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Chapter I

Impact

Friday, September 16

The first ring of the telephone had awakened him. His eyes were still trying to focus as he pushed the speaker button. The low red glow from the digital clock on the dresser told George McCormick it was 1:30 am.

“McCormick.”

“Mr. McCormick?”

What is it with people? he wondered. Why don’t they listen? He just got finished identifying himself and the first words out of the idiot calling was to ask who he was.

“Yes, this is George McCormick.” It was only with effort he kept the sarcasm out of his voice.

“This is the Comm Center, sir. We called you earlier this evening to tell you about the two planes New England Approach Control lost on their radar.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

“I remember. Let me guess. The aircraft have been found and they’re not in one piece.” His voice was still raspy.

There was a brief silence on the other end; then the voice continued. “Yes, sir. The Essex County Sheriff’s Department just notified us they found the wreckage. It’s just outside Chestertown, New York. We’ve notified the Service Director.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’m sure he’ll be calling me. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

Paula McCormick raised her head from her pillow and fought to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her brain. She hadn’t caught all the conversation.

“They found the wreckage? Where? What happened?”

“Yeah, they found it. Chestertown, New York, wherever the hell that is. As to what happened, right now your guess is as good as mine. I expect a call from Gary at any moment.”

McCormick didn’t have to wait long. Thirty seconds later the phone rang. McCormick looked at his wife. “Three guesses who that is.” Paula McCormick just smiled and let her head flop back onto the pillow.

Once more George McCormick pushed the speaker button.

“McCormick.”

“George. Gary Dennison.”

“Hi, Gary, what’s new?”

“Very funny.” It was obvious from Service Director’s tone he was not amused. “I know you’ve been briefed by the Comm Center. I want you to leave tonight. This one could really be ugly in a lot of ways.”

“It’s one-thirty, Gary. Just how do you expect me to get to New York, much less Chestertown? There aren’t any flights out of Reagan-National or Dulles until tomorrow morning, and I haven’t a clue which airline connects into Chestertown, if any.”

“You’re not going to fly commercial. I’ve made arrangements for you to go on the G-159. They’ll fly you right into Glenn Falls Warren County Airport. It’s close to the crash site. You’ll be going with the NTSB team. Get your tail out to Hangar Six ASAP.”

McCormick was stunned. “How the hell did you manage that at this hour of the night, or at any hour for that matter?”

“Hey, I’m the Service Director, remember?”

Dennison did not have that kind of authority, and both of them knew it, but he obviously had managed it somehow.

“Okay, Gary. I’ll be in touch.”

McCormick was the FAA’s weekend duty officer. He wasn’t surprised when he received the second phone call at his townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia, notifying him that the Essex County Sheriff’s Department had discovered the wreckage. McCormick suspected that a midair collision had occurred almost four hours earlier when he received the first call from the Comm Center telling him that New England Radar Approach Control had simultaneously, and unexpectedly, lost radar and radio contact with two aircraft. New England had immediately instituted “Search and Rescue” procedures, called the local police, and notified the Comm Center. They, in turn, had dutifully passed that information along to McCormick. There had been little doubt in McCormick’s mind at the time of the first phone call what had happened. He simply had to wait for the police or someone else to find the crash site to confirm his suspicions. The 1:30 am call did just that. McCormick knew the all-important question was going to be, Why?

McCormick was fifty-three. Like most men his age, he had gained about twenty-five pounds he didn’t need. His five-foot-eight-inch medium frame didn’t do much to evenly distribute the weight, most of which deposited itself around his midsection. He’d been with the Federal Aviation Administration for thirty-one years, the last five working as an Aircraft Accident Investigator at the FAA’s National Headquarters in Washington, DC. McCormick was a company man. His job kept him in the field most of the time, away from the nine-story building at 400 Independence Avenue that housed an eight-by-eight cubicle the government designated as his “office.” The cubicle contained a small gray metal desk whose drawers jammed on a regular basis. Atop the desk sat a fifteen-inch screen powered by a 486 computer. A straight-back, four-legged metal chair, and a dirty, chipped beige plastic phone whose only redeeming feature was voice mail completed the decor. McCormick’s nameplate rested on top of one of the cubicle walls, strategically placed so as to be able to be seen by anyone trying to find his cubbyhole among the many other catacombs throughout the sixth floor.

