The Misfits: Airport 2010 ----> Chapter 1
The Misfits: Airport 2010
Chapter One: Good morning!!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 8:00am (EST)
Kaiden's apartment
Kaiden opened one eye and looked at nothing in particular with it as it sleepily tried to focus. His bedroom was unusually dark and he could hear the steady drumbeat of rain outside. He quickly closed it again and snuggled his teddy bear tighter, then he started shivering. He realized it had gotten a lot colder and the heater, which he had set to 75 degrees before going to bed, was no longer cutting it. He thought for a second about just throwing on another blanket but his eyes caught the clock and his mind overruled him. It read 8:01a.m. Two and a half hours till the flight to Washington. And an hour and a half till check in time. Kaiden wanted to snooze another 15 minutes, but with the weather so bad, and being Check Flight day for him, he decided to drag himself up. "Okay Kai, up, up, up!" he told himself as he rolled out of bed. He walked to the window and opened the blinds. The window was fogged over with condensation. Wiping some of it off he could see it was a dark, gray morning, with just a tiny pale spot of weak orange light cutting through where the sun lay, and that was quickly fading. It was supposed to get worse as the storm system started moving in. "This not going to be good for flying" Kaiden thought as he moved to the thermostat and set the heater to 80 degrees. He had wanted his last day before Christmas to be smooth, however it was not to be. The fantasy was blurred, much like the weak orange spot of light in the eastern sky.
After quickly showering and the other usual related morning routines, Kaiden flipped the TV on. The Weather Channel. Your Local On The 8's. "Currently in our area, 43 degrees, with light rain." Kaiden winced and at the same time broke into a big smile and he wanted to dance for joy. He would need to be on his A-game for sure today in the "office". Yet this was such wonderful weather just 3 days before Christmas. Especially for Miami which isn't used to such cold temperatures. Kaiden giggled at the thought of the locals all bundled up in coats. Being a Detroit native, all he needed was his trusty Blue's Clues hoodie and his patterned scarf for 43 degrees.
Kaiden ate a couple of cupcakes and had a glass of chocolate milk while he looked at the TV meteorologists talk about the huge storm that was rising out of the Gulf of Mexico and spreading across the Southeastern United States like a blob rising out of the proverbial swamp. It was projected to break loose over Washington, D.C. just after lunch. Kaiden silently made a wish to be able to get out of there before it broke open...they were scheduled out of Washington's Dulles International Airport for the return flight to Miami at 1:30pm...any delay and they'd be stuck there for hours and they might even miss the Misfit Christmas Party later that night.
Kaiden looked at the clock again...8:30 a.m., time to get dressed. He had his uniform laid out already. He donned the gray slacks and the blue shirt with the epaulets on the shoulders that sported 4 shiny gold stripes. He brushed his long hair, which was dyed a light blue with red and green highlights for the festive season. He'd added the green last night before going to bed. He put on the gray jacket, with 4 gold stripes on the cuffs, then picked up his ID lanyard and strung it around his neck. He made sure he had his various ID cards on there...his MIA airport access card, his FAA ID card, his TSA security clearance card, and his most important one, his Trans Global Airlines employee ID which was on top. It had his smiling picture on it, and below it was printed the words "KAIDEN BLAKE....CAPTAIN". He truly loved being a pilot. He never felt more liberated from the world and society's self-imposed limits then when he was in the air, flying.
Kaiden was not like anyone else in this world. A young, baby-faced and very attractive guy, physically speaking. However he is also an incredibly gifted person. A MENSA-level IQ. A deep knowledge of many subjects. Very well read. An artistic sense that rivaled that of the greatest. He possessed a unique sense of style in the way he dressed, refusing to conform to society's self-imposed norms. He dyed his hair often, generally defaulting to blue with x-colored highlights. He often spent much time writing stories and songs and reading voraciously. He could quote entire poems and entire excerpts of great novels from memory. But his most important quality lay in is heart. He was extraordinarily sensitive and caring. Those traits, the last one in particular, made him a beloved crew member at the "Haus of Misfit", the self-imposed nickname for TGA's Miami crew base. Unfortunately, too often in life they also made him the target of massive amounts of bullying, even within his own home growing up. Even as a grownup. From a young age Kaiden struggled and fought to make it, oftentimes on his own. As an escape, at 13, the youngest age of eligibility, he signed onto TGA's Young Apprentice Flyer program, where he quickly excelled. By 16, after school and in the summer he was flying crop-dusters and survey planes for TGA's small agricultural services division, and right at 18, with high marks and many hours of flying time he landed in the First Officers' seat of a DC-9 jetliner, originally based out of Chicago which was the closest base he could get to his hometown of Detroit. Now he was a Captain out of Miami. The transfer was made under unusual circumstances after the Colombia incident, but perhaps it was fate that stepped in. At Miami he fit in the most, as opposed to the stuffy, officious, senior Chicago base.
