I do not remember where we were coming from but I certainly remember that night in Anchorage… ! I Had never seen a place like “ The Bush Company” before….
Everyone knows that airline personnel is always serious, does not enjoy celebration, prefers to stay locked-up in the hotel room during crew rest…and of course everyone knows that in the airline business, people never drink ….(*)
Crew resting in Anchorage was always a great pleasure for me, the “still young” Frenchman as Alaska was a place unlike others. Wild life, snow, Eskimos, bears not far away, there was a flavor of adventure. Not one stop in Anchorage ( usually on the way back from Japan, and now that I think of it, we may well have been on our way back from there) without remembering my the early days in CDG airport when I would hear the PA announcements for flights going to the other side of the world with a stop in Anchorage on the way to a trans-pacific run…
So, this was it finally …Anchorage: a crew rest or a crew change? I would not know as it is too far back in my memory….what I still remember is that I had started the evening at the “F” street watering hole, not far from the Captain Cook Hotel which was hosting Tiger’s flight personnel, had met there a couple of "Tigers" who offered to show me what the Bush Company was all about….and managed to survive although in a very bad shape the next morning, having to resource to a good 5 minutes on 100% Oxygen in the airplane cockpit to cure the headache. (1)
( I was "conned" into visiting the Bush Company....I have NEVER been there before, I swear...)
Often flying with the same people, regardless if flight crew or charter mechanics, I benefited from counselling and tips about how to make my life as a charter rep easier when the going went tough ! So I sat in one of the observer’s seats, put the oxygen mask on, breathed deeply, and indeed after a few minutes , life was good to me again.
On that particular day, we had a full load of horses on one of FTL DC.8 . Flying horse charters was somehow a “ routine” flight. I guess some of the horse attendants had stayed onboard during the crew rest to cater to the animals needs.
Our flight crew members were trained to be sensitive to the travel needs of our equine passengers and operated the aircrafts accordingly; avoiding steep ascents and descents, steering clear of adverse weather conditions, putting a premium on smooth, uneventful landings and minimizing time between stops all adding up to stress free and comfortable travel in a climate controlled environment.
(Basic explanation regarding decompression)
Although Flying Tiger Line was a cargo airline, special provisions under FAA regulation made it possible to have cargo or livestock attendants flying on our airplanes to accompany the horses when traveling therefore helping to assure safe handling by someone familiar with the individual animals from stall to stall .
To accommodate the attendants, the company had provided us , as usual, with what was known under the name of an “E-1 Kit”. This so called “ kit” was in fact a given amount of 3-in-a-row basic airplane passenger seats units ( 1,2,3,4 or more) providing sitting accommodation for up to 3,6,9,12 or more horse attendants, also called “ lads” by our British colleagues.
Horse Attendants would be fed, reasonably watered ( we supplied to soft drinks, they usually brought their own drinks and many of them were from Irish origin…!) and seated in the passenger seats usually attached to the seat track in the “tail positions” known as 16,17,or 18, depending on the amount of seats to be used.
To complete the E-1 kit, some "well seasoned" but clean dark blue blankets wrapped in sealed plastic bags, would help, should the cabin temperature be on the cold side.(**)
( A "decompressed" passenger airplane)
Oxygen bottles were also available to each group of 3 attendants. and a short brief was given before start-up to get everyone familiar with the use of the individual oxygen mask in case of emergency. As usual, emergencies requiring use of oxygen masks never occurred, and this was the way it should stay.
Although routine for the flight crews operating for the charter division, flying horses in our planes was not an easy affair for us, the “loadmasters”, especially when using a DC 8 as space was definitely an issue.
Horses were accommodated using a “portable ” horse stall system made of different panels strapped to the floor of the airplane to accommodate the animals in the best possible conditions. Once all the horse stalls set up and horses accommodated, there would be limited space to walk from the cockpit to the back of the airplane and for the lads, using the only existing toilet located just behind the cockpit was a real ordeal…
A mere 15 Inches between the fuselage and the stalls would allow a difficult passage between the back and the front of the airplane .Short of having a proper PA System like in a passenger airplane, we had developed a “ visual” language flicking the ceiling lights on and off to warn attendants of upcoming take-off or landing phases.
(Anchorage, cargo area, many many years later...)
On that very day, we took off from Alaska, on the way to LAX (Los Angeles) final destination of that trip. The weather was gorgeous and the mountains around Anchorage covered in snow. Half asleep, in spite of my earlier “ oxygen session” and the hot coffee , I could feel that my body just wanted to relax for a couple of weeks, following a period of extensive flying.
In a few hours, I would reach the Flying Tiger Line cargo terminal, jump in a cab, and get to spend a few days at Claudine’s apartment in Marina Del Rey, overlooking the sailboats moored along Palawan Way.
I could already see the hummingbird coming to drink the red sweet liquid in a cup suspended to the balcony, I could feel the taste of flavored coffee bought from “Le Petit Casino”, I could already feel the soft carpeting under my bare soles, I could hear the clicking of the halyards coming from the marina at night ….
I heard the biggest explosion ever.
I did not feel heroic.
I simply felt scared, scared shitless
Havoc fell upon the cockpit.
( a SWA DC8 with its cargo door open)
(A Flying Tiger DC 8 loading palletized cargo)
Although there was not one ounce of panic as we were flown by professionals, there was a sense of extreme urgency as the captain and first officer immediately started bringing the airplane down…
“Cabin pressure is gone “said someone in the crew.
