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[ A M E R I C A N _.S Q U I R M__B Y__S A R A H_.V O W E L L ] 
MALCOLM MacPHERSON'S UPDATED "BLACK BOX" TRANSCRIPTS GIVE US A GRISLY IDEA OF WHAT DEATH REALLY SOUNDS LIKE.
BLACK BOX | EDITED BY MALCOLM MACPHERSON | QUILL | 224 PAGES The old joke about the black box is, of course, "I want to be flying in that." It's confusing, not to mention gruesome, that the aviation industry can engineer what is essentially a Walkman to withstand impact, flames and drowning, but it can't protect its human cargo. The sheer durability of the recording devices symbolically suggests that knowing how someone died is more important than the fact of death. Still, I confess, as a fan of detective novels and detective movies and detective TV shows, I find the question of how someone dies inherently fascinating. As an audiophile, the very idea of recordings that offer the sound of death is wildly titillating. And Malcolm MacPherson's updated edition of "The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-flight Accidents" (Quill) reads like radio. Or, more precisely, like flipping through stations. Many of these pre-catastrophe transcripts start out innocuously enough -- a flight attendant offering to make the captain her "special fruity juice cocktail," a copilot informing passengers of weather conditions in Mississippi. Then, as if some cosmic force has grown weary of a pleasantly boring Dave Matthews Band ballad, a thunderbolt yanks the dial so that all you hear is Kurt Cobain screaming, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." From mundane babble to last words in about three seconds flat. MacPherson's subjects make for the ultimate documentaries, and he's edited them subtly. For better or worse, he hasn't surrounded the tapes with much hysterical description, pointing out in his introduction that "I have made no effort to 'characterize' the crew members whose voices are taken directly off the CVR [Cockpit Voice Recorder] tapes. I do not want these transcripts to seem like an Arthur Hailey-type airport novel, as good as those may be." And that's another affinity the book has with radio. You're free to imagine what the good-humored, skillful captain of United flight 232 looks and sounds like; ditto the copilot dope who gets 73 people killed because he neglects to follow emergency procedure. MacPherson is quite clear that these tales are not art. Earlier in his introduction, however, he infers that they're better than art. He recalls that when he started reading CVR documents, "I was able to picture the drama of what these transcripts contained, and they were unlike any I had ever read, seen on the screen, or watched in a theater. They were real, relived on the printed page." Julian Barnes, in reference to Gericault's painting "The Raft of the Medusa," once wrote that "catastrophe is what art is for." Even though MacPherson positions these slices of life in opposition to their fictional counterpoints, it's hard not to read such a dramatic book as anything other than drama. Even so, one might be able to separate art from life for the picky reason that life has a crummy editor. MacPherson's transcripts require a commitment to wade through a heap of plane talk to get to the juicy death bits. There's a lot of boring copilot chatter along the lines of "Flaps one five, takeoff briefing complete," or "We're in a heading select to the right," whatever that means. But if you stick with it, the book has all kinds of rewards, like this wrenching behind-the-scenes picture of American Eagle Flight 4184:
Copilot: Uh, no. We're just goin' to eight thousand. Captain: Okay. Copilot: And, uh, ten more minutes, she [the controller] said. Cabin: [Sounds of beeps warning of overspeed] Copilot: Oops. Captain: We ... I knew we'd do that. Copilot: I'm tryin' to keep it at one eighty [mph]. [Repetitive thudding sound] Cabin: [Wailing warning sound of pitch-trim movement] It is at this point that, without any warning, the airplane flies out of control ... Copilot: Oops. Cabin: [Sound of three thumps followed by rattling; sound of chirps consistent with the autopilot disconnecting; sound of altitude-alert signal] Crew: Okay. [Intermittent heavy irregular breathing starts and continues to end of recording] Crew: Oh, shit. Captain: Okay. Cabin: [Sound of altitude-alert horn] Crew: [Sound of a growl continues for next twelve to thirteen seconds, until impact] Captain: All right man. Okay, mellow it out. Copilot: Okay. Captain: Mellow it out. Copilot: Okay Captain: Nice and easy Cabin: [Terrain warning: "Whoop! Whoop! Terrain."] Copilot: Aw, shit. Cabin: [Sound of crunching] MacPherson claims not to think of himself as a "ghoul." I make no such claim. I'd like to point out that I don't condone negligence, not to mention death. But any frequent flier who reads this all the way through is going to have to cope somehow. In the tradition of death-be-not-proud, I'll admit to the occasional dark snicker. That said, when I read the part where a captain complains, "I'll tell you, flying at night. I don't like it worth a damn," I put down the book, called American Airlines, and switched my night flight to New Orleans to one serving breakfast. MacPherson responsibly points out in his introduction that flying has never been safer, but considering the crash plots that follow, that's like your mom cautioning you against the dangers of salmonella right before she asks you what you want in your omelette. The nice thing about airplanes is that they're their own little worlds. You're breaking the rules of gravity, right? So doesn't it feel like, up there, floating through clouds, a lot of other earth rules don't apply? As a workaholic, I can work anywhere ("All the world's your office," someone once scolded me). But I think of airplanes as work-free zones, a place for magazines and naps and the filmic oeuvre of Ethan Hawke. Thus I was delighted by the aviation lingo. If it's a different world, shouldn't it have its own language? I learned that the code for "evacuate" is the consoling directive "Easy Victor." When an engine runs out of fuel, a copilot yells, "Flameout!" which sounds more like an Elvis movie than a warning. Or the Air Force unfortunates who met up with a flock of Canadian geese were the victims of a "multiple birdstrike." MacPherson himself gives a tsk-tsk to the coroner who described the cause of death(s) at a particularly grisly crash site as "multiple anatomical separations." The cruelty of death is thrown into relief at the transcripts' often eerie
endings. The institution of last words from a literary point of view has made
us romanticize the notion of some final gasp of wisdom. When Jesus perishes,
according to John, "He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave
up the ghost." A nice ending to a nice story -- guy comes along and saves the
world and politely, like a French film announcing, "Fin," tells you that
it's over -- even though on the next page, it's not! In plane crashes, as in
life, there isn't any grand prophesy to let the cockpit know the end is near.
Often, death comes fast and bad, leaving no time for literature. "Damn it"
followed by a bang is how one captain goes out. "We're dead," says a copilot.
And even pilot Michael Smith of the Challenger -- the explosion that shook a
nation and threw the space program into years of guilty self-examination -- in
the end, had only this to say: "Uh-oh."
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