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She took a step back from him "Jack," she said "You know I can&039;t discuss the sale No one can, until the ink&039;s dry"
"Okay," Rogers said He took out his notepad "It does seem like a pretty crazy ru It&039;d be suicide"
"Exactly," she said In the end, she kept coarton offset the wing? Why would any colanced up fro&039;s being sent offshore?"
She shrugged "You&039;ll have to ask them" He had sources in the union Certainly Brail Probably others as well
"I hear they&039;ve got documents that prove it"
Casey said, "They show theine why not, if they have them"
Rogers smiled He made another note "Shame about the rotor burst in Miami"
"All I knohat I saw on television"
"You think it will affect the public perception of the N-22?" He had his pen out, ready to take dohat she said
"I don&039;t see why The probleoing to find it was a bad compressor disk that burst"
"I wouldn&039;t doubt it," he said "I was talking to Don Peterson over at the FAA He told e coen pockets"
"Alpha inclusions?&039; she said
"That&039;s right," Jack said "And there was also dwell-tiine parts operated at a terees Fahrenheit, well above the melt terees So they werethesome of the parts was an art - the fan blades were essentially "grown" as a single crystal ofBut even in skilled hands, theprocess was inherently delicate Dwell-tiue was a condition in which the titanium used to make rotor disks clu theue cracks
"And how about the Transpacific flight," Rogers said "Was that an engine problem, too?"
&039;Transpacific happened yesterday, Jack We just started our investigation"
"You&039;re QA on the IRT, right?"
"Right, yes"
"Are you pleased with how the investigation is going?"
"Jack, I can&039;t coation It&039;s much too early"
"Not too early for speculation to start," Rogers said "You kno these things go, Casey Lot of idle talk Misinformation that can be difficult to clear up later I&039;d just like to set the record straight Have you ruled out engines?"
"Jack," she said, "I can&039;t coines?"
"No co up, he said, "And I suppose you&039;re looking at slats, too"
"We&039;re looking at everything, Jack," she said
"Given the 22 has a history of slats problems "
"Ancient history," she said "We fixed the probleo You wrote a story about it, if I recall"
"But now you&039;ve had two incidents in two days Are you worried that the flying public will start to think the N-22 is a troubled aircraft?"
She could see the direction his story was going to take She didn&039;t want to co her what he would write if she didn&039;t It was a standard, if minor, forot three hundred N-22s in service around the world Thesafety record" In fact, in five years of service there had been no fatalities involving the aircraft until yesterday That was a reason for pride, but she decided not to mention it, because she could see his lead: The first fatalities to occur on a Norton N-22 aircraft happened yesterday
Instead she said, "The public is best served by getting accurate information And at the moment, we have no information to offer To speculate would be irresponsible"
That did it He took his pen away "Okay You want to go off?"
"Sure" She knew she could trust him "Off the record, 545 underwent very severe pitch oscillations We think the plane porpoised We don&039;t knohy The FDR&039;s anomalous It&039;ll take days to reconstruct the data We&039;re working as fast as we can"
"Will it affect the China sale?"
"I hope not"
"Pilot was Chinese, wasn&039;t he? Chang?"
"He was fro I don&039;t know his nationality"
"Does that make it aard if it&039;s pilot error?"
"You kno these investigations are, Jack Whatever the cause turns out to be, it&039;s going to be aard for somebody We can&039;t worry about that We just have to let the chips fall where they fall"
"Of course," he said "By the way, is that China sale fired "I honestly don&039;t know"
"Has Marder talked to you about it?"
"Not to me personally," she said Her reply was carefully worded; she hoped he wouldn&039;t follow up on it He didn&039;t
"Okay, Casey," he said "I&039;ll leave this alone, but what&039;ve you got? I need to file today"
"How co the derogatory in-house term for one of the low-cost carriers "Nobody&039;s done that story yet"
"Are you kidding?" Rogers said "Everybody and his brother&039;s coveringthe real story," she said "Super-cheap carriers are a stock scam"
"A stock scam?"
"Sure," Casey said "You buy some aircraft so old and poorly maintained no reputable carrier will use them for spares Then you subcontract maintenance to limit your liability Then you offer cheap fares, and use the cash to buy new routes It&039;s a pyrareat Volume&039;s up, revenue&039;s up, and Wall Street loves you You&039;re saving so s skyrocket Your stock price doubles and doubles again By the ti up, as you know they will, you&039;ve made your fortune off the stock, and can afford the best counsel That&039;s the genius of deregulation, Jack When the bill coers"
"Exactly," Casey said "Flight safety&039;s always been an honor system The FAA&039;s set up to ulation&039;s going to change the rules, we ought to warn the public Or triple FAA funding One or the other"
Rogers nodded "Barry Jordan over at the LA Tile But that takes a lot of resources - lead ti over your copy My paper can&039;t afford it I need soht"
"Off the record," Casey said, "I&039;ve got a good lead, but you can&039;t source it"
"Sure," Rogers said
"The engine that bleas one of six that Sunstar bought from AeroCivicas," Casey said "Kenny Burne was our consultant He borescoped the engines and found a lot of dae?"
"Blade notch breakouts and vane cracks"
Rogers said, "They had fatigue cracks in the fan blades!"
"That&039;s right," Casey said "Kenny told theines, but Sunstar rebuilt theine blew, Kenny was furious So you et a name at Sunstar from Kenny But we can&039;t be the source, Jack We have to do business with these people"
"I understand," Rogers said "Thanks Butto want to know about the accidents on the floor today So tell roundless?"
