Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds : The Tragedy and Triumph of ASA Flight 529

by POMERANTZ, GARY M.

• ISBN13: 9780609606339
• ISBN10: 0609606336
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-04
• Publisher: Crown Pub

Summary

"A deeply moving account of the extraordinary strengths that ordinary people can display when tragedy confronts them. As emotionally powerful a book as you are likely ever to read." David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross In August 1995, twenty-six passengers and a crew of three board a commuter plane in Atlanta headed for Gulfport, Mississippi. Shortly after takeoff they hear an explosion and, looking out the windows on the left side, see a mangled engine lodged against the wing. From that moment, nine minutes and twenty seconds elapse until the crippled plane crashes in a west Georgia hayfieldnine minutes and twenty seconds in which Gary Pomerantz takes readers deep into the hearts and minds of the people aboard, each of whom prepares in his or her own way for what may come. Ultimately, nineteen people survive both the crash and its devastating aftermath, all of them profoundly affected by what they have seen and, more important, what they have done to help themselves and others. This is not so much a book about a plane crash as it is a psychologically illuminating real-life drama about ordinary people and how they behave in extraordinary circumstances. Each of us has wondered what we would do to survive a life-threatening situation: Would I survive? How would I conduct myselfwould I act to save others in need or only myself? Would others try to save me? How would I be affected by the experience? Judging by what is revealed in Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds, the answers are surprisingly optimistic. In telling the remarkable stories of these twenty-nine men and women, Gary Pomerantz has written one of the most compelling books in recent memory. Open to any page and you'll immediately be drawn into the dramatic pull of the narrative. But on a deeper level, Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds speaks as powerfully about our capacity to care for others as it does about the strength of our will to live. This rich and rewarding book will linger in your mind long after you turn the last page.

Author Biography

Gary M. Pomerantz served the past two years as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Emory University in Atlanta. His first book, <b>Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn</b>, was named a 1996 Notable Book of the Year by the <i>New York Times</i>. He captured the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing in 1999 and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for feature writing for his seven-part series in the <i>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</i> about the air crash that is the subject of this book. He lives with his wife and three children near San Francisco.

Table of Contents

Propeller	1	(10)
Crew, Aircraft	11	(26)
Passengers	37	(14)
9:20 to Impact	51	(52)
Fire in the Field	103	(46)
``You're the Hero''	149	(82)
The Value of a Human Life	231	(20)
Revelation: A Mosaic	251	(32)
Acknowledgments	283

Excerpts

6:45 to Impact. Robin Fech pushed the PA button, turned to face her twenty-six passengers, and said, “The cockpit crew has confirmed we have an emergency. We have an engine failure.” She announced that the plane was headed back to Atlanta. She sounded firm even if frightened.

Chuck Pfisterer, in 6A, thought, Yeah you’ve got an engine problem all right!

Fech reiterated that the plane could fly on one engine. She also told passengers they needed to prepare, just in case. She did not deliver the lengthy formal emergency announcement she’d learned in training. She’d always thought it too long, slow, and boring. But she delivered the essence of that announcement, in her own way.

Make certain your seat belt is low and tight, she said.

Place your feet flat on the floor and review your emergency card.

She explained the brace positions. For all but a few passengers sitting by the bulkheads, that meant crossed wrists against the seat back in front of them, forehead pressed against the wrists. Fech insisted that each passenger demonstrate the brace position.

“You’ll have to prove this to me,” she said.

She asked if there were any questions. No one had any. She cleared off the kitchen galley and then moved up the aisle, saying, “Let me see it.” As passengers assumed brace positions, Fech lifted an elbow here, pushed down a head there. She had been trained to do it. She just couldn’t believe she now had to do it.

She had convinced most passengers that a safe landing was possible. In the fourth row, Ed Gray, on his way to Muscle Shoals to schmooze DuPont with his colleague across the aisle in 3C, Barney Gaskill, imagined a foam-covered landing strip and a bouncy ride in.

In Row 9, the young deputy, Tod Thompson, thought back to childhood fears. He wrestled with rationalizations. A roller-coaster ride once scared him as a boy. But he’d held on then, things had turned out okay, and he’d thought at the time, That wasn’t so bad, was it? It will be the same thing now.

Thompson craned his neck to see the left engine. A few of the left-side window shades in the middle rows hadn’t been shut. Thompson saw the twisted metal. His partner, Charlie Barton, looked out to the left wing, too. He saw what Thompson saw, and spoke not a word.

Charlie Barton went quiet, totally quiet.

Thompson didn’t want others in the plane to know his fear, least of all Charlie Barton.

The plane shook in the clouds, side to side. Thompson reminded himself to think like a lawman: Stay clear-headed! Do what you’re told! He tightened his seat belt, listened for the flight attendant’s next words. Then he closed his right-side window shade, as if the sky would no longer exist if he couldn’t see it.

***

In the seventh row, David McCorkell believed the plane would land just as the flight attendant said it would. Once, McCorkell had been a passenger on a plane that landed in a blizzard as fire trucks lined the runway. When that plane landed safely, every passenger applauded.

Air travel was a way of life for McCorkell. He left home in Minnesota each week on Sunday or Monday and flew to another city to train grocery chains how to use software programs. Then he flew home on Friday, washed his clothes, paid his bills, and started the cycle all over again.

This was David McCorkell, vice president of training, his life and his livelihood one and the same. At thirty-seven and twice divorced, he had the worn appearance of a man who no longer had the time, or inclination, to dream big dreams: a thick Teddy Roosevelt—type mustache, big enough to hide behind, eyeglasses that sometimes slid down the bridge of his nose, and shoulders that slouched.

The plane’s shuddering tested McCorkell’s nerves. He wanted to see the left engine. He leaned into the aisle, looked past Chuck Pfisterer in Row 6 out at the left wing. He saw the propeller blades. They were dislodged and bent and he noticed that they weren’t turning.

The passengers’ silence made him tense.

He looked at his watch: 11:45 a.m. Central time. In Gulfport he had planned to rent a car and drive to Mobile, Alabama. But now that this plane was going back to Atlanta, he worried that he would lose a half-day’s billing. At eight thousand feet and dropping, his plane attempting to enter a right turn now, David McCorkell thought, I’m going to be out a couple hundred dollars.

The right engine, that’s the first noise Alan Barrington had noticed after the propeller shattered. Barrington sat on the right side, in 6C, behind the good engine. He figured the pilots must have turned it up a few notches to compensate for the dead left engine.

The right engine revved louder than before, and lonelier.

Barrington looked at his emergency card as he awaited his chance to demonstrate the brace position for the flight attendant. He read about flotation devices and exit rows. He looked at the little drawings on the card and thought, If we crash, this card won’t do me any good.

Barrington noticed that the man across the aisle, Chuck Pfisterer, could see out on the left wing. This was the same man who had sounded so distressed with the flight attendant moments ago, the man who had mistakenly sat in Barrington’s seat before the plane took off, about thirty minutes ago. Barrington thought he saw tears in this man’s eyes.

And that prompted a scary thought: He’s got a better view than I do, and he’s got tears in his eyes. . . .

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Excerpted from Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds: The Tragedy and Triumph of ASA Flight 529 by Gary M. Pomerantz
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.