Chapter 33: Emergency in the Air

Chapter 33: Emergency in the Air

The explosion on board Flight Two was immediate. Inside the plane there was a sudden noise like thunder, or a blow from a great hammer. A sheet of flame shot along the length of the plane.

D. O. Guerrero died at once. His body was near the centre of the explosion, and was completely destroyed. One moment he existed; the next moment only a few small bloody pieces of flesh remained.

A large hole appeared in the side of the plane.

Gwen Meighen was nearest to Guerrero, and received the force of the explosion in her face and chest.

The hole in the side of the plane caused an immediate change in the air pressure. A dark, terrible cloud of dust rolled through the plane, carrying newspapers, bottles and bags towards the hole. Curtains and doors were torn off and thrown about the plane, hitting several people and adding to the confusion. Passengers held onto their seats to avoid being sucked out of the plane. Oxygen lines fell down on them from the emergency containers above their heads.

Suddenly the sucking stopped. The plane filled with mist, and a freezing, deadly cold. The noise from the engines and the wind was unbelievably loud.

Vernon Demerest had held onto a seat, seized an oxygen line and shouted: ‘Get on oxygen!’ to the passengers. He knew that after only ten seconds without enough oxygen, their lives would be in danger.

He had to get back to Harris and Jordan to tell them what had happened. Breathing deeply, he moved from one oxygen line to the next. As he went, he noticed a young girl helping the people next to her connect an oxygen line to their baby. He found out later that this was Judy, and Standish was her uncle.

Vernon had no time to think of Gwen. He did not even know whether she was alive or dead. Before he could reach Harris, the plane suddenly began dropping fast.

---

Harris and Jordan did not know exactly what had happened, but they had felt the shock of the explosion, and the pressure change which followed it. The door to the pilots’ area was torn off and a thick cloud of dust rushed in. As in the passenger part of the plane, this had been replaced by a fine mist and a terrible cold.

Harris acted quickly, using all his skill and experience in his fight to save the plane. Fortunately, like all pilots, he had practised dealing with emergencies so often that when a real emergency came, he acted with the greatest speed.

It was a rule of aviation that, in an emergency, airline employees must take care of themselves before they began to think about the passengers. Harris reached for an oxygen line immediately, and a moment later Cy Jordan pressed the button that gave the passengers the oxygen they needed.

Harris reduced the speed of the plane. Now he had a decision to make. It was necessary to take the plane down to a safer height where they could breathe without the help of oxygen. The question was, should he bring the plane down slowly, or in a rapid fall?

If the plane was badly damaged, a sudden fall could break it in two. But if they went down slowly, there was a chance that the passengers would die of the cold. What could they do? Freeze for certain, or take a risk and go down fast?

‘Warn Air Traffic Control,’ Harris told Jordan. ‘We’re coming down fast.’

He pushed the controls forward. ‘We are coming down fast,’ he heard Jordan say. ‘Request 10,000 feet.’

They were falling rapidly. Passing through 26,000 feet -24-23. There was no other traffic near them. No time to think about the cold. They would live - if they could get low enough fast enough - if the plane did not break up. At fourteen thousand feet, Harris decided, he would pull out of the fall, and level at ten.

The controls were stiff and heavy, but everything seemed to be working. They were coming out of the fall. Eleven thousand feet - ten five - ten. They were level. The plane had not broken up. He had made the right decision.

Now they needed information from Toronto. Where could they land - at Detroit, Toronto or Lincoln International?

Vernon Demerest came in.

‘We missed you,’ Harris said.

‘How’re we doing?’

‘If the tail doesn’t fall off, we may be all right. What happened?’

‘Oh, just a little bomb that made a big hole in our nice plane.’

They did not want to talk about the real dangers of the situation.

‘It was a good idea, Vernon,’ Harris said kindly. ‘It could have worked.’

‘Yes, but it didn’t.’

Vernon told Jordan to go and see how bad the damage was.

‘Count the people who are hurt and do what you can to help them,’ he said. ‘And find out how badly hurt Gwen is.’ It was the first time that he had allowed himself to think about her.

Toronto Air Traffic Control Centre reported that Detroit and Toronto airports were closed, but Lincoln was still open. Carrying the large amount of fuel that they were, landing anywhere would be difficult. They needed the longest runway that they could get. That was at Lincoln - an hour’s flying time away. The question was, could the plane stay in the air for another hour?

Jordan reported on the damage. He thought that the plane would be able to reach Lincoln, but he was not so sure about the passengers. There were several doctors working among them.

‘What about Gwen?’ Vernon asked, afraid as he spoke of what the answer might be. The news was not encouraging. She was more badly hurt than anyone else.

‘We’ll land at Lincoln,’ Captain Harris decided.

Runway three zero was the one that they wanted. It was still blocked by the Aereo-Mexican plane.

‘They have 50 minutes to clear it for us, ‘Vernon said roughly. ‘They’ll have to clear it. It’s our only chance.’