Kaiden looked at the clock...8:45..."Oh no, time to make like the White Rabbit!" he thought as his time was running short...his check-in wasn't till 9:30 but he didn't want to chance anything today...he grabbed his thick TGA DC-9 operating manual and placed it inside his flight bag. Then after shutting off the heater he picked up his flight bag and his suitcase and left his apartment and went downstairs to his car. "Snowball", as he named her, was shimmering with rainwater beads. It had stopped raining but an icy breeze was blowing as Kaiden climbed in and left for the quick 10 minute drive to Miami International Airport.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
8:55 a.m. (EST)
Miami International Airport
As Kaiden was driving to the airport, Fernando was already there eating breakfast at TGA's terminal in Concourse J. He disliked being there so early...more often he'd come chugging in at the last minute to make his check-in time...but today the weather was bad, and further more since he was playing check-pilot today he decided to make it look good. He had only taken the role on a temporary basis to fill a shortage while new check-pilots were completing their training classes. He'd only conducted a few checks and today's was his last as the new checkers were coming on the line after the New Year. It was good extra Christmas money. He was also excited to be flying with Kaiden again. They hadn't flown together since Kai was still a co-pilot. Back then they spent lots of fun days flying the airline's twin-engined DC-9 jetliners up and down the Florida peninsula and around the Southeastern US. They were the airline's entry-level aircraft. The planes were quite old, some were built before Douglas Aircraft merged with McDonnell Aircraft to form McDonnell-Douglas. It was usually sector flying...they usually worked 3 round trips or so per day, from Miami to a variety of cities and towns across the region. The days were long and full of adventure. Anything could happen, and often times they sure did. In more recent times, as they built up their seniority, they'd get a chance to bid on of the airline's stubbornly old-fashioned point to point "milk" runs, finishing the day far from home after making 4 or 5 stops enroute, then reversing course the next day, or head to a Caribbean destination. Other times brought completely new places to explore in the form of charters. Usually they were sports related although they did catch the occasional vacation charter to some exotic tropical resort. It was a lot of fun, constantly challenging and occasionally scary. It was all in a day's work in the most amazing office there is.
Once he got done eating, Ferdy powered on his laptop and proofread some of the writing he'd done the night before. He'd been asked to help rewrite TGA's DC-9 Operating Manual and it had turned into a massive project that he was glad to almost be finished with. It was a labor of love...Ferdy had always been an airplane junkie and he'd possessed studious knowledge of the DC-9 since he was a teenager, impressing the line pilots at the time, so he was the easy choice to help. At the time his mom was a DC-9 captain and Ferdy flew with her a lot during summer vacation. Ferdy smiled at the memory. He missed her a lot. But before he could get too deep in memories he checked his watch. It was 9:10. He put everything away and walked to the crew room to see if Kaiden was there.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
9:15 a.m. (EST)
Miami International Airport
TGA Flight Attendants crew room
As Ferdy walked towards the room where TGA's flight crews are dispatched, he stopped outside the room where the airline's flight attendants are dispatched. He tapped on the window and waved at a young lady sitting at a table with a laptop open. She looked up briefly and waved back, then got back to her work as Ferdy walked on. LeeAnn Hosna was busy with something similar to what Ferdy had been doing. She'd been asked to edit TGA's DC-9 cabin crew manual, and likewise it had turned into a major project that she was also only too happy to...almost...be done with. While she was typing away the usual crew room chatter was going on around her as the room was crowded with F/A's going out on flights as well as arriving. Additionally, the results of the bidding for the following month's flights was posted so many were crowded around the bulletin board looking over their January assignments. Flight assignments were based on seniority. The longer you were employed, the sooner you got to pick as the most senior people retired or transferred. It was the same for the flight crews and other positions. It was the only really fair way to do it, and it was backed up in the various Union contracts that governed it all. Not everyone got what they wanted every time, but everyone agreed that there was no other fair system out there.
At the front of the crowd stood two particularly happy junior F/A's, Meagan Phynix and Harley Merson. They had just earned their way out of the Extra list and onto regular flight assignments. A regular assignment meant stability. You knew your schedule every day, and you generally were able to plan around it, disruptions due to weather or other factors notwithstanding. Meagan was particularly happy as she got the run she was looking for...one of the "milk runs" that happened to terminate in Lubbock, Texas, where she lived. Miami to Lubbock with stops in Tampa, Houston and Dallas. She could go home on her overnight stays. The agreeable days off also meant she had more time to make extra cash babysitting, which would help augment the anemic junior-level TGA paycheck a bit more. Babysitting was a natural choice...after all, being a flight attendant was sometimes no different.
Harley was happy for a different reason. He was an aspiring singer and the stable schedule meant he'd be able to take more vocal classes. He'd moved to Miami from his native Melbourne, Australia in order to jump on some of the greater singing opportunities in the world famous local nightclub scene. Taking inspiration from Lady Gaga, he'd already gotten some notice and was being encouraged to further his vocal development. Of course a good vocal coach costs money, and he recently made it as an F/A which also gave him a chance to get to know the US a lot better, and this was his first time getting a regular assignment. He'd already serenaded one plane load of happy passengers, and he fit in well in a place where there were many young artists looking to become a success.
