we stop at Cleveland for fuel,Mike?”
“Because I couldn’t wait another two hours. My spooker was dry. I needed a drink. Don’t you understand what it’s like? Haven’t you ever desperately wanted a drink?”
“No, and I hope I never do. On that landing, couldn’t you just have said, “Take it, Jim?”
“It was going to be my last landing until I got off the booze.”
“Your last landing! It could have been my last landing, the last for over two hundred people.!” Jim walked toward the door, then turned. “Look, do everyone a favor. See Joe Barnes. Take yourself off the line until you’ve straightened out.”
“I’ll think about it Jim….I will…”


Mike slept fitfully that night. The next morning he had his usual large breakfast, drank the last bourbon, and deadheaded back to JFK.
When he arrived in Ridgefield the house was empty. He sat in the study, trying to decide what to do. Finally he called Dr. John Martinson, the family GP, who agreed to see him at 2:00 p.m.
Mike entered Dr. Martinson’s office, and he waited for about twenty minutes until the nurse announced the doctor would see him. Dr Martinson was about sixty-five and he had a thin, wrinkled face. Straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, Mike thought as he sat across from him.
“What’s wrong, Captain Hagen?” the doctor asked.
There was a long pause. “Well, I’m a little embarrassed to tell you, but I drink too much,” Mike finally said. “I have to have booze during the day.”
“How long has this been going on?” the doctor asked calmly.
“About a year or so – I mean, during the day.”
“How do you stop when you have to fly?”
“I don’t. I guess you could say I’m sort of hooked on it.”
“You drink while you’re flying?” This time there was consternation in the doctor’s voice. “In the cockpit?”
“I’ve been smuggling a thermos aboard. I put it in the lavatory and, uh, go there a couple of times during the trip.”
“Don’t you think you should stop flying until you get this cleared up, Captain Hagen?”
“I can’t take sick leave without a lot of questions being asked. Besides, I never seem to get drunk like other people. In all the time I’ve been sneaking drinks, it hadn’t reached the point that it affected my ability or judgement – until yesterday.
“Did you have and accident?”
“No, but we came damned close.”
The doctor was silent for a moment, and then said, “You need more help than a general practitioner can give you. I think you should see Court Jameson in New Canaan. He’s a psychiatrist who specializes in drinking problems. I’ve referred quite a few patients to him, with success, but you’ll have to tell Court the truth, and then do what he says…agreed?”
Mike nodded.
“All right. He’ll want a complete physical. We can start this afternoon. I’ll have my nurse call Danbury Hospital and make arrangements for you to have a liver-function test and X-rays for an indication of liver shrinkage or enlargement. When you come back here we’ll go through the other tests.”
Mike thanked the doctor and walked out into the bright sunlight. An exultation came over him, for he had made one decision but he wasn’t sure yet whether he could ever leave the spookers behind, or really wanted to. Deep down, Mike didn’t think he was an alcoholic – he never had blackouts, was abusive, or missed a flight because he couldn’t get up in the morning. He characterized his problem as alcoholic addiction, not alcoholism, but he wondered about Dr. Jameson. What would he call it?

Later that afternoon Mike checked into Danbury Hospital for the liver-function test and X-rays. By 4:00 he could hardly wait to get out. It was spooker time. He needed a drink more than ever.
He left the hospital and drove to a liquor store, where he bought a pint of bourbon, then he picked up a glass at a roadside shop, some ice from a machine, and headed for the Danbury airport.
In the hangar he poured a spooker, then another, and just sat there gazing at his beautiful, shiny orange bird. Finally he rolled Alice out, got in, cranked over the engine, and taxied down the field to a place where elm trees bordered the threshold.
He pulled out the mixture knob and the engine died. Mike felt extremely low, thinking about his life, where it had gone. When the air became chilly, he taxied the Waco back to the hangar and went home.
Mike called Dr. Martinson. “Look, I’ve had enough hospital stuff for today. Could we let the rest of it go until day after tomorrow?”
The doctor agreed.

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER FIVE:

Like many stewardesses, Nancy Halloway lived in the East Sixties of Manhattan. When she arrived back in her apartment that night after the Philadelphia landing, it was late and she was dog-tired.
While she got ready for bed she thought about Mike asking her for that booze. Somebody could have seen him stuffing those bottles into his pocket. That was the one thing the airline was rigid about: no liquor while in uniform.
A couple of days later, Nancy trip-traded and went out to San Francisco on IA’s flight 365. One of the other stewardesses was a girl who had been aboard flight 467 the day of the clear-air turbulence, and she and Nancy rehashed the trip and talked about how scared they’d been.
On take-off from New York, they were again in the jump seat of a DC-8-61. Nancy happened to glance toward the lavatory door and the water fountain outside, and something that had been gnawing at her bagan to take shape. She concentrated, trying to reconstruct that earlier flight. She remembered Mike coming from the cockpit, taking a paper cup, and going into the lavatory. She had wondered about the cup then, because the water inside wasn’t for drinking.
She had been the first one up after the turbulence, checking on the damage. She had gone to the lavatory to find out what the crash was all about. There had been a very strong smell of bourbon. No passengers had been in there; the only person to use the lavatory up to that point had been Mike. She was sure of that.
Next, the Philly trip. That was what was really bothering her. She had smelled liquor again in the lavatory. Then her visit to the cockpit, the guys’ nervousness, and that awful landing……and the little bottles of bourbon Mike had asked her for.
She was sick with what she was thinking. One minute she was convinced it couldn’ t possibly be true; she decided to forget it; the next minute, she was sure it was. She knew many pilots who drank discreetly on layovers, and occasionally, and on a difficult trip she had a nip or two herself behind the closed curtain of the galley. If Mike Hagen was sneaking a few on the job, she could almost understand it; she’d heard his homelife was falling apart and he was seeing some girl in San Diego.
Mike was a cautious, skilled pilot – one of the best. She respected him; look at the way he’d handled the CAT incident. On the other hand, she had a responsibility to the people aboard Mike Hagen’s flights. If she didn’t mention her suspicions and something terrible happened when Mike was drinking and at the controls…..As a matter of fact, she was scared herself; she flew with Mike more than anybody. Maybe the best favor she could to him would be to bring things out in the open so he could get professional help.
Rationalization. Reporting it would ruin his life for good. She didn’t want to be the one to blow the whistle on him.
What she wanted to do was lay the whole burden at somebody else’s feet, but whose? In her eighteen years with the airline, Nancy had never heard of a stewardess reporting a captain.
Finally she decided that when she got back to New York she’d tell Gloria Esposito. Gloria had been a supervisor of cabin attendants at La Guardia for about five years. They were good friends.
When Nancy called, Gloria told her to come right over.
“What’s the matter?” Gloria asked, opening her apartment door.
“Offer me a drink, will you? That’s what I want to talk about.”
Gloria poured them both Scotch, and they sat down. Nancy began to detail the December 10 flight’s turbulance, the Philadelphia landing, and last her growing suspicions about Mike Hagen.
“You mean he’s drinking during flight?”
“Well, that’s what it adds up to. I don’t want to think it’s true. Mike is the one who saved my hide that time in San Diego when I was dating Paul, the navy pilot, and missed the return flight. Mike covered for me with the story about how desperately ill I was. He put his own job on the line for me. Not only that, the guy is a really good pilot. I just don’t know what to do.”
“I understand how you feel, but if he is drinking, somebody higher up ought to know. I have an idea. I’ll check ride out on 467 next time Hagen’s on, and sit up front where I can see everything. We may be worrying for nothing, but if we do catch him doing it, we’ll have to report it.”

Mike passed his physical. There was no liver damage, and he set up and appointment with Court Jameson for the following week. Mike had spoken on the phone with Jim Cochran three times after the Philadelphia incident, and had told him about seeing Dr. Martinson. Jim agreed to fly with Mike again. On a cold day in late January they both showed up at JFK Operations for flight 467.
“Morning Jim,” Mike greeted his co-pilot. “How’s the en route weather?”
“Looks good,” Jim handed the captain the MFP, and the terminal and area forecasts for Houston. As Mike walked over to the weather desk, Gloria Esposito came to him. She didn’t think he looked like a lush. But Dr. Martinson had told Mike that he should start by cutting down on his drinking immediately, and he had only taken two drinks the night before and a spooker at Ellen’s Place that morning.
“I’m Gloria Esposito, check riding first class,” she said.
“Oh, sure. Well looks like we’ll having a smooth flight.”
Nancy, standing on the far side of Operations, never looked up. Before boarding the plane, Mike took Jim Cochran aside. “I want to thank you, Jim. I’ll still be taking one or two probably. I don’t have the cure yet, but it’s coming.”
“I understand. No problem Mike. I’m glad you went to the doctor….and relieved that you didn’t mind me sounding off.”
Mike boarded the plane twenty-five minutes before departure and stowed the thermos in the first lavatory. Gloria Esposito was sitting in 1-B, where she could see the forward head and the cockpit door. She was pretending to read Vogue, but over the pages she watched the captain enter the lavatory and close the door. After Mike returned to the cockpit, she entered the lavatory and studied everything carefull.
“No sign of booze,” she reported to Nancy.
The take-off was effortless. As soon as the plane reached cruising altitude, the stewardesses started the meal service. About two hours into the flight, Mike Hagen stepped out of the cockpit. He did not notice Gloria Esposito as he reached toward the dispenser, snapped a paper cup down, and entered the lavatory.
He looked in the mirror. The red rivers on his left cheek seemed lighter. He wondered how he would look when he stopped the spookers…but…it wasn’t time. He carefully pulled the cold thermos through the disposal locker door and poured the bourbon into the cup. Then he poured a small amount back into the thermos. He touched the icy liquor to his lips and felt the first bite of the fluid running down to do its work. He loved the feeling. He swallowed the rest, rinsed the cup, and put it in the disposal.
As soon as he came out, Gloria glanced at her watch; he’d been in the lavatory four minutes, ten seconds. She immediately went inside. No smell of liquor. Nothing unusual.
“Nancy, he just took a cup into the lav,” Gloria whispered as she stepped into the galley, but I didn’t smell anything.”
“I want to check myself.” Nancy entered the first lavatory. Gloria was right. No odor.
On the last leg of the flight, when they were over Arizona, Mike left the cockpit and went to the lavatory again, and that evening, at dinner in San Diego, the women began to discuss the Mike Hagen routine.
“He does the same thing each time,” Gloria said, “but I noticed something on the last leg. When he came out to use the lavatory, the first one was occupied; the second law wasn’t, but he waited until the first one was free.”
“You think a bottle’s hidden in there?” Nancy said.
“Possibly, but I searched that place thoroughly.” Gloria sighed.
“Maybe he’s just carrying a couple of miniatures around in his pocket. I’ll try to look for that tomorrow.”
“Perhaps you won’t find anything.” Nancy said hopefully.

Mike Hagen sat across from Pat in the small Mexican restaurant; he was unusually silent, only drinking one bourbon. Hurrah for AA, she thought.
“I want to tell you something,” he said slowly. “AA wasn’ t for me. Those people seem to enjoy telling the whole world about their boozing. I just couldn’t do it. I’d be embarrassed.” He paused. “But, something happened last week,” he went on “I made some mistakes on the flight back to New York.”
“I knew it! That party the night before. It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault. I should have decided to land at an alternate to take on fuel, but I didn’t.” Mike looked down at the red tablecloth. “My bourbon was gone. JFK’s weather was marginal. We held too long, fuel ran low, so we put in at Philly. I made a sloppy one-bounce landing. I was scared, Pat, for the first time in twenty-five years of flying.”
“Oh Mike.” She grabbed his hand.
“Anyhow, I went to the doctor, had a complete physical, and next week I’m seeing a shrink.”
“You’re not fooling yourself anymore, are you, Mike?”
“No, I’m in trouble. I know now what I have to do, Pat. For me…and for you.”

The flight back was a long one, with very little push from the westerly winds. Mike went to the head twice, and after his second visit, Gloria Esposito went to inspect the lavatory. Bourbon!
The supervisor bolted from the compartment and signaled Nancy with her finger. Both women entered the lavatory.
Nancy sniffed. “Bourbon.” She said. “Very faint, but it’s bourbon.”

They landed at JFK twenty minutes late. Mike got into his Nova and headed for Ellen’s Place. He parked, sat in the car for a minute or two, then drove home. It was one of the few times he’d reached Ridgefield without the kick of a spooker. He felt elated.

During the next two days he was able to cut down a bit more and he thought he looked better. Then it was time for his appointment with Dr. Jameson. He dressed carefully and applied just a hint of the cover stick.

