Airframe (Page 32)

And he walked away.

OUTSIDE HANGAR 5

10:04 A.M.

The morning sun was shining; the plant around her was cheerfully busy, mechanics riding their bicycles from one building to another. There was no sense of threat, or danger. But Casey knew what Brull had meant: she was now in no-man’s land. Anxious, she pulled out her cell phone to call Marder when she saw the heavyset figure of Jack Rogers coming toward her.

Jack covered aerospace for the Telegraph-Star, an Orange County paper. In his late fifties, he was a good, solid reporter, a reminder of an earlier generation of print journalists who knew as much about their beat as the people they interviewed. He gave her a casual wave.

"Hi, Jack," she said. "What’s up?’

"I came over," he said, "about that wing tool accident this morning in 64. The one the crane dropped."

‘Tough break," she said.

‘They had another accident with the AJs this morning. Tool was loaded onto the flatbed truck, but the driver took a turn too fast over by Building 94. Tool slid off onto the ground. Big mess."

"Uh-huh," Casey said.

"This is obviously a job action," Rogers said. "My sources tell me the union’s opposed to the China sale."

"I’ve heard that," she said, nodding.

"Because the wing’s going to be offset to Shanghai as part of the sales agreement?"

"Come on, Jack," she said. "That’s ridiculous."

"You know that for a fact?"

Chapter 8

She took a step back from him. "Jack," she said. "You know I can’t discuss the sale. No one can, until the ink’s dry."

"Okay," Rogers said. He took out his notepad. "It does seem like a pretty crazy rumor. No company’s ever offset the wing. It’d be suicide."

"Exactly," she said. In the end, she kept coming back to that same question. Why would Edgarton offset the wing? Why would any company offset the wing? It just made no sense.

Rogers glanced up from his pad. "I wonder why the union thinks the wing’s being sent offshore?"

She shrugged. "You’ll have to ask them." He had sources in the union. Certainly Brail. Probably others as well.

"I hear they’ve got documents that prove it."

Casey said, "They show them to you?"

Rogers shook his head. "No."

"I can’t imagine why not, if they have them."

Rogers smiled. He made another note. "Shame about the rotor burst in Miami."

"All I know is what I saw on television."

"You think it will affect the public perception of the N-22?" He had his pen out, ready to take down what she said.

"I don’t see why. The problem was powerplant, not air-frame. My guess is, they’re going to find it was a bad compressor disk that burst."

"I wouldn’t doubt it," he said. "I was talking to Don Peterson over at the FAA. He told me that incident at SFO was a sixth-stage compressor disk that blew. The disk had brittle nitrogen pockets."

"Alpha inclusions?’ she said.

"That’s right," Jack said. "And there was also dwell-time fatigue."

Casey nodded. Engine parts operated at a temperature of 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the melt temperature of most alloys, which turned to soup at 2200 degrees. So they were manufactured of titanium alloys, using the most advanced procedures. Fabricating some of the parts was an art – the fan blades were essentially "grown" as a single crystal of metal, making them phenomenally strong. But even in skilled hands, the manufacturing process was inherently delicate. Dwell-time fatigue was a condition in which the titanium used to make rotor disks clumped into microstructure colonies, rendering them vulnerable to fatigue cracks.

"And how about the Transpacific flight," Rogers said. "Was that an engine problem, too?"

‘Transpacific happened yesterday, Jack. We just started our investigation."

"You’re QA on the IRT, right?"

"Right, yes."

"Are you pleased with how the investigation is going?"

"Jack, I can’t comment on the Transpacific investigation. It’s much too early."

"Not too early for speculation to start," Rogers said. "You know how these things go, Casey. Lot of idle talk. Misinformation that can be difficult to clear up later. I’d just like to set the record straight. Have you ruled out engines?"

"Jack," she said, "I can’t comment."

"Then you haven’t ruled out engines?"

"No comment, Jack."

He made a note on his pad. Without looking up, he said, "And I suppose you’re looking at slats, too."

"We’re looking at everything, Jack," she said.

"Given the 22 has a history of slats problems …"

"Ancient history," she said. "We fixed the problem years ago. You wrote a story about it, if I recall."

"But now you’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’t want to comment, but he was telling her what he would write if she didn’t. It was a standard, if minor, form of press blackmail.

"Jack," she said, "we’ve got three hundred N-22s in service around the world. The model has an outstanding safety 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."