The Savage Storm - A chapter from my autobiography

The following writing was an assignment in the TESOL program at UCSD, which I completed in 2003. Here it is...

By June of 1993 I had managed to accumulate 1200 hours flight time, which is the minimum time required for flying as a Captain on air charter services. I campaigned heavily with my resume to all the air charter operations I could locate, especially those on the west coast. Lucky for me, I was hired right away at Pacific Air Charter, which was based at my home airport of Montgomery Field. I began training in July, and by November I had passed all the required FAA tests. I qualified as a Captain on the Cessna 310 and as a copilot on the bigger Cessna 402. I flew about a dozen passenger trips to San Clemente Island on the 402, and then when one of the senior pilots moved on to the airlines, I was assigned to fly cargo as Captain on the Cessna 310. It was my first job really flying, not just instructing. The hours were awful, the equipment was 20 years old, and the pay was low, but I was ecstatic – I’d made Captain at last!

I flew cargo on different routes around Southern California, but my favorite was the “Desert Route,” a courier flight carrying checks and other bank documents for Bank of America. This route left Burbank at 6:00 a.m. with stops at Palm Springs, Brawley, and Blythe, California. I would arrive in Blythe about 8:30 a.m. and then lay over all day. About 4:30 in the afternoon I would depart Blythe with the bank work and then stop at Imperial County airport on the way to San Diego. Upon arrival in San Diego I would turn the airplane over to another pilot, and then ride along with that pilot to Burbank where I would spend the night in the company apartment. The next morning I would start over.

As soon as I had the seniority to hold this route, I would bid for it as my number one choice every week. The route paid relatively well – one hundred dollars per day – and the five separate legs meant I got to do more flying than on any other route. Also, the deserts of California are warm and lovely in the winter, so I enjoyed my layovers in Blythe. I often brought along my mountain bike in the cargo compartment of the Cessna so that I could go riding in the desert during the day. I also spent quite a bit of time reading and writing at Blythe’s small public library.

On February 7th, 1994, a powerful storm was moving into Southern California. Throughout the day I stayed close to the phone and television in my Blythe hotel room, keeping abreast of the weather. By the time I was scheduled to depart that afternoon, the desert areas were blanketed by a high overcast which was producing light to moderate rain. There was some turbulence forecast for the desert, but nothing particularly dangerous. Meanwhile, over the mountains to the west, the coast was getting clobbered. High winds and thunderstorms were assaulting the shore and smashing their way up the Laguna Mountains – the very mountains I would have to cross on the way to Montgomery Field in San Diego.

At Imperial County airport, I went to the payphone and called again to the Flight Service Station for an update on my weather briefing. I also called Larry Wilson, the owner of Pacific Air Charter, to let him know my plans A, B, and C. Plan A was that I’d arrive at Montgomery Field with the cargo, more or less on time. Plan B, I’d have to divert to an alternate airport in the San Diego area if the weather conditions were below the instrument approach minimums at Montgomery. But if I crossed the mountains and found that the storm was just too gnarly, my plan C was that I’d turn around and go back to Imperial County. In that case, the cargo would have to be driven by ground courier to San Diego. While I was on the phone with Larry, the sun slipped below the horizon and the dark gray storm clouds above became a pitch black sky.

Although I had accrued over a hundred hours of flying time in instrument conditions, I had never before flown into such terrible weather, and I was more than a little nervous about what I would encounter once I crossed the Lagunas. I was flying a 1975 Cessna 310R, tail number N1976Y, or “Seven Six Yankee,” one of my favorite airplanes in Pacific’s fleet. The Cessna 310R is a 5500-pound twin-engine utility transport. Set up in the passenger configuration it can seat six persons; stripped for cargo it can carry up to 1200 pounds of freight. It’s a sturdy airplane that’s built for speed; it cruises at just over 200 miles per hour. On the desert route the cargo loads were light, under a hundred pounds most days. This meant that my thrust-to-weight ratio was excellent, and with a violent storm to fly through, I knew I’d be able to use that performance to out-climb all but the most severe downdrafts.

My good friend and mentor Jeff Sabo was working at that time for Executive Jet, flying the same sort of bank cargo in Lear Jets out of Portland, Oregon. I was extremely interested in making Executive Jet my next career move, so I told Jeff to ask one of his Captains what I would need to do in order to be looked upon favorably by their hiring department. Tim McConnell, Jeff’s favorite Captain, put it simply. Tim said, “He needs to go out and scare the shit out of himself over and over and over. Then he’ll be ready.”

As I flew over the Lagunas and descended toward San Diego, the turbulence increased with every mile deeper I penetrated the storm. Even with my seatbelt pulled as snug as I could stand it, my head bounced again and again against the cockpit ceiling as the Cessna was hammered by the worst turbulence I’d ever encountered. Above the freezing level, pouring rain froze on the leading edge of the wings and on the windscreen, which were both soon covered in ice as the plane pitched and tossed like a cork in a river. At times, lightning bolts flashed nearby in the clouds, startling me, and making me wish the airplane had on-board radar to avoid the storm’s cells. I found myself saying aloud, “Okay Tim, I hope you’re happy, man, ‘cause I’m scaring the shit out of myself right now!!!” It wasn’t a joke. I was frightened. But I had confidence in the airplane and in my flying abilities.

