The Exciting Conclusion

"Center, we are declaring an emergency and will require the longest runway."

Radio silence.

It's a practiced dance in aviation.  Aircraft declare emergencies daily for a variety of issues, very few are seriously life threatening.  Still, you can almost feel the tension over the radio.  Having been on the listening end of this conversation many times over the years, I can imagine the conversations in cockpits throughout the region.  I wonder what's happening?  Who was that again and where are they going?  I wonder if I know them?

Center calls back.  "Roger, I understand you are declaring an emergency.  When you get time, I need a brief description, souls on board and fuel remaining.  Your request has been forwarded to the tower and you can expect the runway of your choosing.  Descend at pilot's discretion and maintain 4000 feet."

As an emergency aircraft, you are given the latitude to do pretty much whatever you want.  Most pilots don't like wielding that power because many of us have been on the "make way" end of it over the years.  Flying into a busy airspace, traffic is tightly metered and speed restricted.  An emergency aircraft sends the rest of that dance into controlled chaos.  The emergency aircraft is not metered.  It has been given the green light all the way to the runway.  Everyone else in the vicinity is slowed or sped up, put in a holding pattern, spun away or even told to go around.  Traffic on the ground is held and the runway effectively closed for everyone but the emergency aircraft.

As we get closer to the runway, my heart begins to beat harder.  My brain is trying its hardest to convince my body to chill out.  We've tied-up every possible loose end.  A blown tire would have left debris on the runway in Denver or caused abnormal indications when the gear was raised.  Engines have run normally for the better part of 3 hours.  Hydraulics reservoirs are full and pressure normal.  Electrical indications are normal.  Fuel consumption is on schedule.  What we are doing is out of an abundance of caution.  Beyond an abundance, really.  So, there is no need to be anxious.  I look over to the Captain and brief the plan.  Same as always.  At the end, I add in the abnormal procedures.

"Alright, so the book says to land with auto-brakes off and land as soft as possible.  I'm going to come in on speed but leave the power in until about 10 feet.  When we touch down, I'll use full-reverse and slowly come on the brakes.  Back me up on the rudders in case it actually is a blown tire.  As we've told ATC, we'll plan on stopping on the runway to have our landing gear inspected by maintenance before continuing to the gate.  Any questions?"  The Captain shook his head and we continued to the runway.

"Gear down.  Flaps 30.  Abnormal landing checklist."  The moment of truth.  If anything was wrong, this would be the last chance for an indication.  The captain reaches out and pulls down the seemingly aggressively large 2-feet long gear handle.  The 3-gear indicating lights cycle from extinguished to red indicating the gear is officially in transit.  We can feel the subtle swinging of the metal arms as hydraulic fluid rushes to the actuators and swings the landing gear in place.  Within a second, all three lights illuminate green.  A bit of relief.

Moments later, the tower clears us to land and adds,"alright, the equipment is standing by at the approach end of the runway and midfield.  They are going to follow you down the runway until you come to a full stop.  We are looking at you now with binoculars and it appears your landing gear is normal from what we can tell.  Cleared to land."

Everything is set and I focus my attention 4 miles ahead at the approaching runway.  Even in the middle of the day, it is blatantly evident that the over 2 mile long stretch of concrete that is our destination is being hugged on its right side by flashing red and white lights.  Several large fire trucks, ambulances and airport operations vehicles sit close enough to be immediately of assistance but far enough away to let us do our thing.  Somewhere among them, I imagine there is a truck with two maintenance technicians but they don't have lights and so invisible to us.  From the terminal, I muse to myself, this must appear to be a real spectacle.

"1000 feet, cleared to land," the captain calls out.  "All systems are in the green."

I continue to fly the airplane without any help from the autopilot to the ground. At around 60 feet, the beginning of the pavement passes under the nose and the airplane starts to count down the feet above the runway.  "50..40..30....20.......10."  Right before 20, I pull the nose up to flare the aircraft.  The cadence of the call-outs from the computer slows as the aircraft briefly suspends its descent over the runway.  With the engines still at approach power, the aircraft could float the entire length of the runway.  At the 10 second mark, however, I slowly bring the throttles back to idle.  The drag is too much and the aircraft begins to sink.  When the wheels finally touch, it's nothing more than a low frequency rumble from somewhere behind us.  One of my best and smoothest landings ever.