LeeAnn saved her work and shut off her laptop then waded into the crowd to get her two charges. The trio were going to work the same round trip to and from Washington, DC that Kaiden and Ferdy were piloting. It was expected to be a crowded pair of flights coming just 3 days before Christmas. Today was projected to be the busiest travel day of the year and it was going to be hectic so LeeAnn figured she'd get everyone ready early. The three got their paperwork with the gate assignments and other pertinent info and they went looking for their flight crew. The five of them would certainly look quite different from your buttoned-down standard airline flight crew. While the zany pilots tended to get more attention, the airline's Miami based flight attendants were, pound for pound, just as equally "out there" as the flight crews. The entire TGA operation at Miami was a circus, in fact.
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There was no one defining moment that led to the Miami crew base of Trans Global Airlines evolving into an eccentric outpost. As "The Reverend", one of the longest-tenured pilots at the base once put it, "it just kinda happened". In the olden days the airline flew flying boats up and down the east coast of the US as well as down to Latin America from Miami. They were wacky way back then. And it just followed into the propeller landplane era, then the jet era, and through through airline's name change from Trans America to Trans Global as it's reach spanned the globe. What did give it a major boost was TGA's purchase of Miami-based Trans Florida Airlines in the early 1980's. Trans Florida was a small local service airline that flew ancient DC-3's and Convair 580's around Florida and several DC-9 jets as well. Their crews were notoriously "out there" so when they merged it was a marriage of the twin Cuckoos Nests.
In recent years TGA's Miami crews became much younger and trendier. Uniform policy violations were technically everywhere as these kids "customized" their look with beanies, scarves, colorful wrist bands and bracelets that sometimes reached halfway up their arms, not to mention the crazy-colored hair styles, dyes and highlights. They would drive the typical set of bosses crazy, however the airline's management tended to look the other way because of one thing: They flew well, the flew safely, and they took their job seriously...just not themselves. TGA's training historically has always been among the very best in the industry, and with many of the flight crews nowadays coming up through the Young Apprentice Flyer program, and having grown up playing video games like Flight Simulator, they were already way ahead of the curve when they joined the airline. Their on-time and safety records were the best in the system. So it was decided to leave the rocker/"stoner"/hip-hop/emo kids alone, just as their wacky ancestors had been left alone.
There was also a special camaraderie to the place. It was like a real life, in-person social networking site. Everyone...flight crews, cabin attendants, mechanics, check-in clerks, ramp workers...worked together, hung out together, laughed together, cried together, partied together and everything else. Everyone was a known quantity to the other. Interventions were a group thing whenever a Misfit was in trouble and a few have owed their lives to it. The place stood out from the crowd and the spirit was infectious. Flights even in the worst situations departed with a more lighthearted atmosphere than normal. They were a tight knit bunch and knew how to band together to make demands when it was required, and it was implied that they could, indeed, shut the operation down if need be. It was like an airline within an airline, the place you wanted to transfer to if you needed to get away...or if you were judged to be an impertinent "noob" that needed to be sent away.
Such is the story of how Kaiden arrived in Miami.
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"The Colombia Incident"
It was the stereotypical dark and stormy night, high over the skies of Colombia. Bouncing around in the turbulence was a TGA McDonnell-Douglas MD-87, a more modern, 1980's "Punky Powered" version of the DC-9. It bore the tail number of N8714F and it was operating flight # 970, and was approaching the end of an international service that began at Chicago's Lincoln International Airport, and had a stopover in Miami before continuing to it's final destination of El Dorado International Airport in the Colombian capital of Bogota. In command was Captain Thomas Bertelsmann and Kaiden, only a month or so out of training, was the co-pilot. Captain Bertelsmann was something of a dour senior pilot, typical of the senior pilots at the Chicago base. No nonsense, strictly business, very conservative and by the book. He had already sharply disapproved of Kaiden's appearance and more or less grunted that Kaiden belonged with the "crazies" down in Miami. That certainly got the flight off on the right note. Although, that being set aside, the flight had gone quite well.
Kaiden had wanted to fly on this trip, and after pleading his case, Captain Bertelsmann finally relented and allowed the gleeful kid to fly the Chicago-Miami leg before taking over for the international portion of the flight. The successful first portion of the evening flight helped relieve the tension in the cockpit and the two got to conversing a bit during flight 970's transit in Miami. Kaiden was careful not to make himself a pest, however. He tended to his other duties quietly as the Captain programmed the next leg's waypoints into the jet's navigation computer. The waypoints were coordinates that would help guide the plane on it's nighttime flight into the Colombian capital. It was critical that these be right as any unnoticed deviation could take them on a collision course with the treacherous Andes mountains that lay in their path. A similar error had already claimed a Cali-bound American Airlines Boeing 757 and most of it's passengers and crew just before Christmas 1995, and while many things were corrected, there was still that notorious guerrilla fighting on the ground, that had only gotten worse in the intervening years which made such tasks especially important. You certainly didn't want to wind up low over hostile territory.
