wearily stumbled down the aircraft steps and filed into the FBO’s pilots lounge. McCormick was met by Susan Desmond and Richard Garens, investigators from the FAA’s Eastern Regional Office. Since the crash had occurred within their region’s jurisdiction, McCormick knew they would be there to assist him with obtaining whatever documents he needed from the New England Radar Facility. They would serve as liaison between FAA Washington Headquarters and the FAA’s Eastern Regional Office. That was their official function. Their unofficial and more important function was to keep their bosses at the regional level in the loop. Desmond and Garens had been able to catch a late Friday night ride on a Cessna 310. The aircraft belonged to the FAA. It was going to be used the following week to conduct a check of the New York TRACON’s radar system. The “three-ten” had been parked on the FBO ramp at JFK Airport. A phone call to its pilot from the Eastern Regional Director and the two investigators found themselves on their way to Glenn Falls in their own private twin flown by a not-too-happy FAA flight check pilot. They had been waiting in the lounge since three that morning, drinking coffee dispensed from a vending machine and unsuccessfully attempting to catch a few hours of sleep on the torn leather couches scattered throughout the room. McCormick had worked accidents with them before.
Susan Desmond was in her late forties, divorced. Her daughter was married and living on her own in California. Her two Siamese cats were sound asleep when she left her apartment. At five feet, four inches and 120 pounds, she worked at keeping herself looking polished. Desmond had been with the FAA for eighteen years. A former controller in the military, she was also an instrument rated pilot. Desmond had entered the agency prior to affirmative action and earned her promotions through productive hard work. Her peers were aware of that fact and, as a result, respected her. She had been with the Eastern Region’s Accident Investigation Branch for three years.
Garens was fifty-one, a gaunt man who stood six feet, two inches and 175 pounds with thinning gray hair and hollow eyes—Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane if ever there was one. He had been with the agency for twenty-two years, the last seven with the Eastern Region’s investigative branch. He was unhappily married, but remained so because alimony payments would effectively decimate his disposable income. His marriage situation negatively impacted every aspect of his work, from the quality of his reports to his relationships with his coworkers. Most of the people in his office looked forward to Garens’s retirement more than he did.
After the usual social pleasantries, emptying themselves of the inevitable results of several cups of coffee, and refilling their spill-proof mugs, Desmond, Garens, and McCormick shoehorned themselves into the plain-white government car provided by the FAA’s Airways Facility personnel stationed on the field. A unit from Troop G of the State Police led them to Ridge Road, then to Quaker Road where they proceeded westbound until reaching Interstate 87. From there they drove north until the exit for NYS Route 9, which took them directly into Chestertown some twenty-five miles north of Glenn Falls. The NTSB investigators along with the reporters followed in cabs from Adirondack Taxi Service. McCormick wondered how the others in the group had managed to arrange for their transportation. He had no doubt several people in the local area had been awakened in the early morning hours from phone calls they never expected to receive. The two G-159 pilots remained behind. They would see to it that the plane was properly tied down and refueled. Then they would wait for the local restaurants to open, grab some breakfast, make sure their cell phones and beepers were turned on, and spend the rest of day hanging around the airport reading magazines and looking for any type of diversion to ward off boredom. The small convoy was met by sheriff’s deputies just north of Chestertown. After a mile of back-road driving, they parked on the road and walked about a hundred yards through the dense woods. The entire group looked as though they had spent the night sleeping in their clothes on the wet ground.
George McCormick never got used to crash sites. The five-second footage the news media would show to the public on the noonday report and six o’clock news would not begin to convey the carnage. It was just as well. Both planes, a Cessna Centurion and a Brasilia, had been demolished. Few pieces of the wreckage were bigger than a fist; the one exception was the vertical stabilizer from the Cessna. McCormick reasoned that it had been torn from the Cessna’s fuselage as the plane plummeted, or had been severed by debris from the Brasilia commuter the instant after the collision. Two distinct craters in close proximity tightly punctuated the points of impact. The blackened craters stood in stark contrast to the myriad of gold and rust hues of fall that surrounded the wooded countryside of upstate New York. The impact had strewn small segments of aircraft and human body parts everywhere; charred shreds of flesh dangled from the bushes and lower tree branches. Isolated patches of low-lying fog yet to be dissipated by the early-morning sun shrouded the ground, giving the entire area a look reminiscent of Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow.” The fog did not make the search for clues any easier, any more than did the stench of burned remains that permeated the cold September morning air, causing pangs of nausea to ferment in the stomachs of the less hardy among the investigators and county police. It was a macabre scene, indeed.
McCormick knew it was possible for an aircraft to continue to fly after a collision; however, the relative closeness of the two impact craters made it clear neither one of these had. For all practical purposes, both aircraft had gone straight down. The site reminded him of an impact crater formed by an Air California BAE-146 jet ten years earlier, compliments of a disgruntled company employee who had forced his way into the cockpit and shot the crew. That aircraft had impacted at close to the speed of sound and imploded. Nothing had remained.
According to preliminary radar data, these planes had collided head-on. Future reconstruction evidence would tell them that the right wing of the Cessna Centurion had smashed through the cockpit area of the Brasilia EMB-120. What it would not tell them was that the Brasilia cockpit crew died instantly while the passengers aboard the sixty-five-foot-long commuter aircraft had not been as fortunate. It had nose-dived into the ground at 420 MPH while the single-engine high-wing six-place Cessna, sans one wing, spun to earth. It had taken a little longer for the Cessna to reach impact than the Brasilia, but the end result was still the same. The only difference was that the pilot of the Cessna had more time to live with the terror of knowing he was going to die than the twenty-nine passengers and one flight attendant on board the EMB-120. Centurions have a well-deserved reputation for having one of the strongest wing structures in aviation, but the force of the Brasilia’s 26,000 pounds, propelled at 280 knots by its two Pratt & Whitney 118A turbo-prop engines, impacting the Cessna’s 3,600 pounds, flying at 210 knots in the opposite direction, sheared its right wing clean from the fuselage.
McCormick and the small cadre of investigators, reporters, and police silently combed the area looking for anything that might provide clues to the cause of the midair. Their first order of business was to find the Brasilia’s bright orange black box, which could be almost anywhere in the heavily wooded marsh. The NTSB officials would later issue an extremely detailed report about the location of the wreckage, the angles of ground impact, the history maintenance of the engines, pilot and crew currency and qualifications, weather conditions, and a host of other facts, none of which would provide the faintest inkling as to why these two planes collided.
McCormick was the FAA’s IIC (Investigator-in-Charge); as such he was later going to have the unenviable job of briefing his superiors in Washington that neither he nor anyone else at the site had a clue as to what caused the crash. He knew that far more information would be needed from recorded transmissions, radar data plots, interviews with controllers, supervisors, radar technicians, weather specialists, and a host of others before any pieces might start to fall into place. That was going to take time, especially the controller interviews. It was a sure bet their union reps would want to talk to them first, before anyone else got anywhere near them. His superiors would not be pleased. They were going to have to relay that information to the FAA Administrator. She, in turn, would have to face the press and the Sunday morning TV talk shows without any answers as to why two aircraft, operating on instrument flight plans, reported at different altitudes, and under radar contact by New England Approach Control, ended up as a metal scrap heap on the New York countryside of Essex County. Retirement suddenly seemed a long way off to George McCormick.
Chapter II
Tallahassee
It