Chapter 5 - The Silver Highway"Portland Approach, Southwest 2891," Thomas called into his headset, his voice tight. "We have an uncommanded landing gear deployment. Severe drag. We cannot maintain four thousand feet. We are descending rapidly toward the Columbia River."
In the Portland International Airport air traffic control tower, Radar Controller Sarah Jenkins stood up at her terminal, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows toward the eastern horizon.
"Southwest 2891, we have you on radar five miles east of the field," Sarah Jenkins reported, her voice trembling slightly despite her training. "Runway 10 Left is clear. All emergency crash, fire, and rescue vehicles are staged along the entire length of the runway. Weather is clear, wind three-zero-zero at six knots."
"Portland," came the voice of Phoenix over the speaker. "We can't line up for Runway 10 Left from this altitude with the gear down. If I try a steep turn to align with the runway, the asymmetric thrust will flip the plane upside down. We are coming in straight along the river channel."
The plan was terrifyingly simple, yet insanely dangerous.
Instead of making a standard legal approach to the airport, Sarah was using the broad, flat surface of the Columbia River as her visual guide. She was going to fly the Boeing 737 down the winding river valley, barely fifty feet above the water, and then execute a gentle, low-altitude bank at the last possible second to align with the threshold of Runway 10 Left.
If she miscalculated the engine response by half a second, a wingtip would clip the river water at 160 miles per hour, cartwheeling the 140,000-pound jet into a fireball that would destroy everything on board.
"Two miles to the river bend!" Jennifer called out, reading the GPS display. "Altitude eight hundred feet! Airspeed one-hundred-sixty-five knots!"
Outside the cockpit windows, the lush green pine forests gave way to the wide, glittering expanse of the Columbia River. Below them, pleasure boats and commercial barges were frantically maneuvering toward the shore as the giant, roaring shadow of the low-flying airliner swept across the water.
Sarah stood between the pilot seats, her knees bent to absorb the sudden turbulence off the river surface. Her shirt was soaked through with sweat; her arms were shaking from the brutal physical strain of holding the heavy chrome throttles in precise alignment.
"First Officer, read me the radio altimeter," Sarah commanded. "Don't look outside. Just read the numbers."
"One hundred feet," Jennifer said, her voice absolute, razor-sharp. "Ninety feet... eighty feet... seventy feet..."
The river surface was rushing beneath the nose of the plane at 180 miles per hour. The spray from the low-hanging jet engines kicked up massive plumes of white mist behind them.
"Fifty feet," Jennifer called out, her heart hammering in her chest. "Forty feet... thirty feet!"
"There's the airport!" Thomas yelled, pointing through the front windscreen.
Directly to their left, past a line of tall poplar trees along the riverbank, lay the perimeter fence and the wide, eleven-thousand-foot concrete expanse of Runway 10 Left. Dozens of red emergency fire trucks with flashing lights lined the taxiways like tiny toys.
"We have to turn left now!" Thomas warned. "If we miss this window, we hit the interstate highway bridge!"
"Hold on to something!" Sarah shouted.
She didn't touch the dead control wheel.
Instead, Sarah slammed the Right Engine throttle forward to ninety percent power while yanking the Left Engine throttle back toward idle.
The right engine roared like a thunderclap. The sudden, massive surge of power on the starboard wing pushed the right side of the aircraft forward, banking the massive Boeing 737 into a sharp, terrifying left turn barely thirty feet above the water.
The left wingtip dipped down, missing the crest of the river waves by less than ten feet.
The plane roared across the riverbank, clearing the perimeter chain-link fence by inches, and lined up directly with the centerline of Runway 10 Left.
"Level the wings! Level the wings!" Thomas screamed.
Sarah slammed the Left Engine throttle forward to match the right, neutralizing the turn just as the massive rubber tires of the landing gear slammed onto the hard concrete runway.
BOOM!
The aircraft hit the ground with brutal force. Smoke billowed from the tires as they spun from zero to 160 miles per hour in a fraction of a second. The Boeing bounced twenty feet back into the air, its dead hydraulic system unable to deploy the ground spoilers to dump the lift off the wings.
"She's airborne again!" Jennifer shrieked. "We're running out of runway!"
The concrete was flashing past at terrifying speed—eight thousand feet remaining... six thousand feet... four thousand feet. At the far end of the runway stood the perimeter light gantries and the deep, cold waters of the river channel beyond.
Sarah didn't panic. She reached up with both scarred hands, grabbed the mechanical thrust reverser levers on top of the throttles, and pulled them all the way up into the emergency reverse position.
The massive metal clam-shell doors on the engine cowlings deployed with a deafening roar, redirecting twenty-seven thousand pounds of screaming jet thrust forward.
SLAM!
The main gear slammed back down onto the runway. Sarah modulated the thrust reversers unevenly—using eighty percent reverse on the right engine and sixty percent on the left—to keep the nose wheel tracking straight down the center white line without a rudder.
Brakes shrieked; rubber burned; sparks showered from the overheating wheel assemblies as the massive aircraft decelerated at a terrifying rate.
Three thousand feet... two thousand feet... one thousand feet...
Finally, barely three hundred feet from the swampy grass at the end of the runway, the giant Boeing 737 came to a complete, shuddering halt.
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The engines whined down into a low, quiet idle.
Silence descended upon the cockpit.
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