I made three separate ‘Pireps’ (pilot reports) to the air traffic controllers regarding the weather conditions I was experiencing so that the reports could be passed along to other pilots who might be considering following the same route. After fifty miles of flying through the tempest, I finally broke out of the storm clouds less than two miles from Montgomery Field. I was thrilled to see the airport, but my work wasn’t over as I was faced with landing in a powerful gusting crosswind. The wind was howling out of the south and filled with driving rain. By the grace of God I somehow made a safe landing on the dark, wet runway. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I cleared the runway and taxied to our loading area.

Larry Wilson often waited in his car on the ramp when the weather was rough. With a flight departing or arriving every half hour, Larry liked to be around to oversee any difficulties brought about by the nasty weather. Sure enough, as I climbed down from the cockpit, Larry drove up in the baby-blue Mercedes that was his trademark around the airport.

“How was the ride down the hill?” he asked, referring to my trip over the Laguna mountain range.
“It was great,” I lied. “Piece of cake.” I was glad to be on the ground, but I was also filled with a kind of post-game euphoria of having faced my fears and prevailed. I knew I had just passed a very difficult test.
“You ready to go up there and do it again?” Larry asked with a leer, knowing I was scheduled to go to Burbank with Cindy Rice in half an hour.
“You bet!” I said, feigning more enthusiasm than I felt. “But you know what, Larry? I’ve got a hot meal waiting for me at home and I’d sure like to get out of these wet clothes. I was so busy watching the weather back in Blythe that I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner, and I’d sure like to go eat. Would it be okay if I rode up to Burbank later with Mike LaForrest?”
“That’s fine with me,” Larry said. “Tell Cindy when you see her at the office that you’re going up with Mike.”

As I finished unloading the Cessna I gave it a pat on the nose, and said a quiet thanks for getting us through a tough spot. I got in my car and drove to the Pacific Air Charter office across the road to turn in my paperwork for the day and to talk to Cindy Rice. When I arrived, Cindy was on the telephone in the briefing room. She smiled and waved hello. Still listening on the phone to the weather briefer, she beckoned me over. I looked over her shoulder at the page of notes she had taken during her briefing. She pointed at three lines she had dictated from the briefer. The three lines were my ‘Pireps.’ They were being passed along to her, even though her route would be up the coast to Burbank, and not over the Laguna Mountains. She pointed at the pirep notes and then pointed at me with her eyes wide and her mouth agape in mock alarm, and I nodded. We both smiled.

With so much severe weather afoot, I knew Cindy’s weather briefing would be extensive, and might take another ten minutes or more. If I was going to ride to Burbank with Mike I had only a couple of hours before I was due back at the airport. I whispered to Cindy, “I’m going home to eat,” and I pantomimed spooning something into my mouth. “I’ll ride up tonight with Mikey,” I said. “See you at the apartment.” Cindy nodded, then covering the mouthpiece with her hand she said, “See you up there!” We waved good bye to each other.

An hour later I was at home in dry clothes, savoring a hot meal – nothing special, just reheated leftovers from a restaurant – when the phone rang. It was Larry. He sounded stricken. He was apoplectic, not making sense.
“You’re home!” He exclaimed.
“Yeah, Larry, you said I could ride up later with Mike,” I replied.
“You’re not on the plane!” Larry blurted, frantically. “You’re not with Cindy!”
“Larry what’s wrong, what’s going on?” I asked, the hair standing up on my arms.
“We think Cindy’s plane went down in the ocean,” Larry groaned.
“Oh my God,” I said. “What happened?”
“They lost radar contact with her and nobody can raise her on the radio.”
“Where, Larry? Where did it happen?”
“About three miles northwest of Mount Soledad. One minute air traffic control was talking to her and then they just lost radar contact. They called her and called her and she never answered. They tried to have Myra Brown call her on the company frequency, but Myra couldn’t raise her. Myra and Lisa Garino were coming back from Burbank, they were around Miramar and heard it all. They said the storm was so bad it took both of them to fly the airplane.” He gasped, out of breath. “Oh my God. Thank God you weren’t on the airplane, too. When they called me I couldn’t remember if you’d gone up with her or not.”
“Where are you now, Larry, are you at the office?”
”No, I’m at home in Rancho Bernardo.” He sounded lost. “Mike LaForrest is over at the office, I just talked to him.”
“Okay, Larry, I’m gonna head over to the office, then. I’m just a few minutes away.”
“Okay. I gotta stay by the phone. The controllers have this number for me. I’ll stay here in case they call. Call me when you get down there.”
“I’ll call you in a little while from the office.”