The flight into Colombia was also quite uneventful with Captain Bertelsmann flying and Kaiden working the radio and monitoring the instruments. However the tension began to ramp up as they began their descent into Bogota. The mountains were enshrouded in a massive storm system and they would have to rely on instruments almost the entire way in. The flight got very bumpy when they descended into the clouds at about 11,000 feet with lightning flashing everywhere. As they were descending through 8,800 feet Kaiden noticed the plane did something odd. The autopilot banked the jet slightly towards the west then leveled out. While Captain Bertelsmann wasn't normally on this flight, Kaiden had been on it several times already, and his photographic memory immediately told him that the westward bank was unusual as they should be flying straight in by this point.
Kaiden told the Captain, who told him things felt just fine to him. This failed to satisfy Kaiden, though, who had an overwhelming feeling the plane was veering off course. A minute later, the non-directional navigational radio beacon (NDB) that Kaiden was supposed to see register on the jet's Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) needle failed to register, and Kaiden became overwhelmed with a sick feeling. He told the Captain that his ADF needle hadn't swung. The needle on the Captain's side only jiggered a bit.
"Damn thing must not be working again." he grunted, referring to the NDB's. "Probably sabotaged by the rebels."
"Yeah probably" Kaiden responded weakly. By this point he was sick to his stomach.
Kaiden had every right to be sick. Unbeknown to both pilots, there were two typos in a row on the waypoint chart that the Captain had used in programming the computer back in Miami. Those typos had led to the plane being programmed, for the next several minutes, to veer towards the southwest and head for Cali instead of Bogota. And directly towards a 9,000 foot mountain. Due to the thick clouds they couldn't see that they had veered off course.
A few minutes later the next NDB failed to register. Kaiden told the Captain, who agreed something was wrong. Kaiden started calling into Bogota Center when the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) alarm started to sound and a loud recorded voice barked "CAUTION, TERRAIN! CAUTION, TERRAIN!" At that moment Kaiden looked at Captain Bertelsmann, and he discovered the Captain was momentarily frozen in shock. It was then that Kaiden made a momentous decision. He seized control of the jet, retracted the speed brakes which were slowing the MD-87 down, and he aimed the nose up and slammed the throttles all the way to the firewall and N8714F went into a steep climb. Just as he did that, the alarm changed to a desperate "WHOOP-WHOOP! PULL UP! WHOOP-WHOOP! PULL UP!" as Kaiden could hear tree branches hitting and scraping the fuselage and panicked screams from the cabin. They rode the crest of the mountain, clearing it by mere 500 feet as they learned later. The Captain had quickly snapped out of his shock, realized what Kaiden did and, grabbing his own headset, made radio contact with Bogota Center and declared an emergency.
After climbing back above the clouds, they established their location and continued to a safe landing in Bogota. Kaiden flew the rest of the flight in.
There were wide consequences as a result of the incident. The fact that a near-crash similar in vein to the American Airlines disaster had happened came as a shock...in that accident, the Cali-bound 757 wound up veering off course, heading for Bogota after the name of a radio beacon was typed into the jet's navigation computer using a shorthand code, and that shorthand code actually stood for a totally different waypoint in the plane's navigation system. It hit a mountain. TGA flight 970 came within a razor's edge of meeting the same fate, and Kaiden's actions saved the lives of all aboard. Captain Bertelsmann, finding himself in shock that he'd frozen like that, never commanded another flight. After giving his statement to investigators in Colombia, he flew back as a non-revenue passenger to Chicago and took an early retirement. He "told on himself", admitting his freezing up like that, and gave Kaiden full credit for doing the right thing. Subsequently both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the USA and the local Colombian authorities discovered the misprint on the chart and a corrected one was immediately issued. The bad chart had been a very new issue and the conditions had simply not come together for the mistake to be detected until that night.
Back in Chicago, where Kaiden was assigned, still fresh out of school, reaction was somewhat mixed. Some of the older pilots, not knowing all the facts, simply thought it was an egotistical act on the part of a brash new hire when the Captain could've done the exact same thing. Kaiden refused to talk about Bertelsmann freezing in shock, thus he essentially sank his own boat among his co-workers. It made him look bad but Bertelsmann would keep some measure of dignity. That was just how Kaiden operated, he refused to kick a man when he was down. Kaiden was given some time off in order to be evaluated for signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and when he was cleared back to fly, the bosses had decided to send him to Miami where he could start fresh and lay low. He was welcomed with open arms by the Misfits. After he transferred, all the details came out from official sources, which vindicated Kaiden's action among the Chicago crews, who were quick to apologize whenever they saw him. His refusal to publicly talk his Captain down also earned him some extra respect.
But while Kaiden didn't suffer from PTSD as a result of the incident, he found himself, on this cold Wednesday morning 2 and a half years later, experiencing the same sinking feeling in his gut as he checked in at the Dispatch office and received his papers and filled out the flight plan to Washington and back. He figured it was because of two things...the returning flight number, 87, which perhaps reminded him of the model plane he was flying that night, and the fact that he had actually driven past N8714F, which was now also Miami based, on his way in. He laughed it off as he walked to the maintenance hangar to check up on the plane he was assigned to fly today.