McCormick made it a point to stay out of political discussions and office intrigue with his coworkers. Like many in government, he disliked its affirmative action policies but was acutely aware that to voice opposition to them would result in a career not highlighted by upward advancement. McCormick was good at his job. He had spent years working as an air traffic controller before taking this assignment. That experience enabled him to look in the right places to search for the cause of accidents, especially if one of the causes was controller error. McCormick was also good at taking care of his own life and responsibilities. His son and daughter were grown. In two more years he would retire. He and his wife looked forward to moving to southwestern North Carolina, far away from the political rat race inside the beltway.

After getting off the phone with Gary Dennison, McCormick threw a change of clothes along with some personal items in an overnight bag, called the local cab company, told his wife he would be gone for most of the weekend, and at 2:15AM Saturday morning, climbed into the waiting cab outside his home. Normally he would have taken the Metro, but the last train from the Springfield and Van Dorn stations had long since departed. After a silent thirty-five-minute ride, he arrived at the gate outside Hangar Six, located at the south end of Ronald Reagan Airport far from the main passenger terminals. Security had been notified he was coming, and McCormick passed through the gate’s checkpoint without being hassled. It was raining hard. Lightning lit the night sky like flashes from a camera being constantly clicked. The inevitable claps of thunder followed almost immediately. From the white color of the lightning and the one-second interval between flashes and sound, McCormick knew the storms were directly over the airport. With his overnight bag in one hand and an attaché case in the other, McCormick ran as best as he could the sixty or so yards from the gate to the hangar door. He was drenched by the time he got there.

Once inside, McCormick met with three members of the National Transportation Safety Board, an official government photographer, and two aircraft inspectors from the FAA’s Washington Flight Standards District Office. All of them would fly to Glenn Falls aboard the FAA’s G-159 Gulfstream. The thirty-seven-passenger commuter aircraft was powered by two recently overhauled Rolls-Royce 529-8X propeller-driven engines. The FAA owned two of the 187 Gulfstreams that had been built between 1958 and 1969. Usually these aircraft flew upper-echelon FAA personnel to official government functions; occasionally they were used for the far more productive purpose of transporting essential personnel to aircraft accident sites. Gary Dennison, McCormick’s Service Director, had called the FAA Administrator and arranged for the use of the aircraft and a crew. There were ten or twelve members of the press in the hangar when McCormick arrived, all with authorization to accompany the investigators on the flight. Somehow they had gotten wind of what had happened; no doubt some citizen had been monitoring New England’s radar approach control frequency on some sort of shortwave radio receiver and “dropped a dime” when he realized that two planes were missing. How the press had gotten flight authorization at that hour of the night and on that short notice was a mystery to McCormick.

The massive frontal thunderstorms in the DC area delayed their takeoff until 3:45 am. The clouds in the overcast night sky enveloped the Gulfstream just after takeoff at three hundred feet where it immediately encountered moderate turbulence. The entire aircraft rattled and seemed to bounce in all directions at once. A very nervous McCormick tightened his seat belt to the point of pain. His hands gripped the sides of his seat. He could see the headlines now: “FAA and NTSB Investigation Team Die in Plane Crash on Way to Accident Site.” They broke out of the cloud deck at twelve thousand feet then continued to fifteen thousand. The turbulence subsided. McCormick sheepishly looked around and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He wasn’t the only one.