I went to the PAC offices and found several of the pilots there, including Mike who had arrived early for his flight, and Myra and Lisa who had just gotten back from Burbank. Everyone knew. Aaron Rogers, who was one of our most senior Captains, was there. Aaron and I agreed to get on the phones and call the other pilots. We wanted to tell our co-workers before they heard it on the news. Better they hear it from us. Together we decided we would suspend all operations for 24 hours while we recovered from the shock, including cancelling the rest of the flights for the evening. Upon hearing from us, most of the other pilots decided to come to the office. Soon we had almost twenty people in the office, all waiting for the terrible confirmation that Cindy had been lost at sea in the storm. There were lots of hugs and some talk of hope, but we all knew there would be no good news. It was an awful night. Many of us stayed at the office all night.

One of our main customers, a major financial institution who shall remain nameless, wins the prize for callousness. They called several times begging us to launch our usual late-night flight. They kept saying “Do you know how much money we’ll lose if we have to drive the work to L.A.?”  Aaron and I both told them, “Are you kidding? This storm killed one of our pilots tonight. We’re all in shock, not one of us here is emotionally fit to fly. We’re not going to launch another plane tonight. Period!”

The next day the local newspaper ran an inch-high headline inside the front page which read, “Thousands of Bank Customers Inconvenienced” and a story about the massive loss of unrecorded bank checks and other irreplaceable bank documents, and how many customer accounts might be affected. A tiny subtext read “Flier Lost at Sea.” There was very little mentioned about Cindy, who was so dear to us. Cindy had been with the company for a couple of years and was loved by everyone. In her mid-thirties, she was older than most of us. She was well known, well loved and well respected in the aviation communities both in San Diego and in Ramona, her home town. As a Flight Instructor, she had taught dozens of people to fly. She was very popular. Her memorial service drew hundreds of people. An air traffic control intersection over Ramona was later renamed “RIICE” in her honor. (All intersections are 5-letters long.) I think the newspaper had their headlines askew. One life lost outweighs ten thousand inconvenienced customers.

It took the NTSB over a year to finalize their report analyzing the accident. When it was finally published, all it said was that the cause of the accident was “the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane.” That’s a common phrase the NTSB uses when they don’t really know what happened. Practically all airplane accidents are caused in some way by the pilot’s failure to maintain proper control. But it certainly doesn’t in any way answer the question of why Cindy, who was a competent pilot and a trained aerobatics instructor, would lose control in the first place. Did the airplane come apart in mid-air? Did she hit turbulence do bad that it knocked her out? Did the cargo come loose from under its net and pummel her, or jam the controls? What happened?

It is my belief, shared by many who looked into the accident, that Cindy ran into a waterspout out there in the dark. The airplane’s radar track was consistent with that possibility, and there’s not much else that would explain why a perfectly good airplane and a skilled pilot would suddenly smash into the sea from three and a half thousand feet. The radar showed Cindy’s airplane initiated an abrupt climb and a complete 180° heading reversal, followed by a colossal descent rate. Then it was gone. Three radar sweeps, one every six seconds. Eighteen seconds from normal flight at 3500 feet to impact with the surface. Had to be a waterspout.

The wreckage sank in three thousand feet of water, deep into the La Jolla trench.A robotic camera was sent down to examine the wreckage, and the NTSB declared that the airframe had entered the water intact, leading to further speculation that Cindy was indeed unconscious or incapacitated by the event.

Rumors about the accident raced around the airport. The news media tried to make a sensational exposé out of it, casting aspersions on Cindy as well as on Pacific Air Charter. As usual, the local television news crews jumped at the chance to insinuate that all airplanes are dangerous, especially the small General Aviation airplanes that we fly. It’s a favorite ‘scary story’ of theirs: How safe are you, with these little airplanes falling out of the sky all the time?

One news channel’s camera crew approached me two days after Cindy’s accident, the reporter shoving a microphone in my face as I approached our flight line. “Mr. Reid? Is it true that you refused to fly with Cindy Rice? Isn’t it true you were afraid to go back up after you’d already flown that day? Can you comment on whether Cindy would have been fired if she hadn’t taken the flight?” I started to deny his questions, then I looked hard at the reporter for a few moments, and I understood that nothing I said would set the record straight. He wanted a story, there wasn’t one. I said, “I’m going to have to ask you to move yourselves at least fifty yards away from this flight line. I need to preflight this airplane and go to work, and you’re interfering with the safety of the operation.” Grudgingly they retreated and began filming me from a distance.

The “news” story ran anyway, with their footage of me conducting my preflight taken from afar. In a classic case of “have you stopped beating your wife” journalism, the news channel alluded that Cindy was facing termination if she didn’t fly that night, that the weather was far too severe for anyone to fly in, and that I had personally refused to go with her. None of those things were true. I‘ll never again believe anything reported on the local news.

In April 1994 I was hired by Executive Jet.