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Chapter One: Good morning!!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 8:00am (EST)
Kaiden's apartment
Kaiden opened one eye and looked at nothing in particular with it as it sleepily tried to focus. His bedroom was unusually dark and he could hear the steady drumbeat of rain outside. He quickly closed it again and snuggled his teddy bear tighter, then he started shivering. He realized it had gotten a lot colder and the heater, which he had set to 75 degrees before going to bed, was no longer cutting it. He thought for a second about just throwing on another blanket but his eyes caught the clock and his mind overruled him. It read 8:01a.m. Two and a half hours till the flight to Washington. And an hour and a half till check in time. Kaiden wanted to snooze another 15 minutes, but with the weather so bad, and being Check Flight day for him, he decided to drag himself up. "Okay Kai, up, up, up!" he told himself as he rolled out of bed. He walked to the window and opened the blinds. The window was fogged over with condensation. Wiping some of it off he could see it was a dark, gray morning, with just a tiny pale spot of weak orange light cutting through where the sun lay, and that was quickly fading. It was supposed to get worse as the storm system started moving in. "This not going to be good for flying" Kaiden thought as he moved to the thermostat and set the heater to 80 degrees. He had wanted his last day before Christmas to be smooth, however it was not to be. The fantasy was blurred, much like the weak orange spot of light in the eastern sky.
After quickly showering and the other usual related morning routines, Kaiden flipped the TV on. The Weather Channel. Your Local On The 8's. "Currently in our area, 43 degrees, with light rain." Kaiden winced and at the same time broke into a big smile and he wanted to dance for joy. He would need to be on his A-game for sure today in the "office". Yet this was such wonderful weather just 3 days before Christmas. Especially for Miami which isn't used to such cold temperatures. Kaiden giggled at the thought of the locals all bundled up in coats. Being a Detroit native, all he needed was his trusty Blue's Clues hoodie and his patterned scarf for 43 degrees.
Kaiden ate a couple of cupcakes and had a glass of chocolate milk while he looked at the TV meteorologists talk about the huge storm that was rising out of the Gulf of Mexico and spreading across the Southeastern United States like a blob rising out of the proverbial swamp. It was projected to break loose over Washington, D.C. just after lunch. Kaiden silently made a wish to be able to get out of there before it broke open...they were scheduled out of Washington's Dulles International Airport for the return flight to Miami at 1:30pm...any delay and they'd be stuck there for hours and they might even miss the Misfit Christmas Party later that night.
Kaiden looked at the clock again...8:30 a.m., time to get dressed. He had his uniform laid out already. He donned the gray slacks and the blue shirt with the epaulets on the shoulders that sported 4 shiny gold stripes. He brushed his long hair, which was dyed a light blue with red and green highlights for the festive season. He'd added the green last night before going to bed. He put on the gray jacket, with 4 gold stripes on the cuffs, then picked up his ID lanyard and strung it around his neck. He made sure he had his various ID cards on there...his MIA airport access card, his FAA ID card, his TSA security clearance card, and his most important one, his Trans Global Airlines employee ID which was on top. It had his smiling picture on it, and below it was printed the words "KAIDEN BLAKE....CAPTAIN". He truly loved being a pilot. He never felt more liberated from the world and society's self-imposed limits then when he was in the air, flying.
Kaiden was not like anyone else in this world. A young, baby-faced and very attractive guy, physically speaking. However he is also an incredibly gifted person. A MENSA-level IQ. A deep knowledge of many subjects. Very well read. An artistic sense that rivaled that of the greatest. He possessed a unique sense of style in the way he dressed, refusing to conform to society's self-imposed norms. He dyed his hair often, generally defaulting to blue with x-colored highlights. He often spent much time writing stories and songs and reading voraciously. He could quote entire poems and entire excerpts of great novels from memory. But his most important quality lay in is heart. He was extraordinarily sensitive and caring. Those traits, the last one in particular, made him a beloved crew member at the "Haus of Misfit", the self-imposed nickname for TGA's Miami crew base. Unfortunately, too often in life they also made him the target of massive amounts of bullying, even within his own home growing up. Even as a grownup. From a young age Kaiden struggled and fought to make it, oftentimes on his own. As an escape, at 13, the youngest age of eligibility, he signed onto TGA's Young Apprentice Flyer program, where he quickly excelled. By 16, after school and in the summer he was flying crop-dusters and survey planes for TGA's small agricultural services division, and right at 18, with high marks and many hours of flying time he landed in the First Officers' seat of a DC-9 jetliner, originally based out of Chicago which was the closest base he could get to his hometown of Detroit. Now he was a Captain out of Miami. The transfer was made under unusual circumstances after the Colombia incident, but perhaps it was fate that stepped in. At Miami he fit in the most, as opposed to the stuffy, officious, senior Chicago base.
