sky. He grabbed at the back of a seat to steady himself But this was
not the big one.
The flight attendants were gathered farther back in the plane, in their
work area, preparing to serve the lunch trays that had just come up from
the galley. They were a mixed group, men and women, a couple in their
twenties and the others as old as fifty-something.
Jim approached the oldest of them. According to the tag she wore, her
name was Evelyn.
“I’ve got to talk to the pilot,” he said, keeping his voice low,
although the nearest passengers were well forward of them.
If Evelyn was surprised by his request, she didn’t show it. She smiled
just as she had been trained to smile. “I’m sorry, sir, but that isn’t
possible.
Whatever the problem is, I’m sure I can help-”
“Listen, I was in the lavatory, and I heard something, a wrong sound,”
he lied, “not the right kind of engine noise.”
Her smile became a little wider but less sincere, and she went into her
reassure-the-nervous-traveler mode. “Well, you see, during flight it’s
perfectly normal for the pitch of the engines to change as the pilot
alte airspeed and-”
“I know that.” He tried to sound like a reasonable man to whom she
ought to listen. “I’ve flown a lot. This was different.” He lied
again: “I know aircraft engines, I work for McDonnell Douglas. We
designed and built the DC-10. I know this plane, and what I heard in
the lav was wrong.” Her smile faltered, most likely not because she was
starting to take his warning seriously but merely because she considered
him to be a more inventive aerophobe than most who panicked in
mid-flight.
The other flight attendants had paused in their lunch-service
preparations and were staring at him, no doubt wondering if he was going
to be a problem.
Evelyn said carefully, “Well, really, everything’s functioning well.
Aside from some turbulence-”
“It’s the tail engine,” he said.
That was not another lie. He was receiving a revelation, and he was
letting the unknown source of that revelation speak through him. “The
fan assembly is starting to break apart. If the blades tear loose,
that’s one thing, the pieces can be contained, but if the entire
fan-blade assembly shatters, God knows what could happen.”
Because of the specificity of his fear, he did not sound like a typical
aerophobic passenger, and all of the flight attendants were staring at
him with, if not respect, at least a wary thoughtfulness.
“Everything’s fine,” Evelyn said, per training. “But even if we lost an
engine, we can fly on two.”
Jim was excited that the higher power guiding him had evidently decided
to give him what he needed to convince these people. Maybe something
could be done to save everyone on the flight.
Striving to remain calm and impressive, he heard himself saying, “That
engine has forty thousand pounds of thrust, it’s a real monster, and if
it blows up, it’s like a bomb going off The compressors can back-vent,
and those thirty-eight titanium blades, the fan assembly, even pieces of
the rotor can explode outward like shrapnel, punching holes in the tail,
screwing up the rudders and elevators. . . The whole tail of the plane
could disintegrate.” .
One of the flight attendants said, “Maybe somebody should just mention
this to Captain Delbaugh.”
Evelyn did not instantly object.
“I know these engines,” Jim said. “I can explain it to him. You don’t
have to take me on the flight deck, just let me speak to him on the
intercom.”
Evelyn said, “McDonnell Douglas?”
“Yeah. I’ve been an engineer there for twelve years,” he lied.
She was now full of doubt about the wisdom of the standard response she
had learned in training. She was almost won over.
With hope blossoming, Jim said, “Your captain’s got to shut down engine
number two. If he shuts it down and goes the rest of the way on one and
three, we’ll make it, all of us, we’ll make it alive.”
Evelyn looked at the other flight attendants, and a couple of them
nodded. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt if. . .”