Ask the pilot

Crying "fire" at 35,000 feet. How the pilot missed his Brussels buffet.

By Patrick Smith

Mar 18, 2005 | Four engines, three engines; divert or continue on? Our thanks, for want of a better term, to British Airways, whose recent double dose of mechanical trouble provided two straight weeks of stimulating column fodder. To close things out, I've chosen to share a personal account of something that happened about four years ago. Hopefully this offers some firsthand insight into the kind of event that, as a cut-and-dried news blurb, provokes more questions than it answers.

I was third in command, the flight engineer, on a four-engine freighter jet flying from Ohio to Belgium. It was a cloudless April morning over northern Maine, and I'd just finished heating the eggs and emptying the trash -- which after three-plus years had come to seem the sole point and purpose of my job -- when the fire alarm rang for the No. 3 engine. Imagine a bell with the volume and tenor of a dozen Big Ben alarm clocks. Imagine coffee everywhere.

Almost immediately, even faster than you'd slam your palm down on one of those infernal Big Bens at 5 a.m., the bell stopped. The three of us, suddenly owl-eyed and zoomed with adrenaline, stared momentarily at the instruments, then at each other. Fire? Yes? No?

Then a panel light began to blink. The light told us that one of the No. 3 engine's fire-detection circuits had fallen off-line. Except only possibly was it off-line, since the bulb is supposed to illuminate steadily, but in our case was flashing erratically, as if it couldn't make up its mind. About 10 seconds later, and to our considerable consternation, the bell commenced its hideous clamoring again. And this time it didn't stop, not until the captain hit the cut-out silencer, killing the bell while its accompanying red annunciator -- FIRE -- continued to burn brightly.

At hand were two indications, either an aggravating contradiction or a perfect accord, depending you saw it: that of a fire alarm, and that of a flickering light saying the fire alarm might be broken.

Truth be known, we also had a third indication. Owing to preflight perusal of the maintenance log, a routine nearly as important as ensuring enough Diet Coke, omelets and roasted chicken were stocked in the galley, we knew the very same fire detector had, on a recent prior occasion, malfunctioned, touching off a faulty alarm. (Making nothing easier, each engine has two detectors, and the second one, the gauges told us, was working fine.)

So, cutting to the chase, it was probable, though in no way provable, that the fire alarm was dubious. Unfortunately, in the world of big-league flying, and especially when fires are in play, probable doesn't cut it.

We now introduce the captain -- a tall, bearish fellow who tended not to say a lot; the kind of guy whose soft-spoken demeanor never quite offsets a commanding, borderline intimidating, physical presence. He stared intently for a moment, fingered his heavy mustache, then spoke in a raised whisper. "Oh, fucking fuck," is what he said.

"Engine fire checklist," came the order, as I grabbed the yellow card from its holster. And promptly the three of us, snapping into well-rehearsed roles, commenced the weird ballet of the in-flight emergency shutdown. We put No. 3 to bed with the snap and click of cutoff levers, generator switches, and a good-night spray of the halon bottle.

The red FIRE bulb ceased to glow and there were no further bells.

Then it was time to land.

Or not. After securing the disorderly motor we consulted our airline's dispatch team via radio. Convinced the warning had been illegitimate, company tech staff basically left the choice between continuing or diverting up to us.

Had we opted to keep flying, the first order would have been several minutes of poring over onboard charts to ensure we'd have adequate fuel for a three-engine Atlantic crossing. High-altitude air is thin, and with less available power and heavy gross weight, we'd be restricted to a lower-than-planned cruising level, increasing overall burn. Certain aerodynamic factors also intensify fuel consumption: that disabled powerplant is now hanging out there like a great round sail, and because the engine is not on the fuselage centerline, it results in a torquing force that wants to yaw the aircraft sideways. This is offset by trimming the plane's rudder and ailerons to hold opposite force. Loosely put, the plane is now flying slightly crooked, causing greater drag and, in turn, drinking even more fuel.

Back at headquarters, company personnel would crunch these same numbers before allowing us to proceed.

Weather too would be scrutinized. Brussels-National is often plagued by late-night fog, so the reports for nearby diversion points -- like Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam and London -- would be no less important. Regardless of how many engines are working, alternate landing spots must adhere to very specific minimum ceiling and visibility forecasts, bearing in mind that while a three-engine landing is relatively effortless, a three-engine missed approach (aborted landing), is less fun. Throw a serious crosswind, icy runway, and any additional malfunctions onto the palette, and the picture is even dicier.

Maybe that sounds complicated, and to some degree it is. To be totally frank, however, pilots itch for such occasions. That's how I saw it, anyway -- the rote tedium of preparing omelets and doodling in the margins of the flight plan at long last arrogated by something exciting, dammit. Not dangerous, mind you, but challenging and, should all go smoothly (which it would), rewarding. There's a tired adage that describes the pilot's career as interminable stretches of boredom punctuated by rare split seconds of sheer terror. And who needs that? More to our liking are the cushy quasi-emergencies like that of a sputtered-out turbofan, the occasional crackle of the laminated checklist, and the need to blow dust off some seldom consulted charts. Of the layperson's assumptions about commercial flight, few are more annoying than the one that needlessly ties an increase in a pilot's pulse with an increase in danger. Situations vary, but because a given mission is workload intensive and demanding of concentration -- whether dealing with a wayward engine or making a wind-whipped approach to a stubby runway at Washington-Reagan -- that doesn't, by definition, make it unsafe. To Brussels on three? The plane can do it, and so can I. I'm ready, willing and not the least bit scared.

Except, for better or worse, pilots aren't paid to get their kicks. They're paid to fly the path of least resistance; to keep everyone alive and everything intact with an absolute minimum of fuss and worry.

Which is why, after a quick and unanimous vote of 3-0, we turned and went to Bangor.

Had this been a precautionary shutdown owed to errant oil pressure or some other innocuous glitch, and with the somewhat grudging approval of the Federal Aviation Regulations -- see FAR 121.565(b), transcribed here last week -- I trust we'd have been perfectly comfortable to aim our 300,000 pounds of aluminum, freight and fuel toward the Bay of Fundy, Newfoundland, and beyond.

But it wasn't an oil pressure problem. Our hunches about the spurious detector would later be proved correct, but at the time there was no way of knowing if we'd suffered an actual fire. And, if so, there were no guarantees it hadn't caused unseen damage or, worse still, wouldn't again spark to life.

This is a good moment, I think, for a look at the scene of the crime. Here's a photo of my former office, the second officer's workstation on the exact bird in my story. If it looks ruefully antiquated, that's because it is. This was a jet conceived by the engineers at Douglas when Gen. Eisenhower still had hair, with a cockpit resembling the bridge of a '50s-era Soviet submarine. (The odd blue cylinder in the lower left corner is my $1.25 flashlight from Brooks Pharmacy, bandaged together with silver duct tape.)

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