I feel the spoilers, the large panels on top of the wing, deploy marking the official end of the flight.  As they extend to nearly straight up, lift on top of the wing is nearly zeroed out and the aircraft settles onto the runway.  Nothing feels abnormal, I think to myself.  With the nose still in the air, I reach to the front of the throttles and unlock the thrust reversers, sending them into idle reverse.  The nose settles onto the ground and I pull back on the reverser handles sending the engines into full reverse.  Nothing feels abnormal.  Feet on the brakes, I gently start to add pressure.  The pads grab onto the discs and slowly I increase pressure on the pedals.  Nothing feels abnormal.  At just under 100 mph, the reversers are stowed.  Seconds later, I bring the aircraft to a full stop in the center of the runway and EXHALE.  Had I been holding my breath this entire time?

Looking over at the Captain, I smile.  "Well, I've definitely had worse landings."  He smiles back and we both look out the window as the fire trucks converge on us.  He gets on the PA and lets everyone know in the back what is happening, as he did throughout the flight and we await news from under the airplane.

"Tower, this is Rescue 1.  We shot the gear with IR.  Temps are hot but normal.  Sending in the mechanics."  As expected, the brakes are hot after stopping a 150,000lb aircraft from 150mph.  A few minutes later, over the radio, "Tower, this is Rescue 1.  The mechanics have inspected the landing gear and have found nothing abnormal.  They are good to taxi to the gate for closer inspection."

After coming to a stop, there really couldn't be any bad news.  The potentially dangerous part was over.  We taxi the aircraft into the gate, set the parking brake and part ways.  The trip is over.  Time to go home.

****

While sitting in the back of the plane as I commuted home to St Louis that night, I reflected on the day's events.  Even though we treated it as an emergency, we knew deep inside that nothing was really ever wrong.  We went above and beyond what was required of us just so that we could ensure the safest possible outcome when we landed.  Later, evaluation of the flight data recorder would determine that an atmospheric anomaly caused the sudden jerk to the left. Nothing a normal pilot couldn't handle.

As I expected I would, in the midst of the stress of a potential serious malfunction and emergency landing, I performed on par. My now approaching a decade of aviation experience had prepared me well to live up to the task of executing a never-before-tried maneuver perfectly after only having read about it in a manual.

Still there was one thing I couldn't shake. It wasn't the nearly 3 hours of stress and problem solving that went into the flight.  It wasn't seeing the emergency vehicles waiting for us at the airport and knowing WHY they were there.  It wasn't the moment that lasted a hour in the feet above the runway as the wheels touched down.  It wasn't even the smiles and profuse thanks from the passengers as they walked off the airplane.

Before every flight, I send a text to Nicole which she always return. "I love you, bye."  It is something we've been doing for as long as I can remember. While it seems cute at the surface, it is a gesture that I strive to make even on the busiest of preflights and I do so because of situations like these.  While highly implausible, there is always a chance that the text I send before pushing back from the gate will be my last.  Those four words may be the last she ever hears from me and I don't want the last thing she sees to be a haha or the beginning of a bad joke.  I want her to know that from the moment I send it until the time I can talk to her again, even if that time is never, how I feel.  I love you.  Bye.

As I was sitting there in my window seat looking down at the Gateway Arch, lit bright against the Mississippi, I couldn't help but think of our ritual.  I pulled out my phone and looked at my texts one last time before touching down.  What was sticking in my mind was that soon our ritual will change.  I will have to send, "I love you both," and her reply will be, "We love you too."

An Abnormality, contInued

I looked over at the Captain, who was staring dutifully at his instrument display and decided to break the ice.  “Hey, so, did you feel...”

He interrupted me, “That was weird, right?”

My mind was now floating firmly in the realm of relief and confusion.  I hadn’t imagined it, so at least I wasn’t crazy.  That didn’t solve the problem that now two of us felt something that we couldn’t quite explain.

At this point, having no other better ideas about what had happened on the runway in Denver, logically my next course of action was to determine if anything was malfunctioning.  After pressing what is effectively a button that tests all flight related subsystems, the airplane returned a, “no dummy, everything is fine” indication.  I was almost hoping there was a hydraulic or flight control issue because at least that would tell me that something had caused the sudden jerk to the left.  There was nothing.  Passing through 10,000 feet, the Captain reached up to call the lead flight attendant to tell them of the planned smooth flight.  While he does this, I listen in.  

