'Are you in a rush to get somewhere?'
'Sort of.'
'I feel badly that national security is interfering with your social life.'
I didn't have a good reply to that, so I said, 'I'm a big fan of national security. I'm yours until six P.M.'
'You can leave whenever you want.' She took her tea and rejoined our colleagues.
So, I stood there with my coffee, and considered the offer to take a hike. In retrospect, I was like the guy standing in quicksand, watching it cover my shoes, curious to see how long it would take to reach my socks, knowing I could leave anytime soon. Unfortunately, the next time I glanced down, it was up to my knees.
CHAPTER 2
Sam Walters leaned forward in his chair, adjusted his headset-microphone, and stared at the green three-foot radar screen in front of him. It was a nice April afternoon outside, but you'd never know that here in the dimly lit, windowless room of the New York Air Traffic Control Center in Islip, Long Island, fifty miles east of Kennedy Airport.
Bob Esching, Walters' shift supervisor, stood beside him and asked, 'Problem?'
Walters replied, 'We've got a NO-RAD here, Bob. Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five from Paris.'
Bob Esching nodded. 'How long has he been NO-RAD?'
.'No one's been able to raise him since he came off the North Atlantic track near Gander.' Walters glanced at his clock. 'About two hours.'
Esching asked, 'Any other indication of a problem?'
'Nope. In fact…' He regarded the radar screen and said, 'He turned southwest at the Sardi intersection, then down Jet Thirty-Seven, as per flight plan.'
Esching replied, 'He'll call in a few minutes, wondering why we haven't been talking to him.'
Walters nodded. A No-Radio status was not that unusual-it often happened between air traffic control and the aircraft they worked with. Walters had had days when it happened two or three times. Invariably, after a couple of minutes of repeated transmissions, some pilot would respond, 'Oops, sorry…' then explain that they had the volume down or the wrong frequency dialed in-or something less innocuous, like the whole flight crew was asleep, though they wouldn't tell you that.
Esching said, 'Maybe the pilot and co-pilot have stewardesses on their laps.'
Walters smiled. He said, 'The best explanation I ever got in a NO-RAD situation was from a pilot who admitted that when he laid his lunch tray down on the pedestal between the pilots' seats, the tray had pressed into a selector switch and taken them off-frequency.'
Esching laughed. 'Low-tech explanation for a high-tech problem.'
'Right.' Walters looked at the screen again. 'Tracking fine.'
'Yeah.'
It was when the blip disappeared, Walters thought, that you had a major problem. He was on duty the night in March 1998 when Air Force One, carrying the President, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four long seconds, and the entire room full of controllers sat frozen. The aircraft reappeared from computer-glitch limbo and everyone started to breathe again. But then there was the night of July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 disappeared from the screen forever… Walters would never forget that night as long as he lived. But here, he thought, we have a simple NO-RAD… and yet something bothered him. For one thing, this was a very long time to be in a NO-RAD status.
Sam Walters punched a few buttons, then spoke into his headset microphone on the intercom channel. 'Sector Nineteen, this is Twenty-three. That NO-RAD, TC One-Seven-Five, is coming your way, and you'll get the handoff from me in about four minutes. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on this in case you need to do some adjusting.'
Walters listened to the reply on his headset, then said, 'Yeah… the guy's a real screwup. Everyone up and down the Atlantic Coast has been calling him for over two hours on VHP, HF, and for all I know, CB and smoke signals.' Walters chuckled and added, 'When this flight is over, this guy's going to be doing so much writing, he'll think he's Shakespeare. Right. Talk to you later.' He turned his head and made eye contact with Esching. 'Okay?'
'Yeah… tell you what… call everyone down the line and tell them that the first sector that makes contact will inform the captain that when he lands, he's to call me on the telephone at the Center. I want to talk to this clown myself so I can tell him how much aggro he's caused along the coast.'
' Canada, too.'
'Right.' Esching listened to Walters pass on the message to the next controllers who would be getting jurisdiction of Trans-Continental Flight 175.
A few other controllers and journeymen on break had wandered over to the Section 23 console. Walters knew that everyone wanted to see why Supervisor Bob Esching was so far from his desk and out on the floor. Esching was-in the unkind words of his subordinates-standing dangerously close to an actual work situation.
Sam Walters didn't like all these people around him, but if Esching didn't shoo them off, he couldn't say anything. And he didn't think Esching was going to tell everyone to clear out. The Trans-Continental No-Radio situation was now the focus event in the control center, and this mini-drama was, after all, good training for these young controllers who had pulled Saturday duty.
No one said much, but Walters sensed a mixture of curiosity, puzzlement, and maybe a bit of anxiety.
Walters got on the radio and tried again. 'Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five, this is New York Center. Do you read me?'
No reply.
Walters broadcast again.
No reply.
The room was silent except for the hum of electronics. No one standing around had any comment. It was unwise to say anything in these kinds of situations that could come back to haunt you.
Finally, one of the controllers said to Esching, 'Paper this guy big-time on this one, boss. I got off to a late coffee break because of him.'
A few controllers laughed, but the laughter died away quickly.
Esching cleared his throat and said, 'Okay, everybody go find something useful to do. Scram.'
The controllers all wandered off, leaving Walters and Esching alone. Esching said softly, 'I don't like this.'
'Me neither.'
Esching grabbed a rolling chair and wheeled it beside Walters. Esching studied the big screen and focused on the problem aircraft. The identity tag on the screen showed that it was a Boeing 747, and it was the new 700 Series aircraft, the largest and most modern of Boeing's 747s. The aircraft was continuing precisely along its flight plan, routing toward JFK International Airport. Esching said, 'How the hell could all the radios be non- functioning?'
Sam Walters considered for a minute, then replied, 'They can't be, so-I think it has to be either that the volume control is down, the frequency selectors are broken, or the antennas have fallen off.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah…'
'But… if it was the volume control or the frequency selectors, the crew would have realized that a long time ago.'
Walters nodded and replied, 'Yeah… so, maybe it's total antenna failure… or, you know, this is a new model so maybe there's some kind of electronic bug in this thing and it caused total radio failure. Possible.'
Esching nodded, 'Possible.' But not probable. Flight 175 had been totally without voice contact since leaving the Oceanic Tracks and reaching North America. The Abnormal Procedures Handbook addressed this remote possibility, but he recalled that the handbook wasn't very clear about what to do. Basically, there was nothing that could be done.
Walters said, 'If his radios are okay, then when he has to start down, he'll realize he's on the wrong
