Chapter 4 - The Flashing Red Line
The failure wasn't subtle.
There was no preliminary warning, no amber caution light on the Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System (EICAS). There was simply a sudden, horrific BANG that sounded like a cannon shot fired directly against the right wing root.
The aircraft shuddered violently. The tail kicked to the right with such force that Emma’s head snapped sideways, hitting the window frame.
The right engine—its compressor blades already damaged by the failed seal that had filled the cabin with smoke—had suffered a catastrophic thermal lockup. The internal turbine assembly disintegrated at fourteen thousand RPM, shedding blades into the heavy steel casing.
The EICAS screen lit up in a sea of red.
ENG 2 FAIL.
ENG 2 FIRE.
HYDRAULIC SYSTEM B PRESSURE LOW.
The aircraft instantly began to roll into a steep, terrifying bank to the right—toward the dead engine.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Emma yelled into the radio, her right foot instantly slamming down on the left rudder pedal with all the force her leg could generate. “Northstar four-one-seven, severe engine failure on engine two! Uncommanded roll!”
The aircraft was turning upside down.
Twenty-four thousand feet below, the ground was spinning across the front windshield—a patchwork of brown farmland and gray rivers coming up at a sickening angle.
In the Chicago conference room, Captain James Sullivan stood up so fast his chair flew backward into the glass wall. “She’s losing it,” he muttered, his face pale. “She’s entering a asymmetric stall dive. She can't hold a 737 on one engine without full rudder trim!”
“Emma!” Sullivan shouted into the headset. “Stand on the left pedal! Step on the live engine! Disconnect the autothrottle completely! Push engine one to full power!”
Emma wasn't listening to Sullivan. The sound of his voice in her ears was just noise.
She was back in her father’s garage.
She was twelve years old, sitting in the wooden simulator rig her father had built out of car parts, aircraft junk, and old computer monitors. Her father had been standing behind her, his hand heavy on her shoulder, shouting over the sound of a simulated windstorm:
“When you lose an engine, the airplane wants to turn into the dead wing! It’s going to drag you down! You don't fight it with the yoke! You fight it with your feet! Step on the ball, Emma! STEP ON IT!”
Emma gritted her teeth, a low groan escaping her throat as she shoved her left sneaker all the way to the forward stop on the left rudder pedal.
Her thigh muscles screamed under the sudden, immense strain. Without hydraulic assistance—which had been degraded by the loss of System B—the physical force required to hold the rudder against the asymmetrical thrust of the remaining engine was tremendous.
She held the pedal down. She didn't let up an inch.
Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the horizon line on the Primary Flight Display began to level out.
30 degrees of bank...
20 degrees...
10 degrees...
The wings leveled.
The airplane was flying sideways through the air, crabbed at a ten-degree angle to keep from slipping, but it was no longer falling out of the sky.
Emma reached up to the overhead fire control panel with her right hand, her left foot still locked against the left pedal like an iron rod.
She grabbed the red fire handle for Engine 2. She pulled it out. She twisted it forty-five degrees to the left.
A heavy CLACK-CLACK echoed through the airframe as the fire suppression bottles discharged into the right engine nacelle. The red ENG 2 FIRE warning light flickered once, twice, and then went out.
The fire was extinguished.
The single remaining engine—Engine 1 on the left wing—was screaming at ninety-eight percent thrust, carrying eighty tons of aircraft through the sky alone.
Emma wiped a bead of sweat from her eye with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Her left leg was shaking hysterically from the isometric strain on the rudder pedal.
“Denver... Center...” she panted into the microphone, her breath coming in heavy, ragged gasps. “Engine two... shut down. Fire... extinguished. Aircraft is... under control.”
For four long seconds, there was no response from Denver.
When Miller came back on the frequency, his voice was no longer that of a calm controller. It was the voice of a man who had just witnessed a miracle.
“Northstar four-one-seven... copy that,” Miller whispered. “Vectors for Lincoln are unchanged. You are thirty-two miles west of the field. Runway 36 is clear. Emergency equipment is standing by on all taxiways.”
In the passenger cabin, the violent recovery had thrown several unsecured items across the aisles. Passengers were crying, clutching one another, praying in hushed, terrified whispers.
Grant Holloway was sitting in seat 31B, his hands locked around his knees, his forehead pressed against the seatback ahead of him. He was shivering uncontrollably. The illusion of his control over his life, his money, his status—it had all been stripped away, leaving only the cold reality that his life was hanging by a thread held by someone he had dismissed as a child three hours ago.
The door to the cockpit remained firmly shut.
Behind it, Emma Carter was preparing to land an airliner on one engine.
She reached for the radio panel and selected the internal cabin PA system. She lifted the hand microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said.
Her voice echoed through the speaker grid in the passenger ceiling. It wasn't the captain’s deep baritone. It was the voice of a nineteen-year-old girl, clear, steady, and entirely without fear.
“This is the flight deck. We have suffered a mechanical failure on our right engine, but the situation is under control. We are currently fifteen minutes from Lincoln, Nebraska, where we will be making an emergency landing. I need everyone to review the safety card in front of you, ensure your seatbelts are pulled as tight as possible, and follow all instructions from the cabin crew. We are going to be fine.”
She hung up the microphone.
Across the cabin, three hundred people looked at one another.
May you like
Grant Holloway slowly raised his head. He looked at the closed door of the flight deck, his face a mask of pale, silent shock.
“Was that...?” he whispered to himself, his voice choking in his throat. “Was that the girl from the gate?”