“Hey guys, we’re through 10.  Should be a pretty good ride all the way in.  And real quick, did any of you feel anything weird during take off?” The captain asked, not wanting to prompt a response.  

“Yeah, this is Jimmy in the back, I was going to call and tell you but we felt a pretty big jerk back here that we’ve never felt before.  Is everything okay?” One of the flight attendants asked.  The Captain replied that everything was fine and that we were trying to diagnose what happened.  

The problem had now left the cockpit.  At 180 mph during a takeoff, even after a thousand takeoffs, your mind is still hyper alert to changes in the norm.  During training, we often simulate engine failures and fires at the most vulnerable parts of the flight so, from a behavioral standpoint, the time when a pilot most expects a problem is shortly before lift off.  With at least one flight attendant feeling something wrong, we knew that the jerk wasn't just from hyper-vigilance.

After several more minutes of thinking about it, I asked the Captain, “do you think it was a blown tire?  That would explain both the lurch and the lack of indications up here.  I mean, it was hot in Denver, we are heavy and this is pretty much the fastest these tires are going to ever spin.  Want me to call back and ask to do a sweep?”  As silly as it may sound, unlike cars, all the aircraft I've flown do not have tire-pressure indications and thus no way to tell if one had deflated.  The Captain agreed.

Pulling back up my charts, I dialed in the Denver tower frequency.  “Denver tower, we just departed off runway 8 and think there is a possibility we blew a tire on takeoff.  Could you send ops to do a sweep to see if there is any debris is on the runway?  Most likely indications would be about the last 3000 feet.”

At approaching 100 miles from Denver, the signal was weak.  They replied, “Absolutely.  I’ll send them out immediately.  Standby for the results.  If we can’t reach you, we’ll forward the results to Kansas City Center.”

With still just under two hours to go, the Captain wasn’t going to just wait around for the results.  “Okay, so let’s treat this like a malfunction.  We’ve gone through the manuals, we’ve contacted Denver.  Instead of just wait, why don’t we call and talk to maintenance.  You take the airplane and radios, I’m going to call the company.

During a flight, all airplanes have the ability to radio a ground station and be connected to any number of agencies.  For a medical emergency, we have a doctor on call at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to answer any medical related questions.  We can reach them via VHF or HF frequencies at virtually any point on the globe. We don’t often use these communications channels, but in this instance, when it’s better to talk about it rather than text about it through our integrated messaging system, we call.

For the next 20-30 minutes, the Captain is on the line talking with maintenance, dispatch and our operational control.  I listen in on the backup radio while I am handling the en route radio, essentially flying the airplane solo.  It is on these days I am so happy there are two of us here so that we can divide and conquer the problem.

During the time the Captain  is talking to the Company, I hear back from Air Traffic Control that Denver tower found no indications of anything amiss on the runway.  That is both a relief and increases the frustration.  SOMETHING caused it. I tell the Captain the news which he then relays to maintenance.  Shortly after, I hear him thanking everyone on the line and joining me, mentally at least, back in the cockpit.

“So they have no idea either” he says.  “They’ve pulled the sensor data the airplane sends them and are seeing nothing abnormal.  Maintenance offered to have mechanics us on landing to inspect the gear before we taxi but in order to do that, we have to be an emergency aircraft.  So, when we get into the final center airspace, we declare an emergency.  They don’t think anything is wrong but out of an abundance of caution, if something IS wrong, it’s better to have the fire trucks at the runway than in the firehouse.  Do you agree so far?”  I nodded, of course I did.  “Until we can rule out that something is NOT wrong, we operate under the assumption that something is.  Since the only thing I can think of that wouldn't show up anywhere is a blown tire, we run the emergency procedure for that.

“One last thing.  On the lead-up to the landing, I’m going to be busy doing a lot of the big picture things.  I’m confident in your abilities so, from here on out, you’re flying and you’ll do the landing. Are you okay with that?”

All pilots are confident in their abilities.  It’s part of the type-A egomania that accompanies most of us.  Getting a comment like that in the lead up to landing on possibly flat tire or malfunctioning gear, is a real vote of confidence.  “Of course. I’ll start reviewing the manuals.”