Kaiden looked at the clock...8:45..."Oh no, time to make like the White Rabbit!" he thought as his time was running short...his check-in wasn't till 9:30 but he didn't want to chance anything today...he grabbed his thick TGA DC-9 operating manual and placed it inside his flight bag. Then after shutting off the heater he picked up his flight bag and his suitcase and left his apartment and went downstairs to his car. "Snowball", as he named her, was shimmering with rainwater beads. It had stopped raining but an icy breeze was blowing as Kaiden climbed in and left for the quick 10 minute drive to Miami International Airport.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
8:55 a.m. (EST)
Miami International Airport
As Kaiden was driving to the airport, Fernando was already there eating breakfast at TGA's terminal in Concourse J. He disliked being there so early...more often he'd come chugging in at the last minute to make his check-in time...but today the weather was bad, and further more since he was playing check-pilot today he decided to make it look good. He had only taken the role on a temporary basis to fill a shortage while new check-pilots were completing their training classes. He'd only conducted a few checks and today's was his last as the new checkers were coming on the line after the New Year. It was good extra Christmas money. He was also excited to be flying with Kaiden again. They hadn't flown together since Kai was still a co-pilot. Back then they spent lots of fun days flying the airline's twin-engined DC-9 jetliners up and down the Florida peninsula and around the Southeastern US. They were the airline's entry-level aircraft. The planes were quite old, some were built before Douglas Aircraft merged with McDonnell Aircraft to form McDonnell-Douglas. It was usually sector flying...they usually worked 3 round trips or so per day, from Miami to a variety of cities and towns across the region. The days were long and full of adventure. Anything could happen, and often times they sure did. In more recent times, as they built up their seniority, they'd get a chance to bid on of the airline's stubbornly old-fashioned point to point "milk" runs, finishing the day far from home after making 4 or 5 stops enroute, then reversing course the next day, or head to a Caribbean destination. Other times brought completely new places to explore in the form of charters. Usually they were sports related although they did catch the occasional vacation charter to some exotic tropical resort. It was a lot of fun, constantly challenging and occasionally scary. It was all in a day's work in the most amazing office there is.
Once he got done eating, Ferdy powered on his laptop and proofread some of the writing he'd done the night before. He'd been asked to help rewrite TGA's DC-9 Operating Manual and it had turned into a massive project that he was glad to almost be finished with. It was a labor of love...Ferdy had always been an airplane junkie and he'd possessed studious knowledge of the DC-9 since he was a teenager, impressing the line pilots at the time, so he was the easy choice to help. At the time his mom was a DC-9 captain and Ferdy flew with her a lot during summer vacation. Ferdy smiled at the memory. He missed her a lot. But before he could get too deep in memories he checked his watch. It was 9:10. He put everything away and walked to the crew room to see if Kaiden was there.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2010
9:15 a.m. (EST)
Miami International Airport
TGA Flight Attendants crew room
As Ferdy walked towards the room where TGA's flight crews are dispatched, he stopped outside the room where the airline's flight attendants are dispatched. He tapped on the window and waved at a young lady sitting at a table with a laptop open. She looked up briefly and waved back, then got back to her work as Ferdy walked on. LeeAnn Hosna was busy with something similar to what Ferdy had been doing. She'd been asked to edit TGA's DC-9 cabin crew manual, and likewise it had turned into a major project that she was also only too happy to...almost...be done with. While she was typing away the usual crew room chatter was going on around her as the room was crowded with F/A's going out on flights as well as arriving. Additionally, the results of the bidding for the following month's flights was posted so many were crowded around the bulletin board looking over their January assignments. Flight assignments were based on seniority. The longer you were employed, the sooner you got to pick as the most senior people retired or transferred. It was the same for the flight crews and other positions. It was the only really fair way to do it, and it was backed up in the various Union contracts that governed it all. Not everyone got what they wanted every time, but everyone agreed that there was no other fair system out there.
At the front of the crowd stood two particularly happy junior F/A's, Meagan Phynix and Harley Merson. They had just earned their way out of the Extra list and onto regular flight assignments. A regular assignment meant stability. You knew your schedule every day, and you generally were able to plan around it, disruptions due to weather or other factors notwithstanding. Meagan was particularly happy as she got the run she was looking for...one of the "milk runs" that happened to terminate in Lubbock, Texas, where she lived. Miami to Lubbock with stops in Tampa, Houston and Dallas. She could go home on her overnight stays. The agreeable days off also meant she had more time to make extra cash babysitting, which would help augment the anemic junior-level TGA paycheck a bit more. Babysitting was a natural choice...after all, being a flight attendant was sometimes no different.
Harley was happy for a different reason. He was an aspiring singer and the stable schedule meant he'd be able to take more vocal classes. He'd moved to Miami from his native Melbourne, Australia in order to jump on some of the greater singing opportunities in the world famous local nightclub scene. Taking inspiration from Lady Gaga, he'd already gotten some notice and was being encouraged to further his vocal development. Of course a good vocal coach costs money, and he recently made it as an F/A which also gave him a chance to get to know the US a lot better, and this was his first time getting a regular assignment. He'd already serenaded one plane load of happy passengers, and he fit in well in a place where there were many young artists looking to become a success.