It was almost six o’clock Saturday morning when the Gulfstream landed at Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport and taxied onto the large parking apron in front of the fixed base operator, Empire East Aviation. The newly remodeled facility was able to accommodate twenty-five transient aircraft plus thirty-three itinerant. McCormick couldn’t help but wonder how many people knew that Floyd Bennet had been the pilot on Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s historic first flight over the North Pole. Afterward, word leaked that Chief Warrant Officer Bennet “confessed” that due to an oil leak Byrd had ordered him to simulate the flight by orbiting just north of Kings Bay, Spitzbergen. This so-called confession was never substantiated or proved. Warren County Airport had recently been renamed for Bennet. The Naval Air Station located on Flatbush Avenue just past the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, that had been named after Bennet had long since been replaced as a national park.

The entire entourage wearily stumbled down the aircraft steps and filed into the FBO’s pilots lounge. McCormick was met by Susan Desmond and Richard Garens, investigators from the FAA’s Eastern Regional Office. Since the crash had occurred within their region’s jurisdiction, McCormick knew they would be there to assist him with obtaining whatever documents he needed from the New England Radar Facility. They would serve as liaison between FAA Washington Headquarters and the FAA’s Eastern Regional Office. That was their official function. Their unofficial and more important function was to keep their bosses at the regional level in the loop. Desmond and Garens had been able to catch a late Friday night ride on a Cessna 310. The aircraft belonged to the FAA. It was going to be used the following week to conduct a check of the New York TRACON’s radar system. The “three-ten” had been parked on the FBO ramp at JFK Airport. A phone call to its pilot from the Eastern Regional Director and the two investigators found themselves on their way to Glenn Falls in their own private twin flown by a not-too-happy FAA flight check pilot. They had been waiting in the lounge since three that morning, drinking coffee dispensed from a vending machine and unsuccessfully attempting to catch a few hours of sleep on the torn leather couches scattered throughout the room. McCormick had worked accidents with them before.

Susan Desmond was in her late forties, divorced. Her daughter was married and living on her own in California. Her two Siamese cats were sound asleep when she left her apartment. At five feet, four inches and 120 pounds, she worked at keeping herself looking polished. Desmond had been with the FAA for eighteen years. A former controller in the military, she was also an instrument rated pilot. Desmond had entered the agency prior to affirmative action and earned her promotions through productive hard work. Her peers were aware of that fact and, as a result, respected her. She had been with the Eastern Region’s Accident Investigation Branch for three years.

Garens was fifty-one, a gaunt man who stood six feet, two inches and 175 pounds with thinning gray hair and hollow eyes—Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane if ever there was one. He had been with the agency for twenty-two years, the last seven with the Eastern Region’s investigative branch. He was unhappily married, but remained so because alimony payments would effectively decimate his disposable income. His marriage situation negatively impacted every aspect of his work, from the quality of his reports to his relationships with his coworkers. Most of the people in his office looked forward to Garens’s retirement more than he did.

After the usual social pleasantries, emptying themselves of the inevitable results of several cups of coffee, and refilling their spill-proof mugs, Desmond, Garens, and McCormick shoehorned themselves into the plain-white government car provided by the FAA’s Airways Facility personnel stationed on the field. A unit from Troop G of the State Police led them to Ridge Road, then to Quaker Road where they proceeded westbound until reaching Interstate 87. From there they drove north until the exit for NYS Route 9, which took them directly into Chestertown some twenty-five miles north of Glenn Falls. The NTSB investigators along with the reporters followed in cabs from Adirondack Taxi Service. McCormick wondered how the others in the group had managed to arrange for their transportation. He had no doubt several people in the local area had been awakened in the early morning hours from phone calls they never expected to receive. The two G-159 pilots remained behind. They would see to it that the plane was properly tied down and refueled. Then they would wait for the local restaurants to open, grab some breakfast, make sure their cell phones and beepers were turned on, and spend the rest of day hanging around the airport reading magazines and looking for any type of diversion to ward off boredom. The small convoy was met by sheriff’s deputies just north of Chestertown. After a mile of back-road driving, they parked on the road and walked about a hundred yards through the dense woods. The entire group looked as though they had spent the night sleeping in their clothes on the wet ground.

