September 11: Food for thought
September the 11th, 2001. None of us will ever forget the deep dark horror which penetrated all of our souls as we watched, with an intimacy only made possible by television, ordinary people going through an experience which rivalled the worst brutalities of all-out war.
OUR EFFORTS TO RATIONALISE the concept of minds so completely perverted as to have been able to commit acts of such total abomination caused circuit breakers to pop in all our psyches.
The events were so inhumanly evil that our initial reactions were disbelief, followed closely by denial. “This cannot be happening. Nobody in his right mind would fly an aeroplane full of passengers into the World Trade Centre. I mean, the crew wouldn’t let it happen would they?”
And then the second one went in.
Even Tom Clancy’s imagination could not have conceived a plot of such enormity. To be frank, nobody would have believed it. The book would not have sold. Clancy devotees world-wide would have turned away from their icon, in the belief that he had run out of ideas and resorted to implausible sensationalism in order to satisfy the cravings of his fans.
The Twin Towers massacre has been described as the greatest work of art ever produced. It contains visual effects never ever seen before on canvas, stage or screen. It stirs all the emotions. There are scenes of terror, hysteria, pathos, tragedy, heroism, mystery and, yes, even humour.
It remains to be seen whether there is any hope of redemption in the future. Meanwhile, the best we can hope to do is to take measures to prevent such horrors re-occurring, and the cockpit is one of the places where we will have to start.
Untried methods will have to be tested to counter the threat posed by this new breed of hijackers, for whom suicide is an ambition. These measures will have to include the use of potentially life-threatening techniques to prevent the aircraft becoming a weapon in the hands of the hijackers. These may include the use of lethal weapons, anaesthetic gasses, the depressurisation of the hull, even suicide, as was thought to have been used in the Pennsylvania aircraft, N591UA, by those heroic passengers…Which reminds me of something which happened to me some years ago, in Mozambique. It sounds like a complete ‘non sequitur’, but I think you will get the point as you read on.
I was involved in an operation with a large international aid organization, to bring relief to the war-ravaged population of Mozambique. Our remit was to carry food, medical supplies and personnel to various outlying centres, most of which had been cut off from the world for half a generation.
Our mode of transport was the legendary De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter, a twenty-passenger turbo prop which lands in places which would very often make a 4 by 4 think twice. Our base was the once-beautiful Indian Ocean port of Beira, which had been reduced to penury by mindless communism and its ensuing war.
The organization for which I was working, relied (and still does so to this day,) on its reputation for total neutrality and transparency to guarantee its safety in the theatres in which it operated. Normally speaking, if there’s no war, the Organization is not there, so by definition, if you are flying for that bunch, you will tend to be putting yourself in harm’s way to a certain extent. You will also be putting your passengers and cargo in the same position.
Obviously, there are ways to limit the risks and experience has drawn up its own manuals of operating procedures, each one applicable to each different environment.
A lot depends on trust and intelligence information. If, for example a rebel commander says it is safe to transit over a certain area, you have to trust him, although we had one company aircraft shot down one hundred miles north east of Quelimane in Mozambique, after one such guarantee. All on board survived the crash uninjured, which says a lot for the skill of the pilot, the integrity of Mr. Cessna’s designers and, of course, the bravery of the Mozambiquan helicopter crew who flew the extremely hazardous rescue mission.
You also have to trust your passengers, and this very nearly led to a situation which, although hilarious to look back on, almost caused me not to be writing this story.
Henrietta, known as Harry to her friends, was a big-boned, brash, buxom, blonde lady from the Low Countries. She was a pharmacist and had been sent out to Mozambique by the Dutch, at the request of our branch of the Organization.
Socially, Harry was the life and soul of the party. Her sheer size and the impressive tone of her laugh made her the focus of attention and she appeared to enjoy being centre-stage. Professionally she had an enviable reputation for getting things done. You didn’t get in Harry’s way if she was on a mission. It wasn’t just her voice that could be intimidating when she was provoked.
One day as I was passing the Medical Administrator’s office, a voice hailed me from its shady interior. “Hugh…Got a minute?”
“Of course Sean. How can I be of assistance?” The Medical Administrator, Dr Sean, was a little white-haired gem of a man from Tullamore, which is also the home of one of the more distinguished Irish Whiskeys. He had an easy smile and a continuous twinkle in his eye.
“It’s Harry again, Hugh. I found out she intends to send a consignment of Chloroform up to Nampula hospital with you on Thursday. You’re not supposed to carry that stuff, are you?”
“Not with passengers, Sean, no.”
Well Harry is very determined to get the vials delivered, so I suppose we’ll just have to work something out for her.”
Harry was ‘very determined’ with me later that evening as well, to the point that we ran out of polite things to say to each other, once she had established that I was sticking to the book on this one. In fact, she stormed off to bed at seven-thirty, after failing to convince me that I was being stupid about the chloroform. And that was very early indeed for Harry.
Tuesday and Wednesday were busy days for Essa, my co-pilot, from Finland, and myself, involving early morning starts and late evening arrivals. So our social life was curtailed to the point that Harry and I had no opportunity to patch up our differences. In fact, so busy had we been, that I forgot what had caused them in the first place.
So, on Thursday morning, I was only aware that Harry was treating me with a certain amount of reserve when she approached the aircraft for the long flight up to Nampula.
After getting everybody boarded, briefed and buckled up, we started engines, completed our systems checks and took off for the first leg to Quelimane, which is a small port up the coast from our base in Beira. We had a smooth flight below the broken layer of fair weather cumulo-stratus cloud, passing over large areas of countryside which had been productively cultivated before the civil war had removed honest labourers from the landscape.