“Sounds good, I’m going to bring the flight attendants in the loop and let the passengers know,” he says so calmly that you’d think he's done this hundreds of time.  No time to reflect on that, time to prepare.

Our iPads contain a wealth of information.  One of the manuals contains a “best practices” for every possible situation anyone could think we would encounter, to include several pages on landing gear malfunctions.  And that’s where I spent the remaining time at cruise.

After over an hour and a half of thinking and talking and thinking and talking and thinking, we finally are handed off to the final center controller before descending. The frequency is congested with dozens of mid-day flights transitioning the airspace or climbing or descending into it.  Ops normal for a weekday afternoon.  Time to set things in motion

“Center, we are checking on at flight level 350 and are declaring an emergency.  We will require fire trucks to meet us at the runway upon arrival and request the longest runway available.”

An Abnormality

“Ladies and Gentlemen, from the flight deck, we are number one for takeoff.  Two hours and twenty minutes en route to Atlanta once we are airborne.  Flight Attendants, please prepare the cabin for departure.”  I switch from PA to the cabin button on my audio control panel as I wait for the confirmation that everyone is seated in the back.

“Okay, while we wait, I see runway 8 on the pavement, runway 8 in the box.  We are on the EXTAN5 departure, SHAYK transition, first fix is KIDNG.  We’ll LNAV out there up to 23,000 feet and no airspeed restrictions.  Any questions?” the captain briefs as we approach the end of the runway.  I shake my head as a bell rings in the cockpit to let me know the flight attendants are calling to confirm they are ready.

“None.  Okay, they are ready in the back.  Before take-off checklist...”  I finish up the last checklist, flip the last few switches and advise the tower we are ready to go.  We pull onto the over 2 mile long runway in Denver, conduct a last minute sanity check, and before we start pouring jet fuel into the engines at over 3000 gallons per hour, he asks if I’m ready to go.  “Yup,” I reply, “let’s go home.”

The throttles are brought to life.  Moments later, we can both hear and feel as the engines reach takeoff pitch; the deafening sound of rushing superheated air exiting the engine and interacting with the relatively cooler atmosphere combined with the feeling of the deep mechanical whirring of the turbines as they spin at nearly 15,000 RPM.  Still, with all that noise and sound, the airplane only sluggishly accelerates down the runway.  At 5500 feet above sea level, the airplane will need to be traveling over 180mph before there is enough air flowing over the wing to create adequate lift.

“V1,” I call out.  We’ve reached the “decision speed.”  From here on out, there is a very short list of things that are going to keep us from taking-off, so short that even engine fire or failure isn’t on it.  At V1, there is no longer enough runway to stop so in 99.9% of instances, it is actually safer to take-off and come back and land.  Shortly after V1 comes Vr and the call-out, “Rotate.”

The Captain lifts the nose off the ground until we are pitched about 6 degrees above the horizon, waiting for the wings to fly.  It is always at this moment I am most in awe.  At over 180 mph, we just wait for the airplane to fly while it is balancing on its rear tires, nose gear raised six feet in the air. Normally, your butt feels the subtle change of direction as the 180,000lb jet gives up the earth to join the sky.

A sudden jerk to the left.  What the...  My eyes dart from my instrument screen to the Captain.  He’s staring straight ahead.  He moves control wheel abruptly to the right to keep the wings level.  He steps on the rudder to bring the airplane back to the centerline.  With the nose still pitched in the air, I will the airplane to fly.  Less than a breath later, the familiar feeling of liftoff.  Confirmed by the instruments, “Positive rate,” I say to the Captain who then commands the gear to come up.  And we are off.

My senses are heightened thanks to the sudden squirt of adrenaline into my blood stream.  We sit in silence for the first ten minutes of the flight saying nothing to each other than the required checklists and radio calls.  My mind searches for something to justify what happened in that brief second on the runway.  Maybe I imagined it?  Maybe the Captain hit a bump or swerved to avoid a deer.  No that’s stupid.

I look over at the Captain who watching his instrument display as we climbed eastward away from the Rockies and decided to break the ice.  “Hey, so, did you feel...”

He interrupted me, “that was really weird, right?”

To Be Continued