George McCormick never got used to crash sites. The five-second footage the news media would show to the public on the noonday report and six o’clock news would not begin to convey the carnage. It was just as well. Both planes, a Cessna Centurion and a Brasilia, had been demolished. Few pieces of the wreckage were bigger than a fist; the one exception was the vertical stabilizer from the Cessna. McCormick reasoned that it had been torn from the Cessna’s fuselage as the plane plummeted, or had been severed by debris from the Brasilia commuter the instant after the collision. Two distinct craters in close proximity tightly punctuated the points of impact. The blackened craters stood in stark contrast to the myriad of gold and rust hues of fall that surrounded the wooded countryside of upstate New York. The impact had strewn small segments of aircraft and human body parts everywhere; charred shreds of flesh dangled from the bushes and lower tree branches. Isolated patches of low-lying fog yet to be dissipated by the early-morning sun shrouded the ground, giving the entire area a look reminiscent of Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow.” The fog did not make the search for clues any easier, any more than did the stench of burned remains that permeated the cold September morning air, causing pangs of nausea to ferment in the stomachs of the less hardy among the investigators and county police. It was a macabre scene, indeed.

McCormick knew it was possible for an aircraft to continue to fly after a collision; however, the relative closeness of the two impact craters made it clear neither one of these had. For all practical purposes, both aircraft had gone straight down. The site reminded him of an impact crater formed by an Air California BAE-146 jet ten years earlier, compliments of a disgruntled company employee who had forced his way into the cockpit and shot the crew. That aircraft had impacted at close to the speed of sound and imploded. Nothing had remained.

According to preliminary radar data, these planes had collided head-on. Future reconstruction evidence would tell them that the right wing of the Cessna Centurion had smashed through the cockpit area of the Brasilia EMB-120. What it would not tell them was that the Brasilia cockpit crew died instantly while the passengers aboard the sixty-five-foot-long commuter aircraft had not been as fortunate. It had nose-dived into the ground at 420 MPH while the single-engine high-wing six-place Cessna, sans one wing, spun to earth. It had taken a little longer for the Cessna to reach impact than the Brasilia, but the end result was still the same. The only difference was that the pilot of the Cessna had more time to live with the terror of knowing he was going to die than the twenty-nine passengers and one flight attendant on board the EMB-120. Centurions have a well-deserved reputation for having one of the strongest wing structures in aviation, but the force of the Brasilia’s 26,000 pounds, propelled at 280 knots by its two Pratt & Whitney 118A turbo-prop engines, impacting the Cessna’s 3,600 pounds, flying at 210 knots in the opposite direction, sheared its right wing clean from the fuselage.

McCormick and the small cadre of investigators, reporters, and police silently combed the area looking for anything that might provide clues to the cause of the midair. Their first order of business was to find the Brasilia’s bright orange black box, which could be almost anywhere in the heavily wooded marsh. The NTSB officials would later issue an extremely detailed report about the location of the wreckage, the angles of ground impact, the history maintenance of the engines, pilot and crew currency and qualifications, weather conditions, and a host of other facts, none of which would provide the faintest inkling as to why these two planes collided.

McCormick was the FAA’s IIC (Investigator-in-Charge); as such he was later going to have the unenviable job of briefing his superiors in Washington that neither he nor anyone else at the site had a clue as to what caused the crash. He knew that far more information would be needed from recorded transmissions, radar data plots, interviews with controllers, supervisors, radar technicians, weather specialists, and a host of others before any pieces might start to fall into place. That was going to take time, especially the controller interviews. It was a sure bet their union reps would want to talk to them first, before anyone else got anywhere near them. His superiors would not be pleased. They were going to have to relay that information to the FAA Administrator. She, in turn, would have to face the press and the Sunday morning TV talk shows without any answers as to why two aircraft, operating on instrument flight plans, reported at different altitudes, and under radar contact by New England Approach Control, ended up as a metal scrap heap on the New York countryside of Essex County. Retirement suddenly seemed a long way off to George McCormick.