"Are we back on?" she said
"Yes"
"I&039;m not the person to ask," she said "You&039;ll have to talk to Edgarton"
"I called, but his office says he&039;s out of town Where is he? Beijing?"
"I can&039;t coers said
"What about hiarton are at each other&039;s throats Marder expected to be naave Edgarton a one-year contract - so he&039;s got only twelve arton, every way he can"
"I wouldn&039;t know about that," she said Casey had, of course, heard such rumors It was no secret that Marder was bitterly disappointed about Edgarton&039;s appointment What Marder could do about it was another story Marder&039;s wife controlled eleven percent of company stock With Marder&039;s connections, he could probably pull together five percent h to call the shots, particularly since Edgarton had the strong support of the Board
So ht that Marder had no choice except to go along with Edgarton&039;s agenda - at least for the ht be unhappy, but he had no option The co planes without buyers Yet they needed billions of dollars, if they hoped to develop the next generation of planes, and stay in business in the future
So the situation was clear The co Marder
Rogers said, "You haven&039;t heard Marder&039;s undercutting Edgarton?"
"No comment," Casey said "But off the record, it makes no sense Everybody in the coht now, Marder&039;s pushing us hard to solve 545, so the sale goes through"
"Do you think the ie of the company will be hurt by the rivalry between its two top officers?"
"I couldn&039;t say"
"Okay," he said finally, closing his notepad "Call et a break on 545, okay?"
"Sure, Jack"
"Thanks, Casey"
Walking away from nun, she realized she was exhausted by the effort of the interview Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess ine all the possible ways a reporter ht distort your statement The atmosphere was relentlessly adversarial
It hadn&039;t always been that way There was a time when reporters wanted infor event They wanted an accurate picture of a situation, and to do that they had to s your way, to understand how you were thinking about it They ree with you in the end, but it was a matter of pride that they could accurately state your view, before rejecting it The interviewing process was not very personal, because the focus was on the event they were trying to understand
But now reporters came to the story with the lead fixed in theirwhat they already knew They didn&039;t want information so much as evidence of villainy In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assu evasive They proceeded frouilt, in an atmosphere of muted hostility and suspicion This new mode was intensely personal: they wanted to trip you up, to catch you in a small error, or in a foolish statement - or just a phrase that could be taken out of context and made to look silly or insensitive
Because the focus was so personal, the reporters asked continuously for personal speculations Do you think an event will be da? Do you think the company will suffer? Such speculation had been irrelevant to the earlier generation of reporters, who focused on the underlying events Modem journalism was intensely subjective - "interpretive" - and speculation was its lifeblood But she found it exhausting
And Jack Rogers, she thought, was one of the better ones The print reporters were all better It was the television reporters you really had to watch out for They were the really dangerous ones
OUTSIDE HANGAR 5
10:15 AM
Crossing the plant, she fished her cell phone out of her purse, and called Marder His assistant, Eileen, said he was in a ers," Casey said "I think he&039;s planning a story that says we&039;re shipping the wing to China, and there&039;s trouble in the executive suite" "Uh-oh," Eileen said "That&039;s not good" "Edgarton better talk to hi any press," Eileen said "John will be back at six o&039;clock You want to talk to him then?" "I better, yes" "I&039;ll put you down," Eileen said
PROOF TEST
10:19 AM
It looked like an aviation junkyard: old fuselages, tails, and wing sections littered the landscape, raised up on rusty scaffolding But the air was filled with the steady hu ran to the airplane parts, like intravenous lines to a patient This was Proof Test, also known as Twist-and-Shout, the domain of the infaht, a hunched figure in shirtsleeves and baggy pants, bent over a readout stand, beneath an aft fuselage section of the Norton widebody
"A as she walked over to hiend at Norton Reclusive and obstinate, he was nearly seventy, long past e, yet he continued to work because he was vital to the coe tolerance, or fatigue testing And fatigue testing was of vastly greater iulation, the carriers were flying aircraft longer than anybody ever expected Three thousand aircraft in the domestic fleet were now more than twenty years old That number would double in five years Nobody really kneould happen to all those aircraft as they continued to age
Except Aht in by the NTSB as a consultant on the famous Aloha 737 accident, back in 1988 Aloha was an inter-island carrier in Hawaii One of their airplanes was cruising at 24,000 feet when suddenly eighteen feet of the airplane&039;s outer skin peeled off the fuselage, fro; the cabin decompressed, and a stewardess was sucked out and killed Despite the explosive pressure loss, the plane ed to land safely at Maui, where it was scrapped on the spot
The rest of Aloha&039;s fleet was exah-time 737s were scrapped, and a third underwent months of repairs All three had extensive skin cracks and other corrosion da inspections of the rest of the 737 fleet, forty-nine hteen different carriers, were found to have extensive cracking
Industry observers were perplexed by the accident, because Boeing, Aloha, and the FAA were supposedly all watching the carrier&039;s 737 fleet Corrosion cracking was a known proble had already warned Aloha that the salty, humid Hawaiian climate was a "severe" corrosion environation found multiple causes for the accident It turned out that Aloha, ht cycles of takeoff and landing at a faster rate than maintenance was scheduled to handle This stress, combined with corrosion from ocean air, produced a series of small cracks in the aircraft skin These were unnoticed by Aloha, because they were short of trained personnel The FAA didn&039;t catch them because they were overworked and understaffed The FAA&039;s principal maintenance inspector in Honolulu supervised nine carriers and seven repair stations around the Pacific, froht occurred in which the cracks extended and the structure failed
Following the incident, Aloha, Boeing, and the FAA fore in Aloha&039;s fleet was variously attributed to poor ineering Accusations ricocheted back and forth for years afterward