Court Jameson’s office was in his home, a very large, restored eighteenth-century colonial house, with a manicured lawn reaching out in all directions. The doctor must be good if he can afford this, Mike thought, or maybe he’s just expensive. For a split second Mike considered bolting, but he remembered Philadelphia and walked to the door with the polished brass plat, at the side of the house. He pressed the buzzer and a woman appeared.
“Good morning. You must be Captain Hagen.” She led him across the waiting room and opened the door of the doctor’s office.
Court Jameson was sitting with his feet up on an antique desk. He looked much younger than Mike had imagined. Maybe it was his smooth Ivy League face, the kind that immediately tells you there’s been plenty of money in the family for a good long time. Mike was relieved. No beard and no psychiatric couch. The doctor got up immediately and shook Mike’s hand.
“Glad to meet you, Captain Hagen. Have a seat.” He gestured to a red leather chair. “We’re kind of informal around here. If you don’t mind using first names, call me Court.”
“That’s fine. Well, how do we begin?” Mike asked.
“We already have…you’re here. Dr. Martinson has filled me in. Now, Mike, let me ask you a question. Are you committed to licking this thing, whatever it takes?”
“Yeah, no choice. I didn’t think it was effecting me until the other day, when I messed up a landing in Philadelphia. That’s some admission, isn’t it?”
“Well, you’re here now because you want to work it out. I’m not going to tell you all the horror stories, but the liver can only take so much, and the booze eats away the brain cells, can even cause impotence. It’s progressive. You just have to catch it or it’ll wreck you. And it’s a bad way to go down.”
“I know.”
“Alcoholism is a treatable disease. I can help you get off the booze, but for a real cure, we have to find out why you drink.”
“I understand.”
“There are three ways we can pull you off the stuff. AA does a great job. Then there’s the hospital, where we detoxicate you under medical supervision. It’s a real tough five days. Scary. You’ll probably have delirium tremens and convulsions, but it will stop your drinking, and it’s safe. Also expensive. The third option is to set up your own program of withdrawal, cutting down a little bit at a time. We measure it very carefully.”
“Might as well tell you. I’m an AA dropout, and I’d have to borrow for the hospital.”
“If you really have willpower, you can wind down yourself.”
“I’ve already cut down some, so I know I can do it.”
“I have a little plan that you’re going to laugh at, but it works,” Dr. Jameson said. From his desk he took out a shot glass ringed with different colored lines.
“You’ll have to buy a jigger like this, a four-ouncer, and on it paint five circles; red, four ounces, green, three ounces, blue, two, and pink, one. Yellow, the last circle, is a half ounce. Next, get a small diary with a page for each day and a line for each hour….and..a box of stars like the kids have for spelling.”
“Okay, what do I do with them?”
“You match colors – if you drank to the red line, paste a red star. You’re drinking on board the plane by hiding the thermos in a lavatory, Dr. Martinson said. From now on, you keep the jigger with the termos and measure how much you drink. Begin by drinking just as much as you normally would. If you have three or four a night – is that about your level?”
“About.”
“Then record that. Write down your exact intake, but measure it. Pour your drink into a glass – or paper cup – then into the jigger, then back into the glass again. Day after tomorrow I want you to cut down the size of your drinks by dropping down one ring on the jigger. If you start on the red , go to the green. Spend three days like that, then we’ll move to the blue for three days.”
“How far do we go?”
“That depends, Mike, but the only way this is going to work is with total honesty. I want the record to be accurate. If the stars get clumsy, buy colored pencils – anything to keep track. One final unorthodox bit in this little plan of mine – if you feel a withdrawal attack coming on after you’ve stopped for a period, take two pills that I’ll give you a prescription for. They’re strong enough to keep you calm. Now, rather than have you come into the office week after week and tell me your life story, Which would take a lot of time, I’m going to ask you to write it in three installments: boyhood to teens, teens through early twenties, and adult life. Don’t be afraid to express your emotions, and don’t try to tell me what you think I want to hear.”
“How do I know what’s important?’
“What I want are the facts; you choose what’s relevant.”
“Can I tape it.?”
“No. Do you type?”
“Hunt and peck.”
“Then type it and deliver installment number one to my secretary the day before you next appointment. Will you be able to take a little time off until we have a handle on this?”
“Yeah, I’m not scheduled out again until February.”
The doctor stood up. “Good luck Mike. Don’t cheat. If you do, it’s just a waste of my time and your money.”


Mike drove very fast to a stationery store, where he bought the paints, the diary, and colored stars. Then he went to a phone booth in the rear and called Pat Simpson.
“Hi, it’s Mike. Just came back from the psychiatrist’s. He’s a nice guy, a little Ivy League, but okay.”
“I was praying you’d go. What did he say?”
“Well, he said my thing was treatable.” Mike went on to tell her about the stars, the jigger with the colored bands and the three-stage autobiography.
“I’m so proud of you, darling. And please do everything the doctor asks.”
“I will, Pat, believe me. I’ll call you later tonight.”
Pat said good-by and put down the phone. She had not been this happy for a long time.

Later that afternoon Mike went to five or six stores before he could find a four-ounce jigger. He bought it and then went over to the office, where he painted colored lines around the glass. He felt good, so good he went to the icebox and poured himself a spooker. He was just about to drink it when he remembered the prescribed routine.
He poured the bourbon into the jigger – three and a half ounces. Mike decided not to split ounces. Should he pour more in or some out? What the hell. He poured a bit of the gleaming liquid back into the Old Grand-Dad bottle, the rest into his ice-filled glass. He was at he green line. He chuckled out loud as he took the box of stars and pasted a little green one next to the 4:00 p.m. line in the diary. He put the whole kit into his desk drawer, then he rolled a piece of white typing paper into his old Remington. He stared at the blank paper, and began:

“I was born on January 8, 1933, at Mercy Hospital, Miami, Florida, the second of two children. My brother, Tom, was born four years earlier. My grandfather and grandmother came from Galway, Ireland, in the late nineteenth century, and settled in Washington County, Maine, near the Canadian border. They bought a sixty-acre potato and blueberry farm, where my father was born in 1900. He had four brothers, and they all worked on the farm. My father also worked for a lumber dealer, and in 1925 he began selling lumber for shipment to Florida.

“The hotel-building boom of the 1920s was in full swing and my father moved to Miami as the representative for the Maine lumber dealer. He made quite a lot of money and bought a small citrus farm on the outskirts of Homestead, Florida. He married a girl he met in Miami, whose father ran a restaurant. They started citrus growing and lumber jobbing, turning out doors and other stock items for the hotels.
When I was born, the Florida building boom was over. We had a difficult time during the early years, and my brother and I both worked. My family was able to get by, since we grew our own food and my father took odd jobs as a carpenter. He was a very religious man. We always attended Mass, and he shoved me into the confessional almost every week.
Nothing much happened that was too unusual when I was a kid, except that I took up flying, and I was spraying groves at sixteen. Had a lot of friends around Homestead, played on the high school baseball team, but flying was my whole life. I received a partial scholarship to the University of Florida at Gainesville; the other half I paid for by crop-dusting. I started at the university in September 1949, four months before my seventeenth birthday.”

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER SIX:

Irene Monihan, head supervisor of cabin attendants at IA’s La Guardia base, was an obnoxious spinster who took her frustrations out on the girls. In return, they hated her. How such a disagreeable person avoided being fired was a mystery. She had begun as a stewardess long before the jet age, then moved on to a supervisory post. She had been transferred from base to base, and the older she got, the more she bore down on the young, bright-eyed girls fresh from the carrier’s training school. Both Gloria Esposito and Nancy Halloway had had run-ins with Irene. There were few who hadn’t.

After flight 602 arrived in New York, Nancy and Gloria decided they would have to go through regular channels in reporting their suspicions about Mike, and that meant Irene. They also decided to report the incident together, partly for moral support, and to share the blame for what might happen.
The following morning Gloria called Irene. “Nancy Halloway and I have a very important matter to discuss with you.’
“Shoot me a memo, sweetie,” Irene said.
“I can’t. If you can’t see us, we’re going to Fitz.”
There was a lengthy pause. The head supervisor’s tone changed.
“That important, huh? Okay, eleven o’clock.”


When they arrived at Irene’s office, they found her looking as if she’d had a bad night, which was going to make matters worse.
They told their story. The head supervisor said nothing, listening without a change of expression. When they finished she said, “Do you realize what it means to wreck a captain’s career? If you’re wrong, you’ll both be out looking for jobs. Joe Barnes is a tough man, but we might as wll get this over with. So, come on, ladies.”
She got up from her desk, crossed the corridor, and pushed open Joe Barnes’s door. Nancy and Gloria followed. “Want to hear a horror story, Captain Barnes? It seems one of your pilots drinks on the job.”
Joe stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s a supervisor and a stewardess here with the goodies.”
Joe knew Gloria only slightly, but he recognized Nancy Halloway from the hearings in San Diego.
“Sit down, girls. It’s all right. I’m not half as bad as Irene,” he said with a big grin.
They relaxed a little, but no one spoke. Finally, Nancy drew a deep breath and said in a low tone, “It concerns Captain Mike Hagen. I’m afraid he’s been drinking on the plane.”
Joe Barnes laughed. “He’s the best man at this base! Whatever put that in your head?”
“He takes a paper cup and goes into the lavatory during flight. I’ve smelled liquor in there.”
“I can back up Nancy’s story. I was check riding one of Captain Hagen’s flights and saw the same thing. Here’re my notes.”
Gloria passed the paper to Joe Barnes. He read it and tossed it back to her.
“All this tells me is that Mike went to the can several times. Later, you went in and smelled bourbon. A lot of passengers bring flasks aboard and nip in the lavs. You know that.” He paused, no longer pleasant. “Did either of you ever actually see Captain Hagen drink?”
“No,” Nancy said.
Gloria shook her head; she knew Nancy wouldn’t tell Joe Barnes about Mike asking for the bottles in Phiadelphia.
Irene sat back in her chair. She was enjoying the delicious little drama, one of the few tah came to her dull office routine.
“Mike Hagen probably saved your life during that CAT episode, and you march in here with this story?” Joe thundered at Nancy. “Why are you doing a number on Mike? You been going out with him? This a personal grudge?”
“No, no,!” Nancy cried, jumping to her feet. “I happen to like Mike Hagen very much, but I did see this thing and you have an obligation to check it out.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t believe you; it’s just that you’re making a very serious charge based on purely circumstantial evidence.”
“I realize that,” Nancy said. “It was a difficult decision for me.”
Joe was thinking. He had sent Cliff McCullen a memo on Mike’s handling of the CAT, and in reply the vice-president had called to say that he and Fitz wanted to take Mike to lunch. Cliff had even suggested that Mike might be management potential, and Joe was basking in the reflection of Mike’s good work…now this! What a bad scene!
“Nancy, Gloria, of course you did the right thing by coming here, and I appreciate it. I guess I just got a little upset because I know Mike very well. To tell you the truth, I very much doubt that Mike Hagen’s sneaking into the head for bourbon, but we’ll sure find out! Until we do, you’re not to mention this to anyone. That means boy friends, girl friends, the man in the supermarket.”
Irene grinned. “Sorry we ruined your day, Joe.”
“You did that. Oh, one more thing. Gloria, would you mind leaving me those notes you took?”
She hesitated for a moment, then smiled. “Sure, why not?” Will you let us know what happens, Captain Barnes?”
“Yes, as long as you promise me this stops right here. That’s the deal.”
The women trooped out of the office.

For almost ten minutes after the women left, Joe sat in his office looking straight ahead, too stunned to concentrate; he didn’t even hear the roar of the jets. Then, forcing himself to think about what the stewardesses had said, he convinced himself that it wasn’t true. Mike had just told him in the way back from San Diego that he didn’t touch the stuff in the daytime. If it did turn out to be true, it would rock the entire Flight Department.
Slowly he began to sort things out. Who to tell? McCullen? No. Should he call Mike Hagen in and confront him with it? No, not yet. Joe had to be sure. He thought about Mike’s co-pilot, Jim Cochran; Joe was certain Jim wouldn’t reveal anything, even if he suspected a problem.
He decided he’d call larry Zanoff, a check pilot in LA. Larry was an old buddy. They had started in DC-32 together and had worn down a lot of seats. Joe would ask him to request a temporary New York assignment. Larry would check Mike out.
After Joe had contacted Cliff McCullen, he called the chief pilot on the West Coast and arranged for Larry’s transfer, then he set to work on the next part of his plan, which involved assigning Zanoff to Hagen’s flight sequence. That job would be handled by IA’s crew-scheduling department at JFK.
Joe Barnes knew one of the men handling the bid sheets, Gordon Terrell; he had been studying flying for some years, hoping to move into IA’s Flight Department, but thegoing had been slow, and Joe wondered if the young man would ever make it. He called Terrell and asked him to come in that afternoon.

“Wanted to see me, Captain Barnes?” Gordon Terrell said as he stood at Joe’s office door later that day.
“Have a seat, Gordon. How’s the flight training coming?”
“Pretty good. I’m almost ready for the flight test….that’s what the instructor says.”
This pleased Joe. “Well, I’m proud of you. I had two reasons for calling you in. First, I’d like to see you in the cockpit one day and I wanted to make sure you were still flying. Second, I need a little confidential favor from you.”
“Anything, Captain Barnes.”
“You heard that Mike Hagen did a great job on that turbulence last month? Fitz thinks maybe Mike could help update our standard operating procedures. We want to take a closer look at Mike.”
“I understand.”
“Now, if we just put a check pilot in to watch him in action, Mike would become nervous. So, Mr. McCullen had a very special idea. He picked a man from L.A. base, Larry Zanoff. He’s a check pilot, but no one knows him at this end. I want him assigned to Hagen’s trips as co-pilot. If anyone asks who the new face is, tell them he’s here temporarily because his mother in White Plains is sick. Got that?”
“No problem. The bid sheets are due back in a couple of days. When I get Hagen’s, I’ll just assign Zanoff to his trips. No one will ever know that you requested it, Captain.”

Joe Barnes called Larry Zanoff that evening and told him about the cabin attendants’ report on Mike Hagen.
“That’s something,” Larry said. “Think it’s true?”
“No, but I have to find out.”
“Well, I’ll take a couple or trips with him. If he’s putting down a few, Joe, we can sure find out.”

The following day Joe Barnes picked up the medical and flight performance records on Mike, and drove to Newark to meet the arriving Larry Zanoff.
Larry hadn’t changed much in the twenty-seven years Joe had known him. He had been prematureky gray, and his pocked, hard face hadn’t aged, even though he was now over fifty. With twenty-six thousand hours in his book, Larry was one of the finest captains IA had on the line.
Larry was to stay with the Barneses in Englewood, New Jersey, a kind of family reunion. The job that had brought him, however, was extremely unpleasant. It wasn’t discussed during the first part of the drive to the Barneses’ house; finally Larry said, “I don’t like this sneaking around behind Hagen’s back, but I guess it’s for better than jumping the gun. Could there be any reason for the girls to lie about this?”
“Don’t know. Hagen and this stewardess have been flying together a long time. Wouldn’t be the first time a guy got rapped by a jealous broad, but he’s got such an excellent record. Just look at his file.”
Larry picked up the tattered folder from the seat and studied it as they drove. It was the record of an impressive high-timer.
That evening, after a steak dinner, Joe called Mike on the pretense of setting up the lunch date with Fitz and Cliff McCullen. Then he said casually, “There’s a Larry Zanoff in here from L.A. One of our senior captains. His mother is quite ill. I arranged a transfer east for a few weeks so that he could be near her. He’s supposed to go out on 467 as your co-pilot. Hope you don’t mind. Cochran’s assigned to reserve.”

