Flying Too Close to the Sun, George Jehn [freda ebook reader txt] 📗

the area bordering the bay adjacent to Runway 22 Right. The TSA officials said these were tied into warning devices located in the air traffic controllers’ work area. If anyone had ventured onto the airport boundary near the plane, their movements should have set them off. The standard operating procedure, however, was to deactivate them when the airport visibility dropped below a half a mile to prevent any possible conflict between an auto sent to investigate and any aircraft taxiing for takeoff. They had been deactivated prior to the time Shuttle Air 1540 pushed back from the gate, but the weather bureau records showed the visibility had improved to above a half-mile for a very brief period, yet the detectors weren’t reactivated.

The cops interviewed Bill Francis and wanted to know why. He responded he had brought this to the attention of the tower supervisor, Tony Heinz who had ordered they be left off because he felt the weather would quickly drop back below the minimum, which it did within moments. The cops interviewed Heinz and he confirmed that. A quick check of Heinz’s finances showed nothing awry. He was married with a couple of older, married children and had a few bucks in the bank. During Heinz’s interrogation he mentioned Francis’ previous error and how he was faced with the loss of his job if he screwed up again and felt that was why he had asked to reactivate the sensors. Could Francis somehow be involved? His name was added to the suspect list.

After consulting with the FBI’s aviation experts, the cops went to Shuttle Air with a request to pull the plane’s flight data and voice recorders to have them analyzed. The voice recorder had a constant erase feature going back only forty-five minutes, rendering it useless. But if the forward cargo door was opened might it show on the flight data recorder? This analysis was an expensive and time-consuming process. After assuring the airline they would pick up the tab, Shuttle Air sent the flight data recorder to Data Link, a high tech laboratory located just outside of New Orleans, where its contents were decoded and carefully analyzed. This jet, however, still had the older type of recorder installed and any door opening wouldn’t show up provided the aircraft was still on the ground. Only if the door opened once airborne would that be indicated and there were no irregularities evident other than the generator problem.

Daly raised the possibility perhaps someone could have come over in a boat and somehow managed to access the cargo bin without anyone the wiser. He called Boston FAA officials, identified himself and got the latitude and longitude coordinates for the departure end of runway 22 Right and then contacted Department of Defense officials to ascertain if a global positioning device was used to navigate to or from any location with those approximate coordinates on the night in question. It would have been only a short distance, so it should be easily recognizable. The DOD officials checked the date and time for six hours before and after the flight departed, but came up empty-handed. No coordinates were selected other than for flights relying upon GPS and all of those matched the exact numbers for their departure gates.

The increasingly frustrated investigators concluded if any pilots were involved it must have been Shepard because the captain should be aware of everything. Her alimony, high credit card balances and child-support payments might provide the motive. Maybe she stayed in the background while another person carried it out? They called and spoke with her exes, both of whom supplied credible alibis for the night in question. The cops checked them out and were satisfied with both. Each ex spoke about her with more than a hint of disdain in their voice.

They had Shuttle Air pull up Shepard’s computer records and a red flag was immediately raised when it was discovered she had rummaged around in a restricted area of the airline’s mainframe. This potential breakthrough got their adrenalin flowing and the cops wanted to question her further. Although unable to squeeze her more without other still-missing details, they drove to LaGuardia and caught her off guard as she sat in a remote corner of the airport coffee shop prior to her first flight. Daly grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down right next to her, blocking any exit, while Morganthaler sat across the table, both feeling they might finally have come up with a solid lead.

“Did you recently snoop in an area of your Company’s computer where you weren’t authorized?” a somber Daly asked, grimacing after burning his mouth on the steaming, foul-tasting brew, hoping she would deny it.

Although the question was not unexpected, Christina felt the cold finger of fear poke at her psyche. Outwardly composed, but inwardly nervous, she calmly replied, “Yes. Once,” wondering if they could see through her façade?

“Why?”

“Because my final flight was being delayed almost every night and as captain, I wanted to know why.” She hesitated, a solemn look on her face. Her plan all along was to put them on the defensive if this arose. “Please confirm your positions allow you to be privy to what I am about to say because it concerns airline security. Are you?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” Daly replied, “but the answer is yes.”

“If I find out later you’re not, you’ll have hell to pay,” she countered, attempting to display confidence she wasn’t certain she had. “As required by TSA and FAA regulations, each night I received notification an armed sky marshal would be riding in the cabin and we were being delayed until he boarded. But we weren’t supposed to incur a delay for that reason unless there was a known terrorist threat and if that was the case, I was also supposed to be informed. Yet no one said a word. So, I checked in the computer after work and discovered the reason,” she responded as nonchalantly as possible, while looking Morganthaler directly