Arlie stopped talking and looked at the two men, who were sitting transfixed and breathing hard.
George Mikulsky suddenly realized the narrative had ended. His body jerked slightly as he sat up. “Ah… okay. The emergency transmitter. The emergency transmitter beacon was never picked up, Captain.”
“Really?” Arlie responded. “Then how…”
“The tracking unit, Dad,” April said. “It dutifully sent me your position just before you went in. When I woke up, I checked my computer readout and realized you’d never arrived anywhere. The tracking unit saved you.”
“Mr. Rosen,” Walter Harrison began.
Mikulsky turned to the FAA inspector and held up an index finger. “Captain Rosen,” he corrected, flinching slightly at the murderous look Harrison flashed at him.
“Very well, Captain Rosen,” Harrison continued, “let’s talk about the absence of a flight plan, your weather briefing, and your altitude.”
“Excuse me, but I filed a visual flight plan with Anchorage Flight Service by cell phone before departure.”
Harrison had been leaning forward in the spartan metal chair. He sat up with an expression of extreme skepticism. “Did you, now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, did they acknowledge that it had been filed?”
It was Arlie Rosen’s turn to cock his head in disbelief as he looked at Harrison in silence and cleared his throat. “Mr. Harrison, when a senior airman tells you he’s filed a flight plan, visual or instrument, it’s usually a pretty good bet he knows the difference between just discussing it and filing it. You’re not talking to a student pilot here. Yes, I got confirmation verbally. That’s how we do it.”
“I’m well aware of the procedures, since I helped write them,” Harrison snapped back. “Point is, Captain, there was no flight plan in the computer at Anchorage Flight Service. There’s no record you even called them.”
“I assume you searched for not only our tail number, but under any other possible variations in the number in case the briefer made a mistake entering it? You do realize, don’t you, that they don’t list their calls in the computer by pilot name?”
Harrison ignored the verbal slap. “There was no flight plan in the computer, Captain, which is why no one missed you until your daughter figured something was wrong.”
April had been listening to the exchange with rising alarm. Mikulsky’s extremely stiff questioning had been bad enough, but Harrison was openly hostile. April rose to her feet and noisily scooted her chair back to interrupt.
“Okay, Mr. Harrison, you know what? My father’s just been brought in from a near-death experience, and if you can’t even question him with respect, I think we’d better end this.”
“That’s okay, honey,” Arlie said as he gestured to April to sit. “Mr. Harrison is an FAA inspector, and it’s his job to be openly skeptical to the point of perceived hostility. Right, Walter?”
Harrison had been doing a slow burn in silence. He made a small snorting sound and shook his head. “I do not attempt to be purposely skeptical, Ms. Rosen,” he said, glancing suddenly at April, then back at Arlie. “Nor am I hostile. But a fact is a fact, Captain, and the fact is that whatever calls you say you made, they do not show up on the record, and Anchorage had no flight plan on you.”
“Which, if true, would mean a major failure on their part,” Arlie interjected. “Which, by the way, is anything but unprecedented. Flight service stations lose flight plans every day, and you know it. And that’s aside from the fact that, as you also well know, a VFR flight plan is not required, merely recommended. I always file one if I’m not going on instruments. Always. No exceptions.”
“When you’re flying privately, Captain, and you don’t have an airline dispatcher to do things for you, do you often depart without a weather briefing?”
April was on her feet again. “Okay, that’s it. The interview’s over.”
Arlie turned to April and shook his head slightly. “Honey…”
April froze, reading her father’s resolve, then nodded reluctantly but remained standing.
“Now, Walter,” Arlie began again, “before you get your knickers in a knot over this flawed assumption, I would assume you’re aware that cell phone companies keep records, too. Have you bothered to check to see whether there’s a record of a call to flight service, which there will be?”
“No.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll want to be judicious enough to stand down on your tone and your very hostile attitude until you do. Fact is, I got my weather briefing, filed my visual flight plan in great detail, and followed all the FAR’s and normal procedures.”
“And you lost your aircraft because you lost a propeller while dragging the waves at less than a hundred feet.”
Arlie Rosen took a deep breath. April could see his jaw muscles twitching as he tried to maintain control of his temper, which was approaching his personal red line.
“Walter—”
“Excuse me,” Harrison interrupted with a snort, “I’m doing you the courtesy of using your formal airline title. Kindly do me the courtesy of calling me Mr. Harrison. You don’t know me, and I resent first name usage.”
George Mikulsky shifted uncomfortably in his chair, wondering how to regain control, but Harrison was ignoring him.
“Why don’t I just call you Inspector Harrison, then?” Arlie asked, as sarcastically as he could manage. “Or would you prefer ‘Your Excellency’?”
“Mister will do fine. Here’s what I want you to answer. You say you kept dropping lower to stay in visual conditions. You were operating under part ninety-one of the Federal Air Regulations, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So how far above you were those clouds, Captain? I assume you know the regulations for visual flight.”
“The clouds were more than the required five hundred feet above me,” Arlie shot back, his voice hardening. “And, yes, I know the regs, as I’m sure you do, Inspector Harrison. Under FAR part ninety-one point one fifty-five, the rules for visual operation are that the requirement for cloud clearance when flying in visual conditions at or below twelve hundred feet is a minimum of five hundred feet below, one thousand feet above, and two thousand feet lateral clearance, with a nighttime visibility requirement a minimum of three statute miles, all under the new Class G airspace. I miss anything?”
“No… other than how it was that you could have been so close to the water in deteriorating conditions and still think you were in compliance with the FARs when it was dark and you admit you couldn’t see anything.”
“What? I certainly did not admit — or say — that I couldn’t see anything, until I entered that fog bank at the last second. That was unanticipated. I had full legal visibility until then.”