Mike Hagen felt an immediate alarm, but he calculated that he was doing so well with his booze wind-down that he would be able to manage, even with a new co-pilot. “Fine, I’ll see him in Operations Tuesday.”
Mike called Jim Cochran. “Did Barnes phone you?”
“About an hour ago.”
“He mention anything, you know, about – uh – the spookers?”
“No. He just told me there’s a West Coast crew member coming in and I’m on reserve. Nothing else.” Jim paused, then asked, “How are you doing, Mike?”
“I’m seeing a psychiatrist now; no phony baloney, though. Straight guy, and he’s already got me drinking less.”
“That’s the way to do it, Mike. You planning to take the thermos aboard with this new guy?”
“Have to. Might not need it, but it’s a security blanket, and I want it there just in case.”

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER SEVEN:

Mike didn’t feel easy about his second visit to Dr. Jameson’s office. He felt he had done a poor job with the autobiography, but he had kept the drinking log with him at all times. He had faithfully pasted in the stars. At first they were all green, then he moved down to the blue. He felt pretty much the same, but he was able to sleep a little longer in the mornings. He was delaying his first spooker of the day until just before leaving for the artificial-flower business, but by 11:00 he would desperately need another. Still, the log indicated that he was slowly, successfully coming off the booze. As soon as he entered the office, the doctor looked at the diary.
“Everything accurate?” he asked Mike.
“Down to the ounce,” Mike said proudly.
“How do you feel, Mike?”
“Not too different.”
“Good, considering you’re drinking less. When are you supposed to fly again?”
“Tomorrow.”
Court Jameson took up the paper Mike had written. “I was surprised at this. It’s the shortest first chapter I ever received, and you didn’t write about yourself. You wrote about your fater. I’d like to know more about growing up in Florida during the 1940. You liked it there, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t the Florida of hotels, beaches, pools, all that. South of Miami it was a really wild place, full of gators, snakes, swamps. The crop dusters would come in for the spraying season. I liked those guys. They were a very close group, they had their own thing going. They flew their own equipment and did what they wanted. I was their mascot. We’d sit under the shade of the wings, drinking Dr. Peppers, eating Moon Pies, swapping stories. It was special, the Florida I remember.”
“When did you take your first drink, Mike?”
“At fourteen….but everyone thought I was sixteen. Big for my age. Every night the Ag flyers would get bonkered at the Gator Hole – a bar that had country music on Saturday nights and good chili for twenty cents a bowl. One time they said, “Let the kid come along.” They were going ot get me drunk.”
“Did all the flyers drink and I don’t mean Dr. Peppers.”
“Almost every guy had a flask. They were tough, hard drinkers – that’s why they were called flying cowboys.”
“So you never waw anything wrong with drinking and flying?”
“Never did, up to a point. You were judged on how well you could drink and fly – not separately – together.
“Did you continue to drink at the Gator Hole?”
“That or others. Each Ag strip had a Gator Hole. Bartenders knew the flying cowboys drank. Do you remember Woody Guthrie? Well, the flying cowboys used to collect his seventy-eights and spin them when there wasn’t country music playing. A couple of cowboys had met him along the dusting route. That was a whole other world.”

Mike spoke in a nostalgic, affectionate way, as if the old crop dusters were still down on the Ag field and the Woody Guthrie seventy-eights were spinning as always in the Gator Holes of the South. Mike was living in the 1940s, Court Jameson was certain of it. The wistful man in front of him was far away in a place that no longer existed – if, needed, it ever did exist exactly the way Mike imagined.

The doctor tried to visualize the hard-flying men piloting planes along rows of crops under a hot sun. It was an unique world of flying Mike had talked about – too high and the fertilizer spread in the wind; too low or too near, death. Court realized that Mike Hagen was a cowboy and probably as good a one as they came.
Packed in his words was a love and respect for wide-open spaces, big fields, and big skies.
“Tell me,” Court said. “What does it really take to be a good pilot? Does it mean going by the book?”
At the word book Mike shifted in his leather chair, then got up and walked to the end of the room.
“I’ll tell you about the book. Half the people who write them, don’t fly. All they know is numbers, not feelings. When I started in DC-3s, the book told you to get it going. The rest was in here.” He pointed to his heart. “We wrote the book each day while we flew. They issue us a handbook for the DC-8 that’s over five hundred pages!”
“But the equipment is more sophisticated.”
“You asked me what it takes. It’s not in the book, it’s judgement – knowing what to do and when. And what not to do.”
“I find it interesting that you talk about judgement.”
“I know. I drink in the air. That’s not good judgement, but let me tell you about judgement – the way I see it.”
“I wish you would,” Court Jameson said as he reached for his yellow pad. He was anxious to hear the definition of judgement by an alcoholic airline captain.
“In all the years that I’v ebeen drinking and flying, I never thought I was taking a chance. I’ve always compensated. I’ve always known exactly how many spookers I could get by with. Early on I realized my reactions in the air were slowed down by the booze, so I wrote away to the FAA for accident reports and studied them. It became my hobby. What did I learn? Two basic things. Sometimes there are accidents that a pilot cannot control – like midair collisions – but looking at the whole spectrum of accisents, I found a few with no pilot error. Pilot error very seldom has to do with fast reflexes; I figure it is ninety-five percent judgement. Big equipment does take numbers – book flying- but once in a while numbers don’t help. When you’re making an instrument landing approach to a field were the ceiling and visibility are right at the minimums, that’s when judgement comes in. What to do? Try to land, or go to your alternate? Another thing. Imagine a situation in which all the autopilots are out. The crew has to fly by instruments accurately, hour after hour. Few guys can do this unless they practice like hell. I can hold a better course and altitude with severe turbulence, on instruments, that any pilot at IA.”
“You know Mike,” Court Jameson said, “there’s a flaw in all this. The Philadelphia landin . . . . . what happened there?”
“It’s hard to explain. There’s a lot to think about when you’re putting a heavy plane down. I was nervous, my mind was jammed. We were high and hot over the threshold and the co-pilot was screaming to go around.” Mike shrugged. “But I decided I could put her on, and I did. . . . and I was craving bourbon like a crazy addict.”
“Mike, I want to make sure you realice you cannot fly while drinking the way you have. It did impair judgement and reflexes. You might have killed everybody on board.”
“But I didn’t. I handled it all right.”
Mike was still rationalizing; even as he admitted a potentially catastrophic mistake, he ended up by saying he had pulled it off.
“Do you really want to stop drinking?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I want to get it under control.” he said forcefully.
“Okay, we had a good session. Remember, one more day on the blue, the go to the pink. Don’t get overconfident; you’ll slip once in a while. Don’t worry about it of feel guilty.


Tuesday. Mike woke up a little later than usual. He dressed and cooked his eggs. After breakfast, with his diary and the ringed jigger packed in his heavy black flight bag, he began the drive to JFK. He was at the fourteen-ounce level for the last time; tomorrow he would reduce his consumption to twelve ounces, the next plateau.
He decided to have only one ounce at Ellen’s that morning while she refueled his thermos. You could barely see that amount o bourbon: a tiny brown puddle circling giant icebergs. He brought I to his lips and in a second it was gone. He hardly felt the bourbon as it disappeared inside him. Another one, he thought. No. There were thirteen ounces left for the rest of the day. He wanted to stretch them out, leaving a good reserve for his night with Pat. He took a page from the back of his diary and charted his last fourteen-ounce day.
6:30 a.m.-1 oz. at Ellen’s
10:00 a.m.-2 oz. in flight
1:00 p.m.- 2 oz. lunch at hotel
(No drinks on afternoon leg)
Evening-three 3-oz. drinks with Pat

The big change from his old pattern – the one Mike wasn’t sure he could handle – was in the afternoon segment over the southwest. He planned to take his meal and two ounces at the hotel as late as he could, pushing the 12:00 Houston spooker to 1:00; that would be just enough time before checking in to Operations at 1:15.

Mike gave himself a final glance in the car mirror – eyes, cheecks better this morning – and walked across the lot to Operations. At the crew-scheduling counter, Mike signed in and asked the guy behind the desk to point out Larry Zanoff.
“Over here, Captain Hagen.”
Mike saw a tall man with a pepper-and-salt crew cut studying the winds aloft chart. He walked over and introduced himself, noting the four stripes on the sleeves and the tiny red wings, IA’s thirty-year insignia.
“Nice to meet you,” replied Larry Zanoff. “I guess we’ll be flying together for a few trips. I’m in the right seat today. Just picking up time while I’m here.”
A voice came over the loudspeaker. “Hagen – Captain Hagen, there’s a telephone call.”
Mike walked to the phone on the far side of the scheduling desk.
“Mike, this is Court Jameson. Sorry to seem to be checking up on you, but I’ve been thinking – maybe you shouldn’t take any flights out at all until we wind this thing down some more.”
“Everything’s okay. I cooled it last night, slept well, and this morning I only had one ounce. Could hardly see the stuff. I have a new co-pilot today, a senior captain in here temporarily, so there’ll be two senior captains in the cockpit, a flight engineer who flies, and two autopilots.
“All right. You have the pills?”
“Right in my pocket.”
“Call me when you get into San Diego. And keep on that schedule, Mike.”
As Larry was filing the flight plan, Mike walked over to his bag. He knelt beside it with his back to the rest of the room and slipped out the thermos, the jigger attached to its side with broad rubber bands. He pushed his raincoat over it, closed the flight kit, and stood waiting in the narrow corridor for Larry.


Larry Zanoff resented his task. There exists between pilots a rare camaraderie – an allegiance to and an utmost trust in each other. Each man on the flight deck must rely on the rest. For one captain to be spying on another was a senditive matter in their close world, yet Larry knew it had to be done, distasteful as he considered the assignment. He would find out about Mike Hagen, if, indeed there was anything going on. He was a professional cockpit investigator, recognizing the small clues that index a pilot.
Ironically, what Larry was to observe on that morning’s take-off from JFK would add up to a performance he wished every IA pilot could execute.
Like many long time drinkers, Mike Hagen was a highly proficient actor. As they walked to gate 7, Mike joked with Larry, who noted the pilot’s apparent ease; Mike’s cheerful manner was not that of a man under pressure, squeezed between the last drink and the one coming up.
When they stepped into the cockpit, Mike placed his raincoat over the left seat, backhanded the thermos, and was into the first lavatory before Larry knew what was going on. Mike worried that the piggyback spooker with its attached jigger wouldn’t fit through the small flap door, but it just did. As a safeguard, Mike edged it far back into the upper corner of the bin with a hooked five-inch wire that he had stowed up his sleeve. Thirty seconds later he was back in the cockpit.

Meanwhile, Larry had riffled through Mike’s flight kit and his raincoat. As Mike slid into the left seat, Larry brushed against him. He could neither see nor feel the bulge of small bottles and he was sure Mike couldn’t have hidden any in the lavatory in such a short time. Larry felt better, for he was hoping not to discover anything.

Mike went through his flight-deck work load with care and efficiency. He studied the dispatch papers and the route they’d take into Houston. Data on the computer printout indicated the flight would be very light that day – well under the JFK and Houston allowable weights.
“That means we’ll go with reduced thrust,” Mike said.
“Guess so,” Larry answered.
Mike noticed the outside temperature and scrupulously checked the calculations of the flight engineer. When the paperwork was finished, Mike slid out of his seat and stood at the cockpit door, greeting the last of the oncoming passengers with his big, congenial smile.

In the days Mike flew DC-3s he had walked slowly up and down the aisle to reassure people, but as jet flying developed, and because of the increased incidence of hijackings, pilots had been ordered to remain on the flight deck and to work behind locked doors. Mike made up for this by chatting with the passengers a few minutes before and after each flight. Larry Zanoff had only seen one or two other pilots do this, and he thought it was a good idea from a company point of view.

The flight was pushed from the gate, the turbines staarted, and ground control directed the DC-8-61 to runway 31-Left. When they were cleared for take-off, Mike took the four throttles forward just enough to give the Pratt & Whitneys the necessary speed and distance – about eight percent under full power.
The purpose of the reduced-thrust take-off is to increase engine life while conserving fuel. Some pilots argue that it lowers the level of safety to reduce power on take-off, but the FAA doen not object to as much as ten percent reduction when conditions such as weight, runway length, and temperature are met. Mike feel it was safer, as a rule, to employ full power, but when he was flying with a senior captain like Larry Zanoff, he used the reduced-thrust take-off.
When they reached take-off speed, Larry called it, but Mike left the bird on the runway a couple of seconds for a touch of extra airspeed. It was an old habit from his bi-plane days, when a little extra was often the difference between life and death, but this technique has little relevance for big-jet operation.
Mike held his airspeed needle right on V₂ plus 10 knots, the take-off safety speed. They climb to fifteen hundred, and Mike started his left-hand turn, which brought them over the old Floyd Bennett Field.
They cleared the Long Island coast at three thousand feet to allow inbound traffic to runway 4-Right to slide in under them.
Larry quickly added up the points in his head. On the plus side, Mike looked good; his cockpit procedures were correct and businesslike. His passenger contact was approved, so was his reduced-take-off decision. His grond handling was expert, his course holding and transitions right on the button. The only minus was Mike’s decision to delay the lift-off.
Larry Zanoff was satisfied with Mike Hagen. He knew a professional high-timer was in the left seat and he was almost certain th man wasn’t nipping in the lavatory, but there were many miles before them, and Larry continued to observe the pilot closely.

