Bub and I
were just walking back from one of our wrestling matches that morning. This one involved a toothbrush and an airport
bathroom. I am not sure if I had won or
not, but her teeth were mostly clean.
“I have an
article for you to read,” was Myra’s greeting as I carried a still squirming
Ellen back to where we had been sitting in the Anchorage RAVN terminal.
“Uh, oh,” I
responded.
“It is an
interesting read,” Myra continued while handing me her phone with the article
open. “I’m going to brush my teeth.”
“RAVN
Victim of Cyber-Attack” was not a reassuring title to open the article
with. Boiled down, the gist was that
RAVN’s computer system had been attacked and the maintenance records for their
DeHaviland Dash 8s were being held hostage.
Without the maintenance records, the planes couldn’t legally fly.
I sighed
while looking down at my ticket listing the Dash as the plane we were supposed
to fly on that day.
“St. Mary’s
passengers,” was called out over the public announcement system, “your flight
is still on hold. We will have an update
in a half hour.”
The announcement
was met by a collective laugh in the terminal.
It was the same announcement that had been made every half hour for the
last two hours.
“Doesn’t
look good for us,” a young couple headed to Kodiak remarked.
Five
minutes later and the PA was alive again, “St. Mary’s passengers, the first
flight to St. Mary’s has been canceled.
We will give an update on the second flight in a half hour.”
People
sighed and began collecting their belongings.
It wasn’t
looking good for any of us scheduled to fly from Anchorage via RAVN, but we all
hung out since we didn’t really have anywhere else to go.
Myra,
Ellen, and I had started out the day in Fairbanks where we were visiting Romay and
Ethan before Christmas. It was good to
see our other kids, Bub got some time in the pool, we did a little shopping
where everything is available, and ate foods we normally can’t get. We got on the early Alaska Airlines jet and
were cruising along until hitting this little hiccup.
“Kodiak
passengers, your plane is taxiing up, and you will be boarding shortly,” was
met by cheers when announced on the PA.
“Well, good
luck guys,” the Kodiak couple wished Ellen and I as Myra sat back down with us.
“Things are
looking up,” I told her. “RAVN must have
gotten something figured out, and planes are moving again.”
We happily
lined up when the Unalakleet flight was announced ready for boarding. The only three seats together left on the
plane when we boarded were part of the back row made up of five seats on the
Dash. Two ladies we didn’t know heading
to some other village through Unalakleet shared the row with us. It was cozy.
Take off
was uneventful, climb out was smooth, and the flight attendant was handing out
beverages and the cookies the Dash is so famous for in Alaska before we knew
it.
“I’ll have
an IPA,” one of the ladies sitting next to me answered the flight attendant
before the question was fully out of her mouth.
“White wine
for me,” her friend added.
Bub was
sound asleep and therefore couldn’t ask for her usual of apple juice. She hits that stuff pretty hard while flying.
Ten minutes
later, and our row friends were ready to start round two. My coffee wasn’t even gone yet, but they were
having one more of what they had on the first go round.
The flight
was clear, and as we neared the Nulato Hills, Myra and I got a good view of the
Yukon River below, a landmark that had meant home for ten years. Where the river skirted the edge of the hills
marked the beginning of a solid gray carpet of clouds that we would have to
descend through to land in Unalakleet.
The weather report from earlier in that day was calling for 900 feet
overcast which was only just below the airport pattern height: an easy landing
for an IFR rated pilot.
We weren’t
worried as the plane began its descent, and kept descending down through a gray
soup. The mechanical whir of the flap
motors and the clunk of the landing gear locking into place signaled we were
getting close to the airport, but then the plane banked and went around
signaling that the pilot must have missed his first approach. The wings leveled out and it felt like we
were going for try number two, continuing to descend with no break in the clouds
visible.
Watching
out the window for a sign of the airport, half the passengers groaned as we
witnessed the gear go up. The other half
of the passengers joined us after the first half explained what the gear going
up signaled.
The engines
responded to the pilots adding power and we began to climb out of the
clouds. They roared with the added
effort, but then something didn’t sound quite right. The left engine sounded rough.
“Is that
prop slowing down?” Myra asked leaning over to me.
“Nah, has
to be an optical allusion,” I answered.
Props when
looked at from a different angle can even appear to change direction, and I
figured we had to be seeing things, but it was unmistakable what was going on
when the prop slowed to the point of barely spinning. The pilots were attempting to feather it to
reduce drag.
“Ah, yup,
that’s stopped,” I pointed out the obvious to Myra.
The pilot’s
calm voice came on over the speakers, “Folks, we have had a little bit of an
emergency and are experiencing a mechanical issue. We have rerouted to Galena where the skies
are clear and winds light. We’ll land
there and get things figured out once we’re on the ground.”
The
mechanical issue that he was referencing was quite apparent to most of the passengers. The fasten seat belts light came on, and one
of our row friends got up out of her seat.
“Mam, you’ll
need to sit down now,” the flight attendant encouraged.
“I have to
pee,” our friend answered. Two IPAs will
have that effect on a person after all.
“Be quick,”
the flight attendant directed, “we are having a mechanical issue.”
“With this
plane?” she asked incredulous as she hurried up to the bathroom.
At this
point, people had pulled out phones to take pictures of the eerie sight of a stopped
prop on a flying plane. I will never
afford to own a twin-engine plane, but every time RAVN doubles their ticket
prices due to a holiday or other high traffic time (last day of school for
instance) my grumbling to Myra often includes the threat of starting our own airline.