At Quelimane’s pretty little red-roofed airport, we topped off the fuel tanks and took on another couple of passengers for the second leg to Nampula. It was Essa’s turn to fly and his competence allowed me to relax and watch in confidence.
By this time, the heat was pushing thermals of hot wet air upward off the sea, feeding the cumulus clouds until they grew into towering bubbling cauliflowers of vapour which forced us up and up amongst their dancing columns. At nine thousand five hundred feet we were above them, but I could see that there were several individual cells in the distance ahead, which thrust themselves above their neighbours, and these were the arrogant ones which would turn violent later as we reached them.
I leaned forward and turned the radar from ‘standby’ to ‘normal’, switching the range to eighty miles. Already some green clumps of radar returns on the screen indicated the presence of rain falling out of the bigger clouds up ahead. What had started the day as friendly, puffy lumps of cotton wool, were now developing into obstacles which we would have to circumnavigate in order to reach our destination.
We would need more altitude too, because even the more innocent clouds were now following the bad influence of their haughty neighbours. We started to climb. Now the big boys were growing long grey tendrils of rain, falling out of the rolling folds of appropriately named Cumulus Mamatus which protruded like great breasts from the lowest levels of the build-ups. Even the innocents were developing dark grey bases, as if to declare their solidarity with the ring-leaders.
It was going to be a rough trip from here on in, and we still had over an hour to go before reaching the comforts of Nampula, which was still reporting cloudless skies and light winds. I switched on the seat-belt signs and asked the passengers to check that their buckles were properly fastened. I mentioned that we were going to be thrown around a bit and that we might have to climb to higher altitudes to get over the worst of the lumps. I told them that since we were unpressurised there could be some people who would feel uncomfortable as we climbed and they should tell us, so that we could descend quickly into the more breathable, though much more uncomfortable, levels below us.
We were just reaching eleven thousand five hundred feet when we went through a particularly vicious down-draught, as we passed under the overhanging anvil of one of the original bad boys we had spotted earlier on the radar.
As we dropped, an explosion of hail rattled against the windscreen. Nothing serious, you understand, but enough, with the turbulence, to grab the undivided attention of our guests in the back. I turned to look into the cabin and jokingly blamed everything on Essa, who responded in kind by laughing and blaming me. Our little pantomime appeared to have alleviated the situation enough to allow a few nervous grins to flit across the faces of our passengers and then Essa turned and tapped my arm. A serious expression had suddenly driven away any vestige of humour.
“Can you smell something?”
“Yes, I certainly can!” I replied. “Get the cockpit doors shut! Fast! I should have known Harry would try this! Get your window open and check the cabin air vents are fully open!”
I unlocked and opened the window my side. and we both donned our oxygen masks. What we could smell was the unmistakable aroma of Chloroform.
Needless to say, our colleagues in the back missed the last hour and a quarter of moderate to severe turbulence, lightening, thunder, lashing rain and the odd return bout with the hail. They were all fast asleep. They even missed Essa’s landing at Nampula. Actually, it was such a greaser that they might have missed it even if he had not had the assistance of the Chloroform.
Anyway, when everyone finally came round from the anaesthetic, after we had got back to Mother Earth, I raced round and opened the airstair door to let everybody out and to save Barf Bags. It was discovered that Harry had ‘inadvertently’ packed two boxes of the phials of Chloroform in her hand baggage and, whether due to the turbulence or the altitude, they had popped when we climbed over the saddle between the anvil and its enormous brother.
Harry was totally unrepentant and I think that’s what finally decided the ‘powers that be’ that she would be more use (not to say ‘safe’) back in her own country.
Which leads me back to where we started.
If, during a flight, you suddenly find yourself confronted by a bunch of suicidal maniacs who are trying to break their way into your cockpit with intent, just pray that you’ve got Harry down the back and that she didn’t forget to bring the Chloroform this time!
——oooOoo——
Meanwhile, we have to potter on as best we can. The world can no longer function without aeroplanes. This is a fact of life. But for everyone who saw the Twin Towers disappear from the Manhattan skyline that day, the aviation industry has lost an awful lot of its high-tech glitter.
Obviously the first line of defence is not to let the beasts and their weapons onto the ‘planes in the first place and there is considerable evidence to show that if the American Domestic Flight security had been up to the standard of the security on their International flights, then the 11th of September 2001 might not have been engraved so deeply on the puplic memory.
Security, however can only go so far. A plastic knife sharp enough to cut through a steak is certainly sharp enough to cut through a jugular. A cockpit door built by the designers of Fort Knox can still be opened by blackmail or subterfuge. Even if you fill half the ‘Y’ class seats with sky marshals, one has to ask how many police officers in the United States are killed every year by their own weapons. The answer to that is ‘far too many’.
The problem is that, if you are dealing with a person who considers it a lifetime’s ambition to commit suicide and to take as many of his fellow humans as possible to Paradise with him, only radical solutions of frightening singleness of mind will suffice. Once an aeroplane becomes a weapon in the hands of such a person, the potential for destruction is almost unlimited.
The Twin Towers removed any lingering doubts we might have harboured about that. The truth of the matter is that the beasts must be stopped at all costs, even if, as in the case of the Pennsylvania heroes, it means sacrificing your own life in order to save the lives of thousands of others.
Cockpit philosophy has made a complete one-eighty since the 11th of September. Now, instead of advising total compliance with the demands of the hijackers, the aviation authorities urge aircrews to use any means available to kill them. Not ‘disable’ you’ll notice…Kill.