Around 10:00 a.m. Nancy saw Mike leave the cockpit. Then something different. He went directly into the head without taking a paper cup.
Inside tha lavatory, Mike hooked his baby with the five-inch wire and pullet it toward him. He grabbed the thermos and poured two onces into the ringed jigger and drank slowly. He would put the star in his notebook later. He rinsed the jigger, refastened it, and pushed his spooker far back into the disposal locker.
Immediately after he went out, Nancy slipped into the lavatory. She sniffed the air. No smell of alcohol.
A few minutes later Mike returned to the flight deck, Larry excused himself. The check pilot was certain Mike wasn’t carrying a bottle, so if indeed he had booze aboard, it would have to be hiddensomeplace in the lavatory. Nancy, who had been briefed about Larry Zanoff, waited for the check pilot to leave the cockpit and then approached him quickly.
“He used the first lavatory,” she said, “but there was a change this time.”
“What?”
“He didn’t take a paper cup.”
“I’ll go look around anyway.”
Larry was methodical; he started on the left side of the counter and pulled up every panel that could be removed, taking out the tissues and small soaps, and dipping his hand into every opening. He even applied pressure to the bulkhead panels to test their security. Larry was just about to leave when he noticed the disposal flap door. He poked his hand inside as fas as it would go, but he felt nothing. He came out, shook his head at Nancy and re-entered the cockpit.

They landed at Houston on time. Again, Mike went to the head; he came out a minute later, his black raincoat concealing the termos. Larry went in and ripped open the disposal locker; there were no bottles buried in the trash. When they reached Operations, Larry suggested they have a bite to eat, but Mike said he had a luncheon date.
Feeling awkward, Larry followed the pilot at a distance. He saw Mike go to the frond desk at the International Hotel, take a key, and walk to the elevator. Larry crossed the lobby to the counter.
“A friend of mine, pilot fro IA, just registered.”
“Oh yes, Captain Hagen, room 409”
Larry went up to the fourth floor, where he passed room 409 and took a position at the far end of the hall. He realized that if Mike Hagen were drinking on the plane, he’d certainly be taking a few in the hotel room, a very private place.
Inside 409, Mike was holding back on his next spooker. After a hot bath, he called room service. He rested on the bed, watching TV until a young waiter delivered his order. When the young man left the pilot’s room, Larry approached from down the hall.
“Son, I need a little help. I’m from the airlines,” he said, showing his official IA identification card. “What did you just take the man in 409?”
“Swiss on rye and onion soup. He has the same thing all the time.”
“Ever see any booze around the room, or bring him some?”
“No, sir.”
“What about ice? Ever bring up a bucket of ice?”
“Nope.”
“Is there an ice dispenser on the premises?”
“Nope, you got to get it through room service – me. Say, what is this about anyhow?”
“Routine check.” Larry pulled out a five and handed it to the waiter. “Have you ever noticed a woman go in there?”
“no, he’s always alone – just reading or watchin TV.”
“Thanks, son. Don’t mention our conversation, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks for the bill.”
Larry was sure that Mike wasn’t sitting around a hotel room drinking warm booze, but why had he said that he had a luncheon date when he didn’t? And why did he take a room at these prices?
Larry watched the door from a distance. No one entered Mike’s room. A few minutes later Mike came out and went to the elevator. Larry hastily tried the door of room 409. Locked. He ran down to the maid and persuaded her to unlock the door and let him in.
There was no smell of bourbon and no empty bottle in the trash basket. The check pilot crossed to the bathroom and saw that one of the glasses had been used and he smelled it. It had the unmistakable odor of mouthwash.
Larry returned to the cockpit fourteen minutes later.
“Where were you? I don’t like late check-ins,” Mike said crisply.
“Oh, I met someone I used to know.” Larry Zanoff felt just a trifle dirty.

The delayed lunchtime spooker helped, and Mike got through the afternoon segment of the flight without leaving the cockpit, although his baby was stored just in case.
He arrived at Pat’s office around 4:00 and they left immediately for the house, but as they drove south, Mike felt that lust for the bourbon, as if alarms were going off deep in his belly, in his head. It was not imagination. The signals were real.

Larry Zanoff rode over to the El Cortez Hotel with the rest of the crew. When they reached there, he called Nancy aside. “He never left the cockpit this afternoon, but if he is drinking, it must be stowed somehow in that first head. I want to try something different tomorrow. I think I know how we can be absolutely sure about this. If he’s hiding booze in there and if he’s an alcoholic, he’ll have to get to that head, won’t he?”
“I guess so. It’s a long flight back to JFK”
“After Mike comes aboard and goes into the first lav tomorrow, I’m having the mechanic turn off the valves so the toilet won’t flush. You put up a sign to seal it off, and if Mike makes a lot of noise about using that head, we’ll know he’s got something in there and we’ll tear it apart when we get into New York. If he merely uses the second one, then I think we can be pretty sure there’s nothing to worry about. You agree?”
Nancy nodded her head slowely.

Pat prepared a festive meal that evening and Mike drank his remaining nine ounces; it wasn’t enough, but he had promised Jameson, and when he considered the other two choices – standing up in the AA meeting or blowing a wad on a hospital – he dicided to stick with the wind-down, if he could. And tomorrow would be rough – his first twelve-ounce day.
After dinner Mike plotted the next twenty-four hours. The flight left at 11:30 a.m. He would take his first three ounces in the morning before departure.
9:00 a.m. – 3oz. at Pat’s
2:00 a.m. – 3 oz. in flight
Ellen’s – 3 oz.
Ridgefield – 3 oz.

He put the notebook away and went into call Jameson; the doctor was glad to hear that Mike was holding on. Later that night Mike showed Pat his book with the stars. She smiled; then catching the earnest look on his face, the small glint of hope, she grabbed his hand.
“I’m proud, very proud of you, Mike.”
“You know,” he said with a rueful look, “I’m scared of getting to the point where there are no more stars in the book. Then what? Something has to change. Like everyone, I’ve been drinking to escape, but there will come a day without stars and I’ll see it all: Jean. The stinking flower shop. It’s so awful. I don’t like my life, any or it, except for my daughters and you.”
“Darling, I have something to tell you. About two months ago I sent my portfolio to a New York advertising agency.”
“I thought you didn’t like the big city.”
She had been in New York years ago as a scared little kid and had told him often she could never live there.

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER EIGHT:

Larry Zanoff arrived at IA’s San Diego maintenance office at 8:00 the following morning. The men there had instructions form Joe Barnes to do anything Captain Zanoff requested.
“Turn off the stop valve! I never heard of such a thing.” One of the maintenance men told Lary. “Why screw up a toilet?”
“There’s a good reason.”
“Yeah, well, okay, the first head on flight 602.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Larry headed for Operations, where he looked at the MFP and studied the weather situation. Winds aloft were swift. It would be a fast flight.

Mike was right on time for the 11:30 flight to JFK. When Larry met him in Operations, he noted the captains smart, straight walk. Larry was certain that the girls were wrong about the booze, and he was glad, because he knew the whole embarrassing matter was just about destroying Joe Barnes.

Mike entered the first head and stowed the spooker. He had already taken three of the allotted twelve ounces. It was going to be a tough day and he patted his pocket to make sure he had the bottle of pills.
At precisely 11:31 a.m., flight 602, San Diego-New York nonstop, was on its way. The flight director would take the plane on autopilot to its first VORTAC station in Arizona. Mike made his usual cheerful good-morning PA, then settled down. Spooker time was two hours away. Two hours of boredom. He wished he could stick his head out the window and feel the wind, yell. Anything.
Nancy Holloway covered the first lavatory door with strapping tape, enough to hold a tiger gone mad. Then she tacked a sign on the door.

LAVATORY CLOSED. TOILET INOPERATIVE.

PLEASE USE OTHER LAVATORY.

Mike began to feel the first hungry sensation – his body’s initial cry for booze – when they were fifty miles west of Tulsa. He asked for some food, which always helped, but past Tulsa the shriek came again. He looked at his expensive chronometer. Ten minutes to spooker time. The ache surged through him, but he stuck to his schedule. Five minutes…three minutes….Time!
Just as Mike left the cockpit, Nancy was coming out of the galley. She stopped, put down a tray, and crossed to the magazine rack. Mike saw the note and the lavatory door and a bolt of fear tore through him. Aware that Nancy was watching him, he managed a smile. “Shouldn’t the flight engineer look at the head?” he asked her.
“It’s no use. The flush button is out. Can’t be fixed in flight.”
The pilot smiled again to cover his surprise and fright. He moved to the second head and went inside. When he came out, with the pills in his hand, Nancy was shuffling magazines into the rack. Mike took a paper cup, filled it with water, and stepped into the galley. She followed him.
“You ever had an allergy?” he asked her.
“No. What do take for it?”
“A prescription. Better than drugstore antihistamines.”
He took the tablets and returned to the cockpit, his stomach flip-flopping. He was experiencing the stark panic of withdrawal jitters. The doctor had said the pills would work. What if they didn’t? What if he got the shakes? More pills?
The gnawing hunger switched to pain. Then he became slightly light-headed. His vision seemed to be affected; he lost focus. He felt he was floating.
“Our next checkpoint?” he asked Larry, hoping to get his mind off panic.
“We’re 140 miles off the Nashville VORTAC.”
Twenty minutes later Mike began to feel the shakes. He tried to remember what he knew about the d.t.s. Would he have hallucinations, see pink elephants, go into convulsions? Maybe he was far enough into the cure not to have full-blown d.t.s. More pills? No, he would hold out as long as possible. Jameson said they were strong. Nearing the Nashville radio beacon, Mike began to feel calmer as the pills entered his bloodstream. He wanted to slip off into a long sleep; he ordered coffee and began to talk with Larry to keep awake.

The drug was worse than the drinks, but what would have happened if the head had broken down before he met Jameson, before he had the pills? In his mind he saw himself rushing to the galley and dumping all the liquor bottles out as the girls looked on petrified. Questions were spinning around in his mind. What would he do now if Larry Zanoff were to slump over the wheel suddenly? What if there were an inbound traffic delay at JFK and they had to circle? Could he get the plane down with a flight engineer whose ability to help with the giant aircraft was limited?
Mike feared the unexpected. Would he fall into a stupor? If he only knew what the pills would or wouldn’t do. The coffee seemed to help. He felt more awake, but quite strange – his head seemded to be wobbling loosely on his neck and he was sweating heavily. He asked Larry for the chart.
“Right here,” Larry said, pointing to a VORTAC forty miles west of Baltimor.
Where had the minutes gone? Was he losing his sense of time? “We’d better pick up the JFK weather,” Mike said. “And you take her in, Larry.”

It was a clear night and Mike could see the speckled lights of the farmlands below. Above, the moon was playing with the fast-racing cirrus clouds. He felt all right for a while, then suddenly, without warning, the anxiety returned. He was going to explode. Mike knotted his fists and prayed, fumbling in his pocket for the pills. He grasped two from the container, picked up the intercom, and asked for a Coke.
The second stewardess brought the drink to the flight deck. Mike washed down the two pills, and soon he felt heavy and lethargic: drugged. The thought that JFK was near helped eased his terror.
Larry landed the plane easily, and Mike said a private prayer of thanks. Almost eight hours without a drink, but Ellen’s Place wasn’t far away. He would call Dr. Jameson immediately, Ellen’s Place or not. Should he try to enter the lavatory? Trying to rescue his liquor when the lavatory was inoperative would be too risky. He could always buy another thermos. Mike edged off his seat, and things seemed a bit blurry. He stood at the cockpit door, saying good-bye to the passengers. If these people only knew, he thought. If they only knew.
An elderly woman with two children approached. “I’ve been promising my granddaugters they could shake hands with the captain.”
Nancy watched Mike laughing with the children. She felt a terrible guilt.
Lary and Mike left the plane, walked across the concourse, and said good-bye. Mike found a phone booth in the concourse, took out a handful of quarters, and dialed Jameson’s number. The answering sevice said the doctor would call right back, when Mike told them it was an emergency. The phone rang almost iddediately.
“Mike, are you all right?”
“I think so, but I was damned scared. The lavatory broke down on the plane. Haven’t had a drink for eight hours. I started to feel it up there and took the pills. First two, then another two.”
“That’s a lot. Now Mike, listen carefully. Don’t take a drink under any circumstances. Don’t drive, either. Take a taxi to Silver Glen – the hospital I told you about. I’ll meet you there and put you under observation for tonight and tomorrow. This is a critical time for you. Call your wife and say you’re staying in town. I’ll have you signed in under another name, Robert Brown.” He gave Mike the address of the private hospital.
Mike called Jean, then caught a cab. He felt so drowsy he dropped off to sleep once or twice. The cab took a long time to find the hospital, once a private estate in the hills outside of Stamford. He paid the driver, placed his uniform coat and hat in his bag, and put on a sweater. He rang the doorbell. A woman answered and took him to a comfortable paneled room, where Dr. Jamson was waiting.
“How do you feel?”
“Drugged, dammit!”
“You are drugged. I’m going to give you a quick physical, a light supper, and a shot that’ll really make you sleep. In the morning, try not to have a drink, just the pills. When your condition is stabilized and you’re awake, we’ll have a sesson here. We’ll probably be able to break down the withdrawal symptoms very quickly.”