LeeAnn saved her work and shut off her laptop then waded into the crowd to get her two charges. The trio were going to work the same round trip to and from Washington, DC that Kaiden and Ferdy were piloting. It was expected to be a crowded pair of flights coming just 3 days before Christmas. Today was projected to be the busiest travel day of the year and it was going to be hectic so LeeAnn figured she'd get everyone ready early. The three got their paperwork with the gate assignments and other pertinent info and they went looking for their flight crew. The five of them would certainly look quite different from your buttoned-down standard airline flight crew. While the zany pilots tended to get more attention, the airline's Miami based flight attendants were, pound for pound, just as equally "out there" as the flight crews. The entire TGA operation at Miami was a circus, in fact.
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There was no one defining moment that led to the Miami crew base of Trans Global Airlines evolving into an eccentric outpost. As "The Reverend", one of the longest-tenured pilots at the base once put it, "it just kinda happened". In the olden days the airline flew flying boats up and down the east coast of the US as well as down to Latin America from Miami. They were wacky way back then. And it just followed into the propeller landplane era, then the jet era, and through through airline's name change from Trans America to Trans Global as it's reach spanned the globe. What did give it a major boost was TGA's purchase of Miami-based Trans Florida Airlines in the early 1980's. Trans Florida was a small local service airline that flew ancient DC-3's and Convair 580's around Florida and several DC-9 jets as well. Their crews were notoriously "out there" so when they merged it was a marriage of the twin Cuckoos Nests.
In recent years TGA's Miami crews became much younger and trendier. Uniform policy violations were technically everywhere as these kids "customized" their look with beanies, scarves, colorful wrist bands and bracelets that sometimes reached halfway up their arms, not to mention the crazy-colored hair styles, dyes and highlights. They would drive the typical set of bosses crazy, however the airline's management tended to look the other way because of one thing: They flew well, the flew safely, and they took their job seriously...just not themselves. TGA's training historically has always been among the very best in the industry, and with many of the flight crews nowadays coming up through the Young Apprentice Flyer program, and having grown up playing video games like Flight Simulator, they were already way ahead of the curve when they joined the airline. Their on-time and safety records were the best in the system. So it was decided to leave the rocker/"stoner"/hip-hop/emo kids alone, just as their wacky ancestors had been left alone.
There was also a special camaraderie to the place. It was like a real life, in-person social networking site. Everyone...flight crews, cabin attendants, mechanics, check-in clerks, ramp workers...worked together, hung out together, laughed together, cried together, partied together and everything else. Everyone was a known quantity to the other. Interventions were a group thing whenever a Misfit was in trouble and a few have owed their lives to it. The place stood out from the crowd and the spirit was infectious. Flights even in the worst situations departed with a more lighthearted atmosphere than normal. They were a tight knit bunch and knew how to band together to make demands when it was required, and it was implied that they could, indeed, shut the operation down if need be. It was like an airline within an airline, the place you wanted to transfer to if you needed to get away...or if you were judged to be an impertinent "noob" that needed to be sent away.
Such is the story of how Kaiden arrived in Miami.
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"The Colombia Incident"
It was the stereotypical dark and stormy night, high over the skies of Colombia. Bouncing around in the turbulence was a TGA McDonnell-Douglas MD-87, a more modern, 1980's "Punky Powered" version of the DC-9. It bore the tail number of N8714F and it was operating flight # 970, and was approaching the end of an international service that began at Chicago's Lincoln International Airport, and had a stopover in Miami before continuing to it's final destination of El Dorado International Airport in the Colombian capital of Bogota. In command was Captain Thomas Bertelsmann and Kaiden, only a month or so out of training, was the co-pilot. Captain Bertelsmann was something of a dour senior pilot, typical of the senior pilots at the Chicago base. No nonsense, strictly business, very conservative and by the book. He had already sharply disapproved of Kaiden's appearance and more or less grunted that Kaiden belonged with the "crazies" down in Miami. That certainly got the flight off on the right note. Although, that being set aside, the flight had gone quite well.
Kaiden had wanted to fly on this trip, and after pleading his case, Captain Bertelsmann finally relented and allowed the gleeful kid to fly the Chicago-Miami leg before taking over for the international portion of the flight. The successful first portion of the evening flight helped relieve the tension in the cockpit and the two got to conversing a bit during flight 970's transit in Miami. Kaiden was careful not to make himself a pest, however. He tended to his other duties quietly as the Captain programmed the next leg's waypoints into the jet's navigation computer. The waypoints were coordinates that would help guide the plane on it's nighttime flight into the Colombian capital. It was critical that these be right as any unnoticed deviation could take them on a collision course with the treacherous Andes mountains that lay in their path. A similar error had already claimed a Cali-bound American Airlines Boeing 757 and most of it's passengers and crew just before Christmas 1995, and while many things were corrected, there was still that notorious guerrilla fighting on the ground, that had only gotten worse in the intervening years which made such tasks especially important. You certainly didn't want to wind up low over hostile territory.