The flight engineer had a fairly good idea about the origin of the problem. He left his seat, had a quick look around the cargo door area and came back right away with the "diagnosis".
“Cargo door seal is gone…that’s why we are losing pressure” he said and immediately added:
“Frenchie! Go to the back, tell the attendants to don the oxygen masks”…” tell them we are experiencing uncontrolled decompression”…
Long time ago, around a drink while on a crew rest in Denmark, It was explained to me by one of our pilots why it was so important to do the right thing at the right time to prevent hypoxia. (***)
This guy had gone to the extent of giving me a complete familiarization on the subject….
“Uncontrolled decompression is an unplanned drop in the pressure of a sealed system, such as an aircraft cabin, and typically results from human error, material fatigue, engineering failure, or impact, causing a pressurized vessel to vent into its lower-pressure surroundings or fail to pressurize at all”
He had explained that such decompression could be to be classed as Explosive, Rapid, or Slow. Explosive decompression (ED) would be violent, the decompression being too fast for air to safely escape from the lungs..."
The crew had donned their oxygen equipment and looked to me like World War II pilots on board a B17 on their way to bomb the shit out of Japs or Nazis!
But it was just us, overflying Canada, loosing cabin pressure and quickly lowering our altitude as per established procedures relevant to this kind of emergency.
I had lost about 20 pounds in the last three month, thank to running and changing my diet, and managed to crawl to the back of the airplane and instruct the attendants to use their oxygen masks.
They pulled the equipment from the seat pockets, put it over their nose and mouth,opened the required valves, and breathed normally as it is often said in pre-flight demo by flight attendants on passenger airplanes, but nothing came out of the masks… not the smallest molecule of oxygen.
Were the bottles empty?
The valves malfunctioning, on the three bottles at the same time? I never found out….! But I remember the look in the attendants eyes made for half of astonishment and for the other half, hatred towards me !!!
It is often said that accidents in aviation derive from a succession of facts, mistakes, wrong doings, inadequate decisions, and rarely from one single cause. I could already foresee losing the life of one, two or three attendants, and be responsible for brain damage on three more due to lack of oxygen…
Although checking the oxygen bottles was not a direct part of my task, I simply regretted immediately not having taken that initiative. I felt horrible, but with the emergency message passed on to the attendants, the airplane on fast descent, I felt an urge to retreat towards the cockpit and crawled back between the fuselage and the stalls.
We had apparently reached a safe altitude and as the first officer leveled out the DC8, the captain quickly reviewing the solutions offered to us….
Option were indeed limited. The fuel quantity on board had been calculated according to a flight plan built for a much higher altitude (anything between FL 330 and FL 370) and flying at a significantly lower altitude would drastically increase our fuel consumption.
“We just need to stop somewhere and gas up” said the first-officer shortly before calling our operation center on the HF radio to keep the company advised of our problem.
At about 12.000 ft now, I could see the Canadian pacific coast clearly and hoped that we would find a way to refuel en-route. But the Canadian authorities did not like the idea of a plane carrying livestock doing a fuel stop without the appropriate quarantine dispositions taken (Countries from the Commonwealth, starting with Great Britain share a common approach when it came to animal quarantine) and, considering that our predicament was not really a matter of life or death, denied our request to land in Vancouver and refuel.
On the top of a difficult technical situation, administrative difficulties in knowingly dispatching an airplane without cabin pressurization, may have created additional delay should we have been allowed to land in Canada.
Saving fuel meant regaining altitude…and regaining altitude meant being able to pressurize the cabin again, even if for a short while…
I believe that the idea came up from the Flight Engineer.
A lot of these folks had been previously in the military, and knew how to fix an airplane or deal with abnormal situations including in flight. “Grab all the blankets you can take, stuff them in the gap around the cargo door, and soak it with water”…so I crawled back to the tail, asked one of the attendant to come with me after collecting all of the blanket we could find…
It took us 10 minutes, 21 Flying Tiger Line blankets and about 17 bottles of Crystal Geyser mineral water. Blankets were rolled like a sausage, shoved in the gap around the cargo door on the bottom and the two sides, and then bottled water was poured on the top. Pretty soon, all the blankets were soaking wet, and soon enough the “mix” of water and blankets began to simply freeze up, re-creating a sort of “seal” which managed to hold till we finally got to Los Angeles with just enough fuel left for landing and taxi.
As we blocked in at Tiger cargo terminal, I Open the cargo door…”our” beautiful “hand-made” door seal fell off and dislocated as it hit the ground .
(1) Flight crew (cockpit) oxygen system is independent from any other oxygen system existing on a cargo or passenger plane. The reason is obvious. On the DC 8, 5 Oxygen masks are available in the cockpit.
(*) we all know that airline people NEVER lie !
(**) When carrying livestock ( horses,pigs,cow and such...) the cabin temperature can rise very high.
Crew will maintain cabin temperature as low as possible....and sometimes it can get very cold...!
(***) Hypoxia: deprivation of oxygen. diminished availability of oxygen to the body tissues; its causes are many and varied and includes a deficiency of oxygen in the atmosphere, as in altitude sickness; pulmonary disorders that interfere with adequate ventilation of the lungs; anemia or circulatory deficiencies, leading to inadequate transport and delivery of oxygen to the tissues; and finally, edema or other abnormal conditions of the tissues themselves that impair the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between capillaries and tissues.