Joe Barnes was full of anxiety as he waited for Larry Zanoff to reach his home. He met Zanoff at the door. “Does he or doesn’t he?” he asked the check pilot.
“No, he doesn’t. . . .but I do. How about a drink?” Larry was smiling. They went to the sun porch, where Joe fixed drinks.
“I guess you want everything.” Larry said. “First of all, Mike’s a good pilot, just as you said. His technique was flawless, except that he left the plane on the concrete a little too long in New York.”
“I know. It’s a carry-over from his DC-3 days.
“Okay, but it isn’t good. I don’t like guys in the cockpit doing things their wasy, not ours.”
“All right, I agree, but it’s not serious. I know he can fly a plane. What else?”
“Mike checks into a hotel on the Houston layover. I thought he might be drinking in the room, but the waiter claims he’s never seen liquor or brought him anything from the bar, not even ice. I went over the room after he left, trying to figure out why he was willing to pay so much for such a short stay. There was no woman, no booze. Nothing, but he oredered some food, so maybe a private meal and a short rest are worth the money to him.”
“What about his trips to the head?” Joe asked.
“He went in once during the morning leg yesterday, but Nancy said he didn’t take the cup. Today we taped the first lav shut. According to Nancy, Hagen just looked at it and entered the second one. He came out thirty seconds, took a cup, and swallowed two pills – allergy medication, he told her.”
“So that’s why he’s been going to the head,” Joe said with a sigh of total relief.
“Could be. I’d say it’s all a mistake, a bad one. I’m sure he wasn’t taking anything into the head, and I searched the place thoroughly both before take-off and after we landed. That head was empty. One more thing. Nancy’s very upset. I wouldn’t take it on her, Joe. She was only reporting what she saw and smelled.”
“He didn’t appear to be drunk an any time.?” Joe asked, just ot make certain the verdict was unequivocal.
“No, but I’d like one more ride with him just to be sure. Could you arrange for Mike to take out flight 15 to Los Angeles next week instead of his regular trip? It would give me a good six hours in the cockpit with him. And if everything is okay, we’ll forget this whole business.”
“Ordinarily he would be going out again in five days, but. . . . .”
“Eight days would be better for me.” Larry interrupted.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,”

The next morning Joe Barnes called Nancy and Gloria into his office. A heavy burden had been lifted from the chief pilot’s back and he could afforc be magnanimous. “First of all, you did the right thing and I want to thank you. Don’t be afraid to come to this office anytime. It’s obvious that Captain Hagen isn’t drinking in the lavatory. He was taking some kind of pills for an allergy. None of us will mention this matter again. It’s over.

It was 9:30 a.m. when Mike awoke after his night in the hospital. His head was fuzzy. A nurse entered his room with a bright good-morning and lifted the blinds.
“How are you today?” she asked
“Feel sort of funny – musty,”
“You’ll get over that. Take these two pill. And here is our breakfast menu and
‘The New York Times.”
Mike obediently swallowed the capsules.
“Incidentally,” the nurse continued, “you have an appointment with Dr. Jameson at eleven. We have a gym with a pool, and I’ve scheduled you for a massage. If that’s all right. . . .”
“Yes, thank you.” A massage would be great Mike thought. He checked off bacon and eggs and gave the menu back to the nurse. Then he took a shower and shaved. He felt better, and the envents of the previous day seemed like a far-off nightmare.
After breakfast Mike walked out of the manor house toward a new brick building. He felt good. No morning drinks, he was back across the line. Inside the building was a small gym, where several men were exercising. They were obviously wealthy, middle-aged businessmen on the dry-out run. Mike took a swim, then rested as a big burly masseur worked him over. At 11:00, Mike was back in the main building, meeting with Court Jameson.
“Mike, I made a bad mistake in letting you take that flight out. Coming off the booze is often worse than being on it. Anyhow, you’re going to have to drink something today. We can drop it down to six ounces. If you can get by today and tomorrow at that level, we’re in good shape.”
“Do I fly next week?”
“If I can get you stabilized at six ounces, maybe less, without anything during the day, you can go. If not, then call in sick.”
“I think I can do it, I’m sure I can.”
“Okay then. Let’s pick up on your autobiography where we left off. You’re a licensed pilot now. You’re crop-dusting and you have a scholarship to the university.”
“I graduated in 1953, when I was twenty. Soon I was married to Jean.”
“We haven’t talked much about that, have we?”
“She was very pretty, the sexiest woman I ever knew. For a while I loved her very much, but slowly our marriage came apart, until there seemed to be nothing left. She spent money like crazy and criticized me for flying.”
“If you wanted to be a crop duster, how did you end up with the airlines?”
“After our marriage, I continued spraying. I had my own plane, a Stearman. Well, Jean would drive from town to town in our cranky old Chevy station wagon and meet me wherever I would land to load up on spray.
“We had an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, but we spent most of the time on the circuit. One night Jean told me a baby was on its way. I was pretty happy. I sort of wanted a son. Then she said that I’d have to settle down. It got to me. Our first blowout. I thought I was settled down. Hell, how many guys of twenty have their own fifteen-thousand-dollar plane, a college degree, thirty-nine hundred hours in their logbook, and a good client list along the crop-spraying route? I was bringing home about five hundred a week after expenses.
“Jean said we couldn’t raise a kid in motels and Gator Holes. She was right about that, but I figured she could live in Lauderdale. I’d base the ship there for the long sugarcane and citrus season – just be out for the soybeans and cotton. But she wouldn’t listen.
“Instead, she suggested I go to law school or learn a profession. Now what would I do in law school? I didn’t care about a fancy profession, I already had what I wanted. I was never anything but a rural kid who loved Florida and planes. I had a thing about dusty roads and big clouds, and I thought crop spraying was the greatest thing in life. Still do.
“Then Jean says maybe I should fly for an airline. Me in a uniform flying an airliner? Do you know that up to that time I had only flown in a closed cockpit three times? I was an opend-cockpit guy. I sat outside with goggles and felt the wind and smelled the oil in that big old radial up front of me, and I’d know every change in the engine. That was my life – sniffing hot oil, seeing the rows drift by, pulling up at the last moment when I came to the end of a row. I’d pull that stick back and feed in the power. Half the clowns would miss plants on the section line. Not me. I knew what I was doing.
Jean persisted, and finally I gave in. I signed with a factory flight school in Miami to get my ATR. I had to sell the Stearman to pay for the course. I didn’t just sell an old bi-plane, I sold myself.
Anyhow, I went to the flight school. I had more flight time than half the instructors, so I made it out of there in four months. Afterward I went up to Boston, flew a DC-3 as a co-pilot. It was wild flying – little fields, lousy weather, wings icing up half the time, but I liked it.”
“If your whole orientation was crop-dusting, the South, I can’t imagine your liking flying in New England.”
“I was surprised, too, but the airline was small, informal, and it was beautiful flying. When the spring came, I could see the crops starting to grow. I began to know the routes, the landmarks, the station managers. I thought I was doing something important; the railroads had gone bust, and we provided about the only service for a lot of people.
When we got to Boston, Jean had a miscarriage. I think she always blamed it on me. Then we bought a house in Needham, Massachusetts, and life was okay. After about two years Jean and I had another talk. She didn’t think I was making enough money, wanted me to fly jets for a major carrier. I told her I was with my kind of airline, but she was pregnant again so I applied to some larger lines. In 1957, I was hired by IA to fly co-pilot.”
“Were you drinking?”
“Yeah, couple of drinks a night, but I never flew hung over. Then we moved to Ridgefield and things really began to sour. I made my transition to jets and the money was much better, but the bills were bigger, too. I realized the marriage wasn’t going to last. Or if it did, it would only be a front for the children.”
“Were you drinking during the day at this time?”
“Yes, I used to have one or two before lunch. I remember the first time I took a drink in the morning. It was at home. I just needed it somehow. . . . then it became a habit.”
“How long ago was this, Mike?”
“A couple of years, I guess.”
Court Jameson looked down at his yellow note pad. “Let’s back-track. You liked flying the DC-3s . . . . “
“Yeah, because you couldn’t just push a button and let an electronic device take you to the VORTAC station. But our equipment became more and more sophisticated. Autopilots for autopilot. What the hell was I? No more than a bus driver. I tried to get some of the old feeling back by buying a bi-plane and restoring her – I call her Alice – and by doing some instructing at Danbury.”
Court got up and walked over to a big bow window. Mike sensed the next question.
“If you weren’t in love with your job or your wife, why didn’t you do something about it?”
“I did. About three years ago I met Pat Simpson and fell in love. I also drank.”
“If you had all the options in the world – could to anything you wanted, had the money – how would you change things?”
“I’d like to marry Pat. We talked about it, oh, maybe a year ago, and we agreed to wait until my daughters were a little older. They’re thirteen and sixteen now. . . . but they know something is wrong. . . . Maybe a divorce would better than living in the middle of a squabble.”
“Assuming you work your personal relationships out satisfactorily, what about your job?”
“I’d like to buy a couple of Ag planes and develop a route through the crop areas, starting in Mississippi with soybeans, moving along to cotton, sugar in central Florida, finally winding up the loop in the deep citrus country. I have this idea of buying into a fertilizer factory and organizing the sprayers into a co-op. In fact, I’ve talked to a few of ‘em. Even without the factory, I could at least set up a didtribution point – buy wholesale, make a couple of cents a pound. It wouldn’t be bad.”
“As soon as we pull you off the booze, Mike, you’ll have to come out the other side with something new, something that you really want. Without that, you’ll be back on the juice in a month.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’ll never let it get to me like it did.”
“Remember, Mike, most alcoholics can’t drink at all. You could, and as we’ve said, that was part of your problem. Your system handled it very well to a point, but if you’d gone on mich loner, we’d have had an even more difficult job on our hands.”
The doctor then told Mike that during the rest of the wind-down period he was to report to the hospital daily on an outpatient basis, and they would continue to talk.

The week went well. Mike bought another thermos – for safety’s sake, he told himself – and painted the rings on a new jigger. He continued to paste in the stars; there weren’t too many now. He was down to six ounces and holding. On the third day in a row that he reached 5:00 p.m. without a drink, he slid open the door to the hangar that housed Alice. He started the old bird and flew her around the pattern one time.
It was his special victory flight.
Dr. Jameson had told Mike than once in a while the spooker need might catch up with him, an he should take a drink I he had to. During the late afternoons of the week, he felt the urgency and wondered if he would ever be able to get by the cocktail hour without a drink, but he had come a long way and he was proud of himself.
The day after he flew Alice around Danbury airport, Mike went into New York for the luncheon meeting Joe had arranged with McCullen, Fitzsimmons, and Hanscom. They ate at the Harvard Club, and everyone ordered drinks before lunch. Mike decided on a dry sherry, not to impress the others, he was out to impress himself. When the sherry came, he thought it was much too dry and only took one taste, which Joe Barnes noticed.
As they stood in front of the club after lunch, Fitzsimmons came over to Mike. “did you ever think of management, Captain Hagen – moving over to Third Avenue?”
“Not really.”
“Well, if you ever do, give me a ring. The mangement team always needs men who can think, who know airline operations.
Mike thanked the vice-president, but running through his head was a small laugh. If they only knew how little he cared about airline management – the books, memos, manuals – a treadmill of trivia from which he was so desperately trying to extricate himself. He shook hands with the immaculately turned-out executives. On the street, they went east and Mike walked west; he didn’t know why, but he went the other way.

[avi-addict]

CHAPTER NINE

Mike sit in his study contemplating the changes in his life. Day by day, as the cravinf for the spooker lifted, a new licidity was coming to him; he saw and smelled more, suddenly discovering details – a few pleasant, but most of them disturbing – that had been hidden in clutter and shadows. The branches on the maple tree in his front yard seemed larger than he remembered. His house seemed sloppier. The office, the stinking, jungle-scented upstairs world of fake exotic flowers, was worse than he imagined. Even things at the Danbury field began to look different; the hangar for old Alice seemed smaller, and the brutish Waco’s colour seemed brighter now. He knew that it was decision time. If he continued with the same life, he would be right back at Ellen’s Place.
It was easy to sit in a psychiatrist’s office and jabber on about a rural Florida youth, but to return to those times, a way of life long gone, was a whimsical goal. Mike was intelligent enough to know that his beloved daredevils were no longer sliding glued-up bi-planes into dirt strips. They had been replaced by young, highly trained men flying sofhisticated, expensive equipment. The spray business had gone big time, too.
Chucking in the towel on a $55,000-a-year captain’s job for a crop-spraying venture appeared more and more frightening, but what were the options? He could report to IA’s Third Avenue offices and become an executive, although that new life might evoke the same old problems; or there was instructing, at maybe $10 000 a year. He’d have to develop a plan.
First he had to tell Jean that it was over. Then he and Pat could take an apartment in New York. Perhaps he would call Fitz and say he was interested in the executive job. While he was collegting his checks, he would investigate the crop-spraying business.

Mike had his talk with Jean. They sat in the study and she looked bored, as if she knew what was coming.
Jean, I guess you know our marriage is over.”
“Darling, it’s been over for some time,” she said. “Hadn’t you noticed?”
“So how do we do it without hurting the girls?“I don’t know,” she said, getting up and moving to the bar. “We could get lawyers and fight, like everyone else, but I don’t think we need that. You obviously have someone you want . . . . “
“Yes.”
“Maybe I do too. I want a lot more than you can give me, Mike. I’m enlarging the flower businesss, moving it to New York. I’ve obtained new financing and a partner. He’s a lawyer. . . . I might marry him. Also, I’ve spoken to a few real estate dealers about the house. They think we might get a hundred and forty thousand, with the price of land around here as high as it is.”
“That much?” Mike felt a burden lifting. Perhaps the house had been a prudent investment. They had only paid $65 000 for it and the mortage had been reduced considerably. They sat talking calmly for a while, and it was the most sympathetic and raional conversation they had had in years.