The flight into Colombia was also quite uneventful with Captain Bertelsmann flying and Kaiden working the radio and monitoring the instruments. However the tension began to ramp up as they began their descent into Bogota. The mountains were enshrouded in a massive storm system and they would have to rely on instruments almost the entire way in. The flight got very bumpy when they descended into the clouds at about 11,000 feet with lightning flashing everywhere. As they were descending through 8,800 feet Kaiden noticed the plane did something odd. The autopilot banked the jet slightly towards the west then leveled out. While Captain Bertelsmann wasn't normally on this flight, Kaiden had been on it several times already, and his photographic memory immediately told him that the westward bank was unusual as they should be flying straight in by this point.
Kaiden told the Captain, who told him things felt just fine to him. This failed to satisfy Kaiden, though, who had an overwhelming feeling the plane was veering off course. A minute later, the non-directional navigational radio beacon (NDB) that Kaiden was supposed to see register on the jet's Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) needle failed to register, and Kaiden became overwhelmed with a sick feeling. He told the Captain that his ADF needle hadn't swung. The needle on the Captain's side only jiggered a bit.
"Damn thing must not be working again." he grunted, referring to the NDB's. "Probably sabotaged by the rebels."
"Yeah probably" Kaiden responded weakly. By this point he was sick to his stomach.
Kaiden had every right to be sick. Unbeknown to both pilots, there were two typos in a row on the waypoint chart that the Captain had used in programming the computer back in Miami. Those typos had led to the plane being programmed, for the next several minutes, to veer towards the southwest and head for Cali instead of Bogota. And directly towards a 9,000 foot mountain. Due to the thick clouds they couldn't see that they had veered off course.
A few minutes later the next NDB failed to register. Kaiden told the Captain, who agreed something was wrong. Kaiden started calling into Bogota Center when the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) alarm started to sound and a loud recorded voice barked "CAUTION, TERRAIN! CAUTION, TERRAIN!" At that moment Kaiden looked at Captain Bertelsmann, and he discovered the Captain was momentarily frozen in shock. It was then that Kaiden made a momentous decision. He seized control of the jet, retracted the speed brakes which were slowing the MD-87 down, and he aimed the nose up and slammed the throttles all the way to the firewall and N8714F went into a steep climb. Just as he did that, the alarm changed to a desperate "WHOOP-WHOOP! PULL UP! WHOOP-WHOOP! PULL UP!" as Kaiden could hear tree branches hitting and scraping the fuselage and panicked screams from the cabin. They rode the crest of the mountain, clearing it by mere 500 feet as they learned later. The Captain had quickly snapped out of his shock, realized what Kaiden did and, grabbing his own headset, made radio contact with Bogota Center and declared an emergency.
After climbing back above the clouds, they established their location and continued to a safe landing in Bogota. Kaiden flew the rest of the flight in.
There were wide consequences as a result of the incident. The fact that a near-crash similar in vein to the American Airlines disaster had happened came as a shock...in that accident, the Cali-bound 757 wound up veering off course, heading for Bogota after the name of a radio beacon was typed into the jet's navigation computer using a shorthand code, and that shorthand code actually stood for a totally different waypoint in the plane's navigation system. It hit a mountain. TGA flight 970 came within a razor's edge of meeting the same fate, and Kaiden's actions saved the lives of all aboard. Captain Bertelsmann, finding himself in shock that he'd frozen like that, never commanded another flight. After giving his statement to investigators in Colombia, he flew back as a non-revenue passenger to Chicago and took an early retirement. He "told on himself", admitting his freezing up like that, and gave Kaiden full credit for doing the right thing. Subsequently both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the USA and the local Colombian authorities discovered the misprint on the chart and a corrected one was immediately issued. The bad chart had been a very new issue and the conditions had simply not come together for the mistake to be detected until that night.
Back in Chicago, where Kaiden was assigned, still fresh out of school, reaction was somewhat mixed. Some of the older pilots, not knowing all the facts, simply thought it was an egotistical act on the part of a brash new hire when the Captain could've done the exact same thing. Kaiden refused to talk about Bertelsmann freezing in shock, thus he essentially sank his own boat among his co-workers. It made him look bad but Bertelsmann would keep some measure of dignity. That was just how Kaiden operated, he refused to kick a man when he was down. Kaiden was given some time off in order to be evaluated for signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and when he was cleared back to fly, the bosses had decided to send him to Miami where he could start fresh and lay low. He was welcomed with open arms by the Misfits. After he transferred, all the details came out from official sources, which vindicated Kaiden's action among the Chicago crews, who were quick to apologize whenever they saw him. His refusal to publicly talk his Captain down also earned him some extra respect.
But while Kaiden didn't suffer from PTSD as a result of the incident, he found himself, on this cold Wednesday morning 2 and a half years later, experiencing the same sinking feeling in his gut as he checked in at the Dispatch office and received his papers and filled out the flight plan to Washington and back. He figured it was because of two things...the returning flight number, 87, which perhaps reminded him of the model plane he was flying that night, and the fact that he had actually driven past N8714F, which was now also Miami based, on his way in. He laughed it off as he walked to the maintenance hangar to check up on the plane he was assigned to fly today.
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