“RAVN, who
do they think they are? Doubling their
prices and gouging us, grumble, grumble.
I’ll buy a bigger plane, grumble, show them. Cherokee 6 and start hauling people around,
grumble, grumble, kick a rock in the road.”
These
grumblings have led me to read articles on small twins with which I would fight
back the Goliath that is RAVN. Each
article at least skims over the fact that a twin with one engine out is harder
to fly than a single engine plane with one engine out (the math is simple on
that, and I actually wrote that correctly… checked it twice). It has to do with the difficulty of balancing
power and drag with the cliché being that with one engine out on a twin, the
other is guaranteed to carry you all the way to the scene of the crash.
“Let’s
pray,” Myra earnestly stated while bowing her head.
And we
did. We prayed for the pilot, prayed for
the weather, the engine that was still running, the engine that wasn’t, the
people on the plane, our families on the ground, the runway in Galena, and once
we were done praying together, we continued to pray silently on our own. We pretty much cycled through that pattern
for the eternity that was the hundred and eight air miles to Galena from
Unalakleet, plane flying nose up to compensate for that one less engine.
“There is a
mechanical problem on this plane,” our row companion who returned from the
bathroom was explaining to her comrade. “We’re
going to Galena.”
“On this plane?”
her friend asked for clarification. “Maybe
we should turn our lives around,” they both laughed as they tightened their
seatbelts.
The flap
motor whirred, the gear dropped into place and I felt the familiar descent to
runway 06 in Galena. It has always been
a popular runway with me, but this cemented its place as my favorite.
Touchdown,
though much more significant, felt like any other touchdown when both engines
were running, and the plane slowed and turned off on a taxiway, making its way
to the terminal. The passengers cheered.
Engines
shut down, plane parked at the terminal, the pilot stood in front of us, “Well
folks, sorry about the inconvenience. We’ll
be in Galena for a little while. They
have a nice warm terminal, and we’ll figure out what we are going to do to get
you out of here tonight.”
He didn’t
even look rattled, a little tired maybe.
We exited
the plane, and Myra and I had never been so happy to see Galena. Ellen had finally awoken as we packed to get
off the plane.
“Where are
we,” she asked, “is this Galena?” She
had been hoping we would go to Galena at least at some point the whole time we were
out on our little vacation.
Inside the terminal
we were met by smiling familiar faces, “Welcome home, you guys moving
back? You were on that flight? Good to see you here safely.”
“Well, who
do you want to call?” Myra asked me and before I could answer.
“Jason? What are you guys doing here?” Pastor Kopp
asked. “Want to come over for dinner?”
“Yes,” was
sufficient
Galena was
a Christmas winter wonderland with three feet of fresh powder on the ground and
the trees wearing it like icing in a ginger bread village. Never had it felt so much like coming home as
we drove the dark roads to the pastor’s house.
We feasted
on a homegrown chicken, sweet potato casserole, and caught up. The Kopp boys got me up to speed on how the
swim team was doing and that they finally had a mascot: The Whitecaps. Chris talked leather work, and firewood, and
what had changed in town and the church and what had stayed the same. Shell played host. Myra and I sat around a warm kitchen table
while Ellen ran around with the Kopp’s youngest daughter, a new-found friend
that she didn’t remember was an old friend from when we had lived in Galena
before.
Chris and I
drove out to check on people to see if anyone needed anything. A mutual friend from Unalakleet had called and
asked him to check on a couple of college freshmen who were traveling back from
school in Hawaii to spend Christmas at home in Alaska. When we walked through the door we were greeted
by the smell of moose soup and were surprised by the rolls, cookies, chips,
crackers and cheese stacked up on the check-in desk. The people of Galena had provided an
impromptu potluck feast for visitors they didn’t even know. National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was just starting on the terminal
television. People talked and laughed,
Chris checked in on the two students, dropped off some homemade summer sausage,
and we headed back to his house.
Back at his
house, three hours flew by much faster than a Dash on one engine, Ellen made
ginger bread men with the Kopp kids (using a recipe that didn’t have eggs which
meant she could eat it too) and when I called the local RAVN terminal they told
us to be at the airport at 9:15 which was in fifteen minutes. A different plane and crew was coming for us
and would take us back to Anchorage where more than likely we would be stuck
until after Christmas. The cyber-attack
and poor flying weather were adding up to a lot of stranded passengers. That was okay though. Myra and my perspective had changed on a lot
of things.
“You are
all invited to my birthday party,” I announced as I walked down the aisle
toward my seat, “it’s in June.”
Loaded on a
fresh plane with a fresh pilot, he addressed the passengers before climbing
into the cockpit, “Well folks, we were originally going to go straight back to
Anchorage, but looking at the weather, things have improved in Unalakleet and
we are going to give it a try. Not
promising anything, but it looks good, and we are going to see if we can get
you home tonight.”
More
cheering.
The plane
climbed as it should, the engine sounded as it should, the air was smooth, and
visibility was good as we lined up with the runway in Unalakleet. More cheering at touchdown.
We had left
our car parked at the house, and so the three of us did a cold shuffle to the
four-plex where the girls went inside and I got the car to go pick up our bags. Everyone had left the Unalakleet terminal by
the time I went to pick up our totes. It
was dark, late, and cold, but we were home.
It had only taken us six hours to make the one-and-a-half hour flight. Being home for Christmas was only a small part of our Christmas miracle.
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| The UAA/UAF Dash: One of the more recognizable planes in Ravn's fleet, this is one of the planes that was affected by the cyber-attack, but not the exact Dash 8 that had an engine go out. |
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