Mike called Pat that evening, and the following morning he drove out to JFK to meet her. They put the bags in the car and went to Ellen’s Place. Pat understood the significance of the visit. As they entere the squalid, gray-shingled place, she was overcome with pity, but when they slipped into a booth and Mike told Ellen he wanted a Coke, she knew he had won. Pat had a glass of milk, and finally Mike stood, a big smile on his face as he crossed toward Ellen.
“Ellen, I’m being transferred and I want to say good-bye”
“Sure, good luck – whatever you do.”
Mike walked out of Ellen’s Place forever, and they drove north to the Hilton Inn in Rye, where Pat registered. During dinner Mike said that he was just about off the booze, down to four ounces a day. He told her about the talk with Jean, and at last he said, “Would you like to be the wife of an airline exrcutive, or of a crop sprayer or something?”
Pat smiled and leaned over and kissed the big, red-faced pilot. “Anything you want, darling.”
They talked about living in New York. She was going for an interview with an advertising agency, and Mike kept thinking about working on Third Avenue. Other people did it, and with Pat there, maybe he could survive.
Early the following morning, he took Pat up in Alice. They flew over the house, then he pulled an indide loop. Mike felt higher than God. Pat screamed, partly from joy, partly from fright. Everything seemed perfect; Mike knew he had made it.


The next morning Jo Barnes called, asking Mike to take out flight 15 – the 7:30 p.m JFK-LAX nonstop – three days later, with Larry Zanoff flying in the right seat. During the period before their departure, Mike wondered whether or not he should carry the spooker aboard. Finally he decided to take it along. It would be a long trip, six or more hours, depending upon the head winds. Every once in a while he still felt the need for a few ounces.
Mike didn’t know if he wanted to come off booze all the way, but he knew his limits now. He had his final session with Jameson just before the nonstop to Los Angeles.
“Is this graduation?” Mike asked.
“I think so, but when things begin to go wrong, and they will from time to time, don’t reach for the bottle. Come back and let me help you. You’ve proved that you have self-control, Mike, and that’s the most important thing.”
Mike left Court’s office that day a confident man.”

It began as a light snowstorm, the morning of Mike’s scheduled departure for Los Angeles. Suddenly the storm intensified, and shortly before noon on that February 20, snow covered the JFK taxiways and runways. It had been a difficult week for snow-removal operations at the airport. Two previous storms had left residual accumulations in below-freezing temperatures.
That afternoon heavy winds forced the closing of all but two runways. By 3:50 p.m. the snow had turned to rain, but the temperature had risen only to 32 degrees, so ice formed on both active runways.
The snow committee – airport officials and pilots from various carriers – was watching the situation closely. Continuous aircraft operation and wind often make a runway patchy so that one part of it may be slick, while another section remains rough; this can affect an aircraft’s traction and braking, and the only remedy is constant sanding. All that afternoon and evening they alternated runways, closing one operating the other.

Mike had a three-ounce drink at lunch and then went to Pat’s room at the Hilton and slept for a few hours. When she woke him at 4:00 p.m. he saw the snow and called IA Operations.
“This is Captain Hagen. I’m taking flight 15 out tonight. Do you have and estimated time of arrival on the inbound equipment?”
“Yes. It left L.A. on time. No delays en route, but we have half hour inbound delays now.”
“What about outbound?”
“No delays yet. I’d say, at the worst, 15 will be away from the gate maybe an hour late.”
Flight 15 was a DC-8-61, license number N4962C. The plane was configured exactly like the equipment used on flight 467. The required 180-hour special inspection of the plane had been carried out two weeks earlier. That check had shown no maintenance problems.

Mike and Pat arrived at JFK at 6:15 p.m., and Mike took Pat in to see Operations. As soon as they entered the impersonal, airless room, she understood why he detested it.
For Mike, entering Operations totally sober was another victory, like drinking a Coke at Ellen’s Place. Pat, who would be flying out to the coast with Mike, left for the lounge, and Mike and Larry Zanoff began to discuss the flight.
“The front is beyond us,” Larry said. “Some turbulence up to nine. After that, it should be relatively easy. Situation’s local.”
The equipment was on the daily JFK- LAX route, spending each night in LA and when flight 14, the inbound service landed in New York at 6:25 p.m. on that February 20, no maintenance report on N4962C was filed. The trip was thirty minutes late arriving at JFK, and 15 was set up to go out at 8:30 p.m. instead of 7:30 as scheduled.
In addition to Larry and Mike, there were seven others in the crew; the flight engineer and six cabin attendents, five female, one male. Louise Conners, a pretty blonde, came up to Mike and introduced herself as the senior stewardess that evening.
“This weather’s local,” Mike said. “We shouldn’t have too much trouble once we’re out of here.”
Louise smiled and thanked the captain. She and her cabin attendants left Operations together and walked along the concourse toward gate 6, on the left side of IA’s terminal.

Mike and Larry walked down the loading ramp with that confident air and slight swagger that told everyone these were high-time veterans. The spooker in Mike’s left pocket was hidden by the raincoat over his arm. After entering the aircraft, he stored his thermos in the first lavatory and looked at himself in the mirror. Not bad, he thought. His face had lost much of it’s old puffiness, and the telltale rivulets on his left side seemed lighter, almost blending into the apple-red of his cheek. It had been nearly eight hours since Mike had downed his three-ouncer and he felt extremely well. He was over the worst of his problems, and most of his self-respect and pride had returned.
When he entered the cockpit, Mike noticed the force with wich the hail was hitting the front windshield. “What’s the runway visual range?”
He ask Larry as he slippe into the left seat.
“Three thousand. Doesn’t look it, does it?”
“Sure doesn’t,” Mike said, peering about. He could hardly see the line of red lights on top of the terminal.
As the two pilots were going through their paperwork, George Gibbons, the flight engineer, was moving around underneath the giant transport. Among his preflight duties was inspection of the exterior of the aircraft. The hail was blasting him in the face as he completed his visual checks of the undercarriage, turbines, and control surfaces. Everything satisfied his cautious eye. George did not linger at each inspection station, but spent just enough time to convince himself that N4962C passed her test.


Pat was now standing just outside the gate area. Mike had told her she could probably board early. She felt deliciously happy. There was no question in her mind that Mike had licked his drinking problem, and since Jean had agreed to a divorce, her own future appeared rosy indeed. Pat studied the clusters of anxious passengers who were bunched up around the check-in counter.

From where she stood she could see the giant tail of the plane through the large wraparound windows. Finally an IA passenger service representative led a group toward her – a small blond girl, clutching a doll as well as her mother; four flashy-looking TV executives, two nuns, and a TV talk-show personality, Brenda Moore – the preboards. The service representative told Pat that Mike had arranged to have her come aboard with this group.
They walked down the loading ramp toward the plane. Inside the first-class cabin they felt a blast of cold air rushing in through the open galley door where the stewardesses, still in their overcoats, were taking in the last of the catering supplies.
The little girl was starting to cry, and Pat smiled sympathetically at the mother. “This is Marsha. It’s her first flight,” explained the mother. “My sister will be meeting her on the other end. I hope she’ll be all right.”
“Why don’t we make friends?” Pat said to the child. “I know the captain. Would you like to meet him?” Marsha stopped sniffing and a slight smile crossed her lips. Pat took her by the hand and the mother followes as they walked toward the flight deck.
“I’m Pat Simpson, a friend of Captain Hagen’s,” she told the senior stewardess. “I thought this little passenger would like to meet the pilot.”
Louise Conners nodded. “Mike asked me to take special care of you, Miss Simpson.” She indicated that they should move foreward. “This is called the cockpit, and there’s the man who is going to fly us all the way to California.”

Mike, delighted to hear Pat’s voice, turned and saw the small girl and motioned her toward him. “Come into my office.” he said with a big smile, and took the child on his lap. “See all those instruments? They’re going to tell us where we are.”
“I hope she won’t be too much trouble,” the mother said.
“We have children all the time.” They settle down very quickly. The stewardess will take good care of her,” Mike said, handing the little girl back to the mother, who returned with her to the cabin.
Pat lingered for a minute. “What a night,” she said.
“B ad down here, but the upper air is forecast to be fairly smooth. We’ll be out of this stuff soon after take-off.”
When the flight engineer entered the cockpit, Pat went back to the cabin. She was in 1-A, the first seat on the left in the first-class section, and the little girl was next to her. The child’s mother had left the plane feeling relieved. Two rows behind, Brenda Moore sprawled in a window seat reading ‘Variety’ and across the aisle the nuns sipped hot chocolate.
The rest of the passengers on the fully booked plane were boarded, and the heavy door of the DC-8-61 was swung closed. Then there was a tug on the plane and the aircraft was backed from the gate. The ground controller advised the aircraft there would be some departure delays because of weather conditions, and he rattled off directions to runway 22-Left.
JFK’s runway 22-Left is a hundred and fifty feet wide, eighty-four hundred feet long. Jamaica Bay is on the runway’s far side; approach lights mounted on pilings run about a half mile into the bay. Along the edge is a bulkhead that keeps the water from encroaching upon the airport’s landfill. At its nearest point, the bulkhead is less than four hundred feet from the runway. The slope from 22-Left to the bay is on an incline of about 4 degrees. On the night of February 20, the runway was under twenty-two inches of snow and ice. The tide was high and wawes were breaking against the bulkhead, sending sheets of icy water curling back up the incline toward the runway.
Piles of snow seven feet high had accumulated, but they were far enough from the runway not to interfere with aircraft operations.

The outside noises – wind, sleet, and the powerful Pratt & Whitneys hanging below each wing – completely drowned any cabin conversation.
Most of the passengers were quiet; some were tense.
Besides those on the flight deck, there was one other pilot on board, Carl Smith, sitting in the coach section. He flew for another airline and he could relax. He knew that the hail pounding on the DC-8-61 wasn’t a problem; the wings had been de-iced, and once the plane was airborne, the internal heaters would take over.

When they reached the taxiway adjacent to 22-Left, Mike counted eleven planes in front of his aircraft. He switched over to the tower frequency and told the controller they were ready in sequence. The time was 8:45, and it would be over half an hour before flight 15 could be airborne. Mike knew it would be a long night, and he wondered if he would be visiting the first lavatory. He decided not to think about it. He picked up the PA.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Hagen. The noise you’re hearing is, of course hailstones. While it’s annoying, they don’t hurt the plane. Our runway visual range is improving, and the weather upstairs – above ten thousand – is forecast to be smooth. There are about eleven planes in front of us, so we’ll be delayed up to half an hour. I think we’ll open up the bar now, but before we take off, all tray tables must be secures and the seats brought to upright positions. I would also recommend that your seat belts be securely fastened for your comfort and safety. We hope you enjoy your flight with us tonight. Thank you.”

The stewardesses shook their heads. The coach passengers wouldn’t order too many drinks, since they had to pay for them, but there’d be a lot of action in first class, where the drinks were free. On a night like this, probably everybody would want a couple. One of the girls working coach came forward to help out. She and Louise and a stewardess assisting her moved down the aisle, taking orders.
Brenda Moore and a few of the TV executives were sitting together. “We’ll have three vodka martinis, sweetheart, and some nuts if you have ‘em,” one of the men said to Louise. She ignored his rude manner and told them to fasten their seat belts.”
“Did you get the drink order, honey?”
“Yes, sir, I did! Louise said snappily.
When the DC-8-61 was number two in position, Mike made another PA. “We are next in line for take-off, folks. We appologize once more for the delay. Please be sure all cigarettes are extinguished, tray tables are up and fastened, and your seats are in full upright position.”
The stewardesses quickly secured the galley. Louise and her assistant went through first class, while the four other flight attendants checked the coach section, seeing that everyone was belted in and that all tables were stored. When they were satisfied, they sat down. Billy Joe, the male cabin attendant, and a very young stewardess were on the left side of the galley door, near exit 11; two older stewardesses were on the right side, adjacent to exit 12.
In first class, Louise’s assistant belted herself in on the jump seat that unfolded from the bulkhead near the main entrance door. Louise sat next to her and took out a Gothic paperback.

The wind was gusting, holding from the southwest and whipping across the field just a bit from the left side. The before-take-off checklist was read. As the plane ahead started he take-off run, the control tower notified IA 15 to taxi into position and hold. Mike brought the trottles forward and steered the Stretch-8 onto the runway. He lined her up with the white center stripe; he saw almost all the way down the runway. He called the tower.
“Say wind again.”
“Thirty knots, gusting forty, two-hundred degrees.,” came the word back from the tower controller.
“Hurricane,” Larry commented.
They remained at the threshold for about twenty seconds. The controller could not see the runway, but he was monitoring the departures via his ground-surveillance radar.
At precisely 9:19:30 the controller said, “IA 15, you’re cleared for take-off.”
“IA 15.”
Mike took his feet off the brakes and eased the thrust levers slowly up to forward position. The plane directly behind them was a United 747. Its co-pilot, who was watching the IA take-off, thought the jet was not gathering speed as quickly as it should have. The turbines roared out their full thrust, seventy-two thousand pounds, and the noise was deafening, but ten seconds into the take-off run, the plane had covered only four hundred and fifty feet of the iced runway. As the co-pilot in the waiting 747 saw the tail of the Stretch-8 disappear into the slashing rain, he continued to feel that the acceleration was slow.
Mike had the sme thought. He sensed that something was wrong, but what? To the pilot’s sensitive ear, the high-pitched roar of the turbines sounded okay.
“George, are those turbines up there?” he snapped loudly.
“Yes, sir! Fine.”
The airspeed needle struggled up to 90 knots. Dammit, Mike thought, that needle should be at 120. Innumerable thoughts raced through his mind; they came in microseconds. Then, after thirty-five seconds, the plane entered the final stretch; almost half the runway was behind them.
“Airspeed, Larry?”
“One ten.”
Carl Smith, the airline-pilot passenger, pressed his face to the window. He noticed how slowly the runway lights were passing. He listened. No change in the turbines; pitch, whine continuous – one hundred percent output.
They had been into the take-off run for forty seconds. The strobe lights at the pier end of the runway were coming up like the entrance lights to hell.

Altough Louise sat with her eyes fastened on the pages of her novel, she suddenly realized the plane was taking a long time to get off. She had been flying for six years and was aware, unconsciously, of changes in the sound of the plane.

