Part 1 – A Bridge Too Far?

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I am sweating fairly profusely now. The cabin crew are tending to the Captain and removing him while I continue to work the problem. ATC are excellent under these circumstances as they transfer me to another radio frequency with no other aircraft operating on it, allowing me to focus without distraction. With the Captain off the flight deck I am effectively on my own, although we elect to place a cabin crewmember on the flight deck should I require assistance. Doubtful. The airplane is flying nicely and I am starting to get through the various checklists. The manner in which we normally do these checklists is so regimented that not having the other pilot present to complete the normal ‘challenge and response’ communication is strange. I chose to challenge and response myself in order to ensure correct completion of the checklist. I feel utterly stupid, but you can be sure they’ll be listening to every single word that I’ve uttered on the cockpit voice recorder, so I’ve got to cover my ass. With so much fuel on board I could spend all day doing checklists and making sure that everything is perfect, but I feel a duty of care to get the airplane on the ground and get medical attention for the Captain. His name is Dave by the way.

With all checks completed and the problem solving model applied to aid my decision making process I elect to land at the departure airport. The fuel burned while completing checklists has allowed me to get close to the maximum landing weight for the aircraft and the company, communicating with me through ATC, have approved an overweight landing in order to get the aircraft on the ground. Nonetheless, I am still taking my time and then it hits me. This is going to be the first time I’ve landed the airplane in 40 days. Typical. Armed with the knowledge that I have done everything that I can in order to ensure we are prepared for landing I complete a passenger announcement. I don’t give them too much information about the half dead Captain as mass panic would ensue and I tell them we will be landing in 15 minutes. At this point all I want is a nice cup of coffee to settle my nerves, but the overriding feeling is that this would most likely be deemed inappropriate and unnecessary. I inform ATC that I’m ready to commence the approach.

I complete, yet more, checklist items and elect to configure for landing earlier than prescribed in the manual. The manual assumes there are two pilots and despite the above average job I seem to be doing I’m still only one man. The longer the approach goes on the tenser I get. It’s natural, but almost overwhelming. My palms are sweaty and I can feel the adrenalin drop again as I start to breath a little quicker. If ATC weren’t consistently giving me updates on the wind at the airfield I’m pretty sure my fast-beating heart would be drowning out every other sound in the cockpit. As the airplane descends below 1000ft I start to think about disconnecting the automatics and realise that I never clearly decided on when I would take this action. No time to dwell on it as I remove the autopilot and take manual control. It’s a funny thing but once I am in control my heart rate drops and I fly as though I were back in my flying club in Dublin. You can’t teach what’s happening here. As we approach touch down I smoothly apply the necessary control inputs to ensure we sit gently onto the tarmac. I don’t think I’ve ever landed an airplane as well, but then I’ve never needed to. Cometh the hour and all that.

The landing roll is long and uneventful but allows me time to think about my next actions. I set the parking brake on the runway, I go through the shut down procedure for the good engine and ensure that the cabin manager is happy. With the engines off and foam pumping from the fire tenders into the failed engine I pause to take a selfie of my stress ridden face. I’m a millennial so this should not surprise any of you! The best course of action, once the engine is confirmed safe is to tow the aircraft to a taxiway and disembark the passengers onto busses, but first we allow a medical team on board to attend to the Captain. In a move that I’m sure my father would be proud of I use this time to write down some notes on what actions I took and how I feel. I’m pretty sure he’ll be proud that I landed a single engine wide body on my own but my gut tells me he’ll be more proud I’ve taken the time to record it all.

Despite all the Netflix and the general time wasting I regularly engage in, it appears that over the last 6 years I have managed to develop some resilience and the ability to work under pressure when others are depending on me. I would also like to highlight that if doesn’t result in a performance bonus this year I’m going to be pretty pissed off. I know that A380 guy got a book deal; although I think this short blog post might suffice. Dave won’t be celebrating our collective survival today as he’s in a Dubai hospital getting brain scans to figure out why he collapsed at the worst possible time. I’m sure he’ll be okay. I’ll visit him with a hangover tomorrow morning. For now, I’m going to see how many of this crew want to celebrate my saving their lives.

Gin and Tonic please!

Photo by Raechel Romero on Unsplash