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"You’ll be all right"

He moved back to row seventeen, the seat iht of hi within view

For twenty-six years, Captain Sleighton Delbaugh had earned his living in the cockpits of cohteen as a pilot

He had encountered and successfully dealt with a daunting variety of probleh to be called crises, and he had benefited froram of continuous instruction and periodic recertification He felt he was prepared for anything that could happen in a modern aircraft, but he found it difficult to believe what had happened to Flight 246

After engine number two failed, the bird went into an unplanned descent, and the controls stiffened They ed to correct its attitude, however, and dra eleven thousand feet of altitude was the least of their probleht," Bob Anilov said He was Delbaugh’s first officer forty-three, and an excellent pilot "Still turning right

It’s locking up, Slay"

"We’ve got partial hydraulic failure," said Chris Lodden, their flight engineer He was the youngest of the three and a favorite of virtually every feood-looking in a fresh-faced farely because he was a little shy, which ht crews Chris was seated behind Anilov and in charge ofthe mechanical systems

"It’s going harder right," Anilov said

Already Delbaugh was pulling the yoke full aft, left wheel "Damn"

Anilov said, "No response"

"It’s worse than a partial loss," Chris Lodden said, tapping and adjusting his instru what they were telling hiht?" The DC-10 had three hydraulic systened backup They couldn’t have lost everything But they had

Pete Yankowski-a balding, red- facility in Denver was riding with the crew on his way to visit his brother in Chicago As an OMC--observing member of the creas in the fold-down ju over the captain’s shoulder He said, "I’ll go have a look at the tail, assess the dae"

As Yankowski left, Lodden said, "The only control we’ve got is engine thrust"

Captain Delbaugh had already begun to use it, cutting the power to the engine on the right, increasing it to the other-the port---engine in order to pull thean to swing too far to the left, he would have to increase the power to the starboard engine again and bring theineer’s assistance, Delbaugh determined that the outboard and inboard elevators on the tail were gone, dead, useless The inboard ailerons on the wings were dead The outboard ailerons were dead

Saspan of over one hundred and fifty-five feet

Its fuselage was a hundred and seventy feet long It was more than just an airplane It was literally a ship that sailed the sky, the very definition of a "jumbo jet," and virtually the only way they now had to steer it ith the two General Electric/Pratt & Whitney engines

Which was only a little better than a driver trying to steer a runaway auto to one side and then to the other, desperately struggling to influence its course with his shifting weight

A few ine exploded, and they were still aloft

Holly believed in a god, not due to any life-altering spiritual experience, but largely because the alternative to belief was sih she had been raised a Methodist and for a while toyed with the idea of conversion to Catholicisod she preferred, whether one of the gray-suited Protestant varieties or the ether In her daily life she did not turn to heaven for help with her proble her parents in Philadelphia She would have felt like a hypocrite if she had fallen into prayer now, but she nevertheless hoped that God was in aover the DC-10, whatever His or Her gender ardless of His or Her preference in worshipers

Christine was reading one of the pop-up storybooks with Casey, adding her own a co to distract her daughter froe The intensity of her focus on the child was a giveaway of her true inner feelings: she was scared, and she knew that the worst had not yet passed

Minute byto accept what Jim Ironheart had told her It was not her own survival, or his, or that of the Dubroveks that she doubted He had proven hiularly successful when he entered combat with fate; and she was reasonably confident that their lives were secure in the forward section of the economy-class seats, as he had promised What she wanted to deny, had to deny, was that soto die It was intolerable to think that the old and young, uilty,to die in the saainst some rocky escarp jet fuel, with no favor given to those who had led their lives with dignity and respect for others

Over Iowa, Flight 246 passed out of Minneapolis Center, the air-traffic control jurisdiction after Denver Center, and now responded only to Chicago Center Unable to regain hydraulics, Captain Delbaugh requested and received pero to divert from O’Hare to the nearest major airport, which was Dubuque, Iowa He relinquished control of the plane to Anilov, so he and Chris Lodden would be able to concentrate on finding a way through their crisis As a first step, Delbaugh radioed System Aircraft Maintenance (SAM) at San Francisco International Airport SAM was United’s central maintenance base, an enormous state-of the-art complex with a staff of over ten thousand