The nuns sat staring out the window. It was their first flight and they had no idea whether the take-off should last forty-five seconds (the right time for a gross-weight DC-8-61) or five minutes. Others scattered about the plane thought that perhaps the take-off was lasting longer than it shoul have.

“I don’t like it! Mike screamed. “Abort!!”
At that moment the plane was forty-nine hundred feet down the runway: the airspeed needle was vibtating in the 121 range. Mike yanked his four throttles back; his hand flipped ontop to four smalle throttles and he pulled them back, reversing the thrust of the turbines. He touched the brakes. . . . Nothing!!
For an instant the roar of the turbines went dead and only the bawling wind could be heard. An eerie stillness. Of the six cabin attendants, only Loouse had experienced and aborted take-off. She threw her book down. She knew what was coming: the extreme high pitch of the rurbines in reverse thrust; the accelerated forces pushing people about. She hope they hadn’s missed any seat bealts; it was too late now.
The scream of the reversed turbines pushing out thousands and thousands of pounds of hot, compressed air evoked alarm throughout the cabin. Three seconds had gone by. The plane traveled another 528 feet, and the needle encased in the airspeed indicator dropped back into the 110 range.
As soon as Mike realized he had lost directional control, he took out his thrust, putting it back to forward idle. Then he used the only thing he had going for him at that point – the rudder. He jammed his foot in to straighten out the plane, and for a moment she seemed to swerve just a bit toward the center of the runway.
“Dammit! Do something, rudder!” Mike shouted.
“Let me try my side,” Larry yelled.
Nothing!!
Mike used a touch of reverse thrust asymmetrically, hoping to bring the plane around. The jet was now making a beeline for the ice piles on the side of the runway. Then the DC-8-61 began an insidious side-to-side motion that accelerated, rocking the passengers faster and faster.
Inside the cabin, there were shouts of “What’s wrong?” Carl Smith thought he knew; he quickly put his head down on his knees and called to the other passengers to do likewise.
Mike was helpless. He saw the snow pile coming up. After a painful few seconds, the surging, swaying plane’s left wing was thirty-seven feet over the side of the runway. There was a seven-foot clearance between the piled snow and the underside of the wing tip.
No problem, but twenty-seven feet in from the wing tip hung the outboard Pratt & Whitney turbine.
A crucial obstruction.
The turbine smashed into the packed icy snow. The collision speed was 78 knots – just enough to rip the turbine from the wing.
The engine hung on for a split second before it fell away, belching out kerosene and black smoke. The grinding tear had ruptured the outboard fuel tank, and the disillate spurted up and out, covering the left wing.

Mike felt the plane halt briefly. Everybody did. The seat belts dug into the passenger’s stomachs as the decelerating forces took effect. The violent swaying movement, the sickening rolling sensation assaulted the frightrened people with one wave after another.
Again Mike fought in vain with the limp rudder pedals. Still no response. Suddenly the plane shifted direction and skidded across the runway toward another pile of snow. The jet hit at 73 knots. The controls came back in Mike’s hands and his knees were jammed to his stomach. The windshield was blocked by flying ice. The nose gear, fifteen feet from the front of the plane, hit the wall of snow. The whole underside of the plane began to peel away; the ice opened up the jet as easily as a surgeon’s knife cuts into a fleshy stomach.

On impact, the passengers’ heads struck the semipadded seats in front of them. Teeth sank into lips, jaws were smashed, and noses gushed blood. There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone cried out at once. It was a nightmare as the cabin lights flickered and went out, leaving them in blackness.
Louise’s head snapped back against the bulkhead; her body went the other way. She felt the pain in her stomach as the seat belt settled farther down into her gut, but it held. Louise’s assistant was not so lucky; her seat belt came loose. She was thrown aft, her head hitting the back of the first-class section. The girl crumpled up in the darkness.
The forward galley became a hot pressure chamber. It did not come apart: it disintegrated, more like an explosion of grenades, spitting out trays, bottles, glasses, knives, forks, oven doors, and finally, splashes of hot coffee. The barrage hit the TV executives. They fell forward, uttering loud, agonizing screams.
As the plane went over the snow wall, two floor beams in the coach burst, thrusting the jagged, raw aluminum up through the cabin floor. Gallons of volatile fuel gushed out.
Once over the banked ice and snow, the plane began to slide down the incline toward Jamaica Bay. The beautiful DC-8-61 was nothing but a long tube now, one wing partly attached and dragging, the other parts – the turbines, horizontal stabilizers, and the left wing, were scattered about the icy wall. The windshield was clear of ice now; Mike could see the bay in front of him, the waves curling and breaking into long froths in the black night. The nose of the DC- 8-61 slid over the bulkhead. The entire plane would have plunged into the frigid waters of the bay had not the longitudinal beams in first class cracked and burst. The shock wave opened the fuselage twenty-six feet aft of the nose. The front part dug into the soft, slimy mud several feet down; the left front windshield popped out, and sewage-filled water burst into the cockpit. What was left of the nose slid along the mud for a few feet, then bounded up from the bottom, breaking the surface once again like a whale coming up for air. The 820-foot slide of the DC-8-61 finally came to an end.
It had been only eleven seconds since the huge airliner had begun her final, uncontrolled swerve.


The controller monitoring progress of flight 15 on the surface detection equipment could not believe what he was seeing. Not only did the little airplane on his scope begin to slow down, it went crazy, zigzagging across the runway until it left the strip on en erratic route toward the water.
“IA 15 just went off the runway!” he screamed out loud. Instinctively the controller pushed the crash alarm, notified the emergency-equipment units and the New Yor City Fire Department, and closed down runway 22-Left.

Mike never tought it would happen like this. His crash, the only one of his life, taking place before flight. A ground crash! Most appalling of all, it had happened with two high-time captains in the cockpit. What had gone wrong? How did they loose it? Why hadn’t the Stretch-8 accelerated in time? George had said the turbines were functioning. What had gone wrong with the brakes and the rudder? Mike’s mind was jammed with questions.
He became aware of the icy bay water creeping up around him and released his seat belt. He heard nothing but wind and the slap of waves upon the bulkhead behind them. It was pitch-black. How long had he stat there thinking? Perhaps only a second ; he had lost track of time.
“Mike, we’re not polar bears,” Larry said. Let’s get out and help those passengers.”
Both men stood; the water was already up to their waists. George Gibbons sat dazed at his board. He was close to tears. “The turbines were okay,” he cried. “Nothing was wrong!”
Mike and Larry pulled George from his seat. They could feel his shoulders shaking. Mike groped for the flashlight mounted on the bulkhead wall, found it, and turned it on the engineer’s panel.
Then he threw the emergency lighting switch; not even a flicker.
The ice smashed the power packs. The vital light units were gone. Mike cut off the fuel-control levers and pulled the fire-control that disconnected fluids to the engines. By now Larry had reached the cockpit coor. He jerked on it futilely. In the glare of the flashlight he saw that the bulkhead was twisted.
The three men were trapped in the front did not know what was on the other side of the door. All they knew was that water was cascading in, and they thought the cockpit was going down. George tried to pull open the emergency top hatch, while Mike and Larry yanked at the door.
“The axe!” Larry yelled.
Mike took it down and began to hack through the five layers of almost impregnable Formica-clad plywood, of which the door had been designed in order to keep out hijackers.

For some seconds after the plane came to rest, the passengers in the dark cabin experienced the stillness of shock. Then amid soft sobs and screams of panic, the water level began to rise in first class, and the stench of kerosene spread through the coach section.
The cries assured the flight-deck crew that the cockpit had not been severed from the rest of the plane. They had feared that they were no longer attached to the main body of the fuselage; that the cockpit alone was sinking into the bay. They chopped furiously at the door, all the while expecting a delayed distillate explosion. That was the worst that could happen – not drowning, but burning to death.

Billy Joe had been with IA only a year and had always wondered how he would react in a crash situation. The young steward had memorized safety procedures and undergone hours of simulation and training. He knew the exact position of the Jetescape doors. They looked like emergency window exits; however, upon pulling the red handle, a whole section of the fuselage came out and a pneumatic slide appeared from under the bottom of each door plate.

When the plane began to swerve and rock violently, Billy Joe knew they were’nt going to get off the ground and he immediately started thinking about emergency procedures. Remain calm, of course, wait until the plane came to a complete stop, open galley door, activate the slide, and command the passengers in an orderly evacuation.
It didn’t work that way.
In the blackness, just after the jet came to a stop, Billy Joe unstrapped himself, got up, and removed an emergency flashlight from its mounting. In the beam of the powerfull light he saw the destruction.
Seats were upside down. Passengers had been flung about; arms and legs were twisted together in the center aisle, along with coats, pillows, blankets, attachè cases, and overhead hat racks. His light beam swung back and forth, and he noted the twisted metal of what had been the right aft galley. He quickly went over and dug the stewardesses out. They were dazed, but didn’t seemto be seriously injured.
A stewardess was already wrestling with the left-galley exit. Billy Joe stumbled over coffeepots and debris to help her. As they yanked the door open, a blast of icy wind and rain entered the dark cabin. It was about a seven-foot drop to the ground below. Billy Joe let out the chute; the wind picked it up and flung it around.
Two other stewardesses found flashlights and moved forward to assist in evacuation from the Jetescape doors, exits 9 and 10. The deluge from the galley had completely blocked one of the exits.
The stench of kerosene was strong and someone yelled, “The plane’s going to blow up! Explosion. Let’s get out!”
This started a stampede. Carl Smith, the pilot passenger, had been sitting close to Jetescape 9: he was uninjured and already had the door open. He shouted, “Take it easy, everyone. This way, don’t panic.”
The slide was inflated. Carl begin pushing the people out, yelling at them to get away from the plane. Meanwhile, the stewardesses were struggling with the other Jetescape door. One of them was shouting, “Don’t try to take your personal belongings. Leave everything and get off the plane.”

When the flight crew broke through te cockpit door, the first thing Mike saw was Pat’s bloody face. She was sitting dazed in a litter of spilled galley trays, still holding Marsha, who was hysterical. Mike pushed through the partly submerged rubble and unbuckled her.
“Are you hurt, darling?”
“No, I’m okay. What happened?” she asked
“Don’t know, we lost directional control somehow.”
Mike noticed the water streaming up throught the floor. The forward entrance and galley doors were completely useless. Mike made his way to the Jetescape door that the stewardesses couldn’t manage. He pullet it open, but saw at once that anyone using this exit would probably slide off the slick ice straight into the water.
First-class passengers would have to reach the wing section exits.
“Out over the wings!” Mike yelled. “Use the right side!”
He climbed over broken seats and helped Louise get the wing exits open. They threw the windows out and yanked on the nylon ropes. People would need them when then they got onto the slippery tilted wing. One of the passengers helped lift the injured stewardess over the sill. Louise hurried back to get the nuns. Two men dragged out Brenda Moore, who was unconscious. Mike picked up Marsha and led Pat to exit 6, where she and the child stood in line to follow the coughing, petrified passengers onto the wing.
People tried to form a human chain along the wing, but they had to fight just to stand up on the slipperey surface. The plane’s main fuel tanks had burst, and the wing was coated with the lethal liquid. Pat clutched the little girl and made her way over the wing; several times she slipped in a gushing pool of kerosene. All she could think of was getting the child away from the plane. And Mike ! She didn’t want to leave him there.

As the passengers started clawing their way up the slithery kerosene hill, the crash equipment dispatched by the tower began arriving on the scene. The crews from the rescue vehicles directed the passengers away from the kerosene outflow, bringing them up the far side of the incline. Hoses were unrolled from the 3 000- gallons-per-minute pumpers, and a mixture of water and foam was quickly sprayed on the distillate fuel to seal it. Two ambulances arrived, followed by the triage unit, a vehicle into which the passengers were placed to protect them from the weather and evaluate their physical condition.

It took six frantic minutes for Mike and the rest of the crew to evacuate the plane, but nobody was sure the aircraft would not blow up; when kerosene pours out at high rates, sometimes there are delayed detonations. Satisfied that everyone was out of the wreckage, Mike climbed the hill to find Pat. She was in the triage unit, and had a gash over her left eye; other than that, she appeared to be all right.
“Darling, I have to go back and help,” he said to her. Then to the attendent, “Where will she be taken?”
“Jamaica Hospital, Captain.”
Mike kissed Pat and climbed back over the snow pile. There were a few stretchers being maneuvered slowly to the top.
The spooker!
Mike suddenly realized he would have to board the plane again. The FAA would tear it apart inch by inch; his spooker would certainly be found. The discovery would have a devastating effect on the whole industry; Mike didn’t care very much about IA, but he didn’t want to ruin Jo Barnes. He looked over at the nose of the plane and saw it was settling lower in the water, while the body was settling in the mud. Mike grabbed a flashlight and climbed onto the wing.
Larry struggled up the field with the last of the injured passengers. He looked around for Mike and didn’t see him. Puzzled, he approached a rescue worker. “Have you seen the captain?”
The man jerked his head toward the dark hulk below. “Went back on board.”
“He’s on the plane?” Larry said incredulously. “But it’s sinking!”
He turned and stumbled again toward the aircraft.
Far down the aisle of the mutilated plane, Mike was struggling to open the door to the first lavatory, which was wrenched and twisted. The water slapped at his chest; his legs were numb from the cold, but he had to get the door open and remove the spooker. He found the fire axe and began to chop through the barrier. When he had enough of the door open, he wedged his large body inside. The disposal bin was canted back at a 30-degree angle. Mike stuck a nimbed hand inside.
The spooker was gone!
It had obviously become loose in the crash and was now somewhere under the water with the litter. He grasped the axe again and began to hack away at the Formica counter. Between his furious smashes he heard a loud, wrenching sound.
It came from behind him. The plane was moving forward! The water rose another few inches; Mike pounded desperately at the counter. It finally split open and he reached into the rising black water. He found his spooker almost at once.
The water rose again. The added weight of the rising tide was dragging the shattered plane deeper and deeper into the bay. Mike started out, but the door opening was smaller now; the water pressure had built up. At the moment Mike realized he was trapped in the sinking jet. This is th eultimate irony, he thought. He gazed at the spooker in his hand, seeing the dim outline of the thermos that had almost ruined him and now was finally taking his life.
“You little bastard!” he screamed. “You’re not doing this!”
The front section of the plane lurched sickeningly on the ice. Mike sucked in a deep breath and crashed against the lavatory door. It moved slightly. He hit it again and the door gave a little more. He only had enough strength for one more heave; this time the door cracked just enough to let him through.
Suddenly there was a sharp, crunching sound beneath him; the front part of the DC-8-61 was breaking away, sliding into the bay, and Mark was going with it; he grasped the back of a seat and jerked himself toward the rear. The water was up to his neck; his muscles ached with the strain. He pulled away to safety just as the cockpit disappeared in the bay.
Mike was standing there looking at the black, gaping hole, still clutching his spooker, when Larry found him.
“Are you crazy! What are you doing here!” Larry shouted. Then the check pilot saw the termos in Mike’s hand; he grabbed it, screwed open the top, and sniffed the bourbon.
“Damn you! How the hell did you hide that?”
“It was attached to the disposal bin. Joe Barnes knew something, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, a couple of girls got suspicious when they saw you going to the head so much, and Joe asked me to check it out.”
“Larry, I was almost off the stuff,” Mike cried. “This mess tonight has nothing to do with it. You felt those rudder pedals!”
“I honestly don’t know what happened tonight, but one thing’s for sure, it’s all over for you. Joe Barnes can handle the matter any way he sees fit, but for now I’m chucking this thing in the bay. That’s all we need. Someone to spot the pilots running around with booze on ‘em.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Mike was wild.
“Maybe not. Maybe you’re just unlucky. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They stood at the edge of the bay, and Larry was about to throw the thermos into the churning black water when Mike reached for it. “Let me,” he said.
Mike watched his spooker sink below the surface. They paused there for a moment in the wintry air, then made their way up the incline.

Joe Barnes arrived at the airport by chartered helicopter. After he checked in at Operations, he rushed to the small office where the flight crew were lounging on chairs.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
They nodded.
“The company officials and the FAA are on the way. Let’s get the stories straight. They tell me the plane is totaled.”
“Very totaled,” Mike said.
“We’re lucky there weren’t many injuries, but enough to make this damned serious. What happened, Mike?”
Mike got up and walked around the room. “Well,’ he began, “conditions were bad – not below minimums, but windy, with some freezing rain. We started down the runway, but the plane wasn’t coming up to speed. It felt like we were dragging something.”
“What about the turbines?” Joe asked the flight engineer.
“Nothing wrong, Captain Barnes. Every engine was up to full take-off thrust.”
“Maybe your brakes locked,” Joe said.
“But the frictional heat alone would have melted that,” Larry interjected.
Joe motioned Mike to continue.
“Well, I just didn’t like it, so we aborted. We had her in reverse thrust and suddenly she started to weathercock. I had absolutely no steering control. The outboard engine struck an iced-over snow pile. This wrenched u around; we crossed the runway at right angles and hit another ice pile at about seventy-five knots, I guess. The left wing and engines came off and the plane continued down the slope and crashed. The cockpit and part of the first-class section are in Jamaica Bay.
“Why didn’t you abort sooner?”
“We still would have lost direction control,” Mike said. “We couldn’t brake her on that ice. Besides, nothing seemed to be wrong.”
“Nothing wrong, except the plane didn’t accelerate! Of course there was something wrong - had to be.” Joe said.
“Joe, can we speak to you for a minute?” Larry asked.
“Okay. Gibbons, leave us,” Joe said. “And don’t say anything to anybody until I tell you.”
When the flight engineer had left the room, Larry turned to Mike. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”
“Go ahead, it doesn’t matter anymore. Tell him everything.”
“What!” Joe blasted. “Tell me what? Come on, don’t play games. The FAA and the execs will be here in a minute.”
“Mike went on board at the last minutr,” Larry said. “It was a crazy thing to do, he almost got trapped in there, but he had a thermos in the lav, Joe. The booze was there all along. Stuck in with heavy adhesive.”
Joe’s face was beet red with rage. “Is that true, Mike?”
“Yes, it’s true,” Mike said, with a kind of marked despair. “I was drinking on the plane a while back, but I was almost off the stuff. Joe, please believe me, I had it under control. I wasn’t endangering anyone.”
“What did you do with the termos?” Joe asked.
“Threw it in the bay.”
The chief pilot sat down and tried to calm himself. It was lucky they had retrieved the thermos. . . . FAA investigators would have found it. Just the appearance of booze hidden in the lavatory would have cast doubt over the accident, no matter what had gone wrong with the equipment.
“Why didn’t you tell me before, Mike? I would have understood. I could have helped.”
“I’m sorry Joe, I should have.”
“Well, we’re going over to the hospital to take some blood tests. I want to know if there’s any alcohol in your system.”

At IA, as at most of the large carriers, it was routine procedure to examine the flight crew following any incident, and Joe Barnes took the two pilots over to Jamaica Hospital. After his blood sample was taken, Mike went down to see Pat. Her head was bandaged, but X rays revealed no scull damage. Marsha had been placed in the pediatrics section, and her mother was already there. Of the 204 passengers aboard flight 15 that night, sixty-one remained at the hospital for treatment.
Just after midnight the lab technician called Joe. “We have the crew’s blood and urine analyses, Captain Barnes.”
“Give me Hagen first.”
“Normal, sir.”
Joe’s heart was racing , but he gave a deep sigh of relief. He walked into the solarium, wher Mike sat dozing. Joe shook him.
“Okay, Mike, there was no booze. Let’s go over and make out the accident report.”
“What happens to me, Joe?”
“I can’t think straight tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow.”


Later that night, after Joe Barnes had explained the accident to the executives who had come in, he, Fitz and Cliff McCullen took a company station wagon and drove to the crash site. The rain had let up by this time, but the wind still blew hard from the south-west. As soon as they reached the threshold of 22-Left, Joe asked the driver to stop.
“Want to see what this is all about,” he said.
Joe climbed out and walked over to one of the men. He saw a piece of rubber being held down and protected by a heavy block.
“Don’t touch it!” the man said. “FAA said to mark each one.”
“What is it?” Joe asked.
“It’s worn-down rubber from the Stretch-8,” the man said
“How many pieces are there?” Joe asked.
“Twelve. She blew her tires out long before the abort.”
Joe stood rigid, paralyzed. The clues were devastating, and one thing was certain; the plane had proceeded down 22-Left losing rubber all the way – the wheels weren’t turning! As Joe looked down again at the shredded tires, he could see that one side of the jagged rubber was black with heat friction.
He returned to the car. “What happened?” Cliff asked.
“Wheels froze,” Joe answered. “Maybe the whole gear.”
At the next stop on the runway, Joe saw more shredded bits of evidence; blackened pieces of undercarriage rubber. The plane was surrounded by investigating authorities. Joe finally located the FAA district branch chief, who told them that the entire area was being roped off. The chief pilot asked if he could inspect the gear, which was lying about.
“Sorry, NTSB says no. They’ll be up from Washington on the first flight tomorrow…but there is something you can see.”
“The rubber?” Joe asked.
“No. Score marks in the ice. That plane was sliding on her rims.”
The branch chief took the IA tem down the runway about 1 850 feet from the point where the Stretch-8 had hit the snowbank. In the glaze of the work lights, Joe could see deep score marks, which had been panted with red dye in case the ice melted before the investigators arrived. Photographers were recording the marks – the trail of N4962C’s final moments.
Joe Barnes suddenly felt sick. What if the plane had taken off? What if Mike hadn’t grabbed those throttles? If he hadn’t decided to abort! Joe saw the whole agonizing scenario. Take-off would have been normal. With the accelerated head wind, the plane would have rotated successfully and become airborne. The gear would have retracted as usual, flight 15 would have moved across country. On their long final into Los Angeles, the gear handle would have been pushed into the down position, and three green lights on the panel would have indicated that the landing gear was down and locked.
Joe saw it all in his mind. Sparks kicked off by the bare, tireless wheels touching the runway surface. Perhaps a swift bump would have been felt in the cockpit. Mike and Larry would have known then that something was wrong, but it would have been too late. At that speed, probably 130 knots or so, there would have been strucktural failure – wings ripping off, a cascade of volatile A-1 fuel sparks, and the inevitable. . . .EXPLOSION!!
Joe stood there for a long time looking at the score marks.
“What are you thinking, Joe?” Cliff McCullen asked.
“I was saying a prayer.”
“That they didn’t take off?”
“Yeah, it would have been hell on the other end.”
“I know what you mean. They’re lucky people,” the vice-president of the Flight Department said solemnly.
They were just about to to enter the station wagon again when Mike Hagen arrived in an FAA car. He got out and walked over.
“How do you feel Captain Hagen?” Fits asked.
“Not too bad. I didn’t get hurt. The plane was fairly well decelerated by the time we hit the snowbank.”
“Tell ‘em what you told me about the accident, Mike.”
The pilot related the events leading up to the abort, emphasizing how slowly the plane had accelerated.
“Your whole undercarriage was frozen, Mike.” Joe said. “All the tires were blown out. By the time you reached the halfway mark, you were sliding over the ice on your rims. There are chunks of rubber all down the runway – score marks where the rims cut the ice. When you aborted, you lost directional control because there were no tires on the nose wheel!”
Mike, in silence, realized what a complete tragedy would have followed had the flight taken off.
“Something must have gone wrong with the brakes between the gate and the runway.” Joe said. “We’ll know in the morning. It’s an investigator’s dream.”
Joe realized now that his pilots had done all they could, and more. There were many pilots who, having seen nothing wrong, would have taken off. Mike Hagen wasn’t one of them. He turned to Mike and said, “Beautiful work, Captain Hagen.”

In pilot’s language, the abort on 22-Left was a rejected take-off, but the news media called it a bad crash. The press, and especially TV, quarries this sort of story; it’s big, hard local news, always visual.
The newsmen arrived on the scene to find their image of a bad crash realized. The harsh emergency lights, the foam-soaked in-field, the shredded ends of the fuselage resting by the bay with the nose submerged in the black water, the stench of kerosene, all of this made the accident appear much worse than it was.
“You mean everyone walked away from that?” a CBS newsman asked.
“There were a few injuries, but no one was killed,” an Ia public relations man told him.
“How did the pilot save everyone?” The TV reporter knew he had a newsbreak – a serious airline crash where the angle was pilot heroism and skill, not death.

Nineteen safety board experts arrived at dawn. After they measured the bits of rubber and the score marks, they hauled the remnants of N4962C back to an IA hangar for study. By 10;00 the runway was again open to traffic.

What rattled Joe Barnes’s mind was the cluster of approbations surrounding Mike Hagen. The legend of Mike Hagen became even more entrenched when the ‘New York Daily News’ printed a picture of the wreckage on the front page with a thick black headline:
PILOT SAVES 213 LIVES IN JFK CRASH.
If they only knew, Joe thought.
He was still trying to put things in perspective when Mike walked into the office the next morning. They had a friendly, candid conversation, and at the end Mike said he was quitting the airline.
“Why did you dislike IA?” Joe finally asked.
“It wasn’t IA, the whole business – I’m just not right for the job. . . . but, there are a few things I can point to. Take last night. Superspy Zanoff, the perfect IA skipper, sat there like a lump before I rejected the take-off. He didn’t suspect a thing. Whatever else you may think of me, Joe, you better make sure you remember that I saved lives.”
Joe agreed with part of Mike’s rationalization. It was true the pilot could do things with planes that few, if any, other captains at IA could match. But the days of seat-of-the-pants flying had long been over. Mike’s uncanny air sense and his magnificent inventory of contact-flying skills were not enough in an age of computers and specialization. When Mike finally admitted he wasn’t right for the airline job, Joe knew that the pilot had come to terms with himself. He was far better off spraying a soybean field.
There remained a large question: Were Mike’s twenty-one years in the in the airline business a total waste? The answer was NO. He was the anachronism; he liked to do things his own way. That was the particular tragedy of Mike Hagen, but Joe realized that perhaps there should be just a touch of Mike Hagen in every airline pilot.
They talked a little while longer, and then said good-bye. As Mike walked down the hall, Joe saw a magazine sticking out from his side pocket….”Ag Flyer,” it said.
Joe leaned against the doorjamb. Mike stopped, waved at him, and then dissapeared into the stairwell. The clacks of his heavy footsteps on the metal stairs were wiped out by the roar of a jet.
“Mike,” Joe said, though there was nobody there to hear him, “good-bye and thanks for not taking off last night.” He looked down the long corridor. Its emptiness seemed to mirror the hollow created by the departure of Mike Hagen, the last of the contact men.
The chief pilot returned to his office and closed the door.


* * * * F I N I S * * * *

[Muntu Pilut]

Thanks Avi, excellent read. The books ending and the movie's ending are different....

[jimbo99]

A nice quick read. Thanks Avvie.

[avi-addict]

Originally Posted by Muntu Pilut

Thanks Avi, excellent read. The books ending and the movie's ending are different....

I'm so sorry Munti....this is the "condenced" version in one of the 'Readers Digest' books......I would very much like to know how it ended in the book...and movie.....less or more sad?


Tnx Jimbo.

[Muntu Pilut]

In the movie they get a fire warning during take-off, he also aborts. During the evacuation, Larry finds the flask sticking out Mike's uniform jacket. He also resigns and decides to fly cropdusters.

[avi-addict]

Tnx Munts....I would just love to see the movie.....This was such a sad story to me....you have this skilled pilot with an extra sensitive feeling for flying and yet with such a "flaw" to "handicap him....but on the positive side...with utter willpower he overcame his weakness and got out of it a better man.