Airframe (28 page)

Marder led her to a seating arrangement, to one side. He gestured grandly, as if he were taking her to a banquet. Since he gave her a choice of where to sit, she took a chair with her back to the window, so the sun would be in their eyes.

She got out her notes, shuffled through them. Marder said, “Would you like something to drink? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great.”

“How do you take it?”

“Black,” Jennifer said.

Casey watched as Jennifer Malone set out her notes. “I’ll be frank,” Malone said. “We’ve gotten some damning material on the N-22 from critics. And on the way this company operates. But there are two sides to every story. We want to make sure we include your response to the criticism.”

Marder said nothing, just nodded. He was sitting with his legs crossed, a notepad on his lap.

“To begin,” Malone said, “we know what happened on the TransPacific flight.”

Really? Casey thought. Because we don’t.

Malone said, “The slats came out—deployed?—in midair, and the airplane became unstable, went up and down, killing passengers. Everyone has seen the film of that tragic accident. We know passengers have filed lawsuits against the company. We also know the N-22 has a long history of slats problems, which neither the FAA nor the company has been willing to deal with. This, despite nine separate incidents in recent years.”

Malone paused for a moment, then went on. “We know that the FAA is so lax in its regulatory policies that it doesn’t even require certification documents to be submitted. The FAA has allowed Norton to keep the certification documents here.”

Jesus, Casey thought. She doesn’t understand
anything
.

“Let me dispose of your last point first,” Marder said. “The FAA doesn’t have physical possession of certification documents from any manufacturer. Not Boeing, not Douglas, not Airbus, not us. Frankly, we’d prefer the FAA do the warehousing. But the FAA can’t store them, because the documents contain proprietary information. If they were in possession of the FAA, our competitors could obtain this information under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of our competitors would like nothing better. Airbus in particular has been lobbying for a change in FAA policy—for the reasons
I’ve just explained. So I presume you got this idea about the FAA from someone at Airbus.”

Casey saw Malone hesitate, glance down at her papers. It was true, she thought. Marder had nailed her source. Airbus had fed her that tidbit, probably through its publicity arm, the Institute for Aviation Research. Did Malone realize the Institute was an Airbus front?

“But don’t you agree,” Malone said coolly, “that the arrangement is a little too cozy if the FAA lets Norton store its own documents?”

“Ms. Malone,” Marder said, “I’ve already told you we’d prefer the FAA do the storage. But we didn’t write the Freedom of Information Act. We don’t make the laws. We
do
think that if we spend billions of dollars developing a proprietary design, it should not be made available free of charge to our competitors. As I understand it, FOIA wasn’t enacted to enable foreign competitors to pillage American technology.”

“So you oppose the Freedom of Information Act?”

“Not at all. I’m simply saying that it was never designed to facilitate industrial espionage.” Marder shifted in his chair. “Now, you mentioned Flight 545.”

“Yes.”

“First of all, we don’t agree that the accident was the result of slats deployment.”

Uh-oh, Casey thought. Marder was going out on a limb. What he was saying wasn’t true, and it might very well—

Marder said, “We’re currently investigating this situation, and although it’s premature for me to discuss the findings of our inquiry, I believe you have been misinformed on the situation. I presume you’ve gotten this slats information from Fred Barker.”

“We are talking to Mr. Barker, among others …”

“Have you spoken to the FAA about Mr. Barker?” Marder said.

“We know he’s controversial …”

“To put it mildly. Let’s just say he adopts an advocacy position that is factually incorrect.”

“You
believe
it is incorrect.”

“No, Ms. Malone. It
is
factually incorrect,” Marder said, testily. He pointed to the papers Malone had spread out on the table. “I couldn’t help noticing your list of slats incidents. Did you get that from Barker?”

Malone hesitated a fraction. “Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure.”

She handed the paper to Marder. He glanced at it.

Malone said, “Is it factually incorrect, Mr. Marder?”

“No, but it’s incomplete and misleading. This list is based on our own documents, but it is incomplete. Do you know about Airworthiness Directives, Ms. Malone?”

“Airworthiness Directives?”

Marder got up, went to his desk. “Every time there is an inflight incident involving our aircraft, we review the incident thoroughly, to find out what happened and why. If there’s a problem with the aircraft, we issue a Service Bulletin; if the FAA feels compliance with our bulletin should be mandatory, it then issues an Airworthiness Directive. After the N-22 went into active service, we discovered a slats problem, and an Airworthiness Directive was issued to correct the problem. Domestic carriers are required by law to fix the airplanes, to prevent further occurrences.”

He came back with another sheet of paper, which he handed to Malone. “This is a complete list of incidents.”

Slats Events of Norton N-22

“The underlined sentences,” Marder said, “are what Mr. Barker omitted from the document he gave you. After the first slats incident, the FAA issued an Airworthiness Directive to change cockpit controls. The airlines had a year to comply.
Some did it immediately, others didn’t. As you can see, the subsequent incidents all occurred in aircraft which had not yet made the change.”

“Well, not quite …”

“Please let me finish. In December of 1992, we discovered a second issue. The cables running to the slats sometimes became slack. Maintenance crews weren’t catching the problem. So we issued a second Service Bulletin, and added a tension measurement device, so ground crews could check more easily whether cable rigging was within spec. That solved it. By December, everything was resolved.”

“Clearly not, Mr. Marder,” Malone said, pointing to the list. “You have more incidents in 1993 and in 1994.”

“Only on foreign carriers,” Marder said. “You see that notation, DO and FO? That stands for ‘domestic operator’ or ‘foreign operator.’ The domestic operators must make the changes called for in the FAA Airworthiness Directives. But foreign operators aren’t under FAA jurisdiction. And they don’t always make the changes. Since 1992, all incidents have involved foreign carriers that hadn’t made the retrofits.”

Malone scanned the list. “So you knowingly allow carriers to fly unsafe airplanes? You just sit back and let it happen, is that what you’re telling me?”

Marder sucked in his breath. Casey thought he was going to blow, but he didn’t. “Ms. Malone, we build airplanes, we don’t operate them. If Air Indonesia or Pakistani Air won’t follow the Airworthiness Directives, we can’t force them to.”

“All right. If all you do is build airplanes, let’s talk about how well you do that,” Malone said. “Looking at this list here, you had how many design changes on the slats? Eight?”

Casey thought, She doesn’t understand. She’s not listening. She doesn’t get what she’s being told.

“No. Two retrofits,” Marder said.

“But there are eight incidents here. You’d agree to that …”

“Yes,” Marder said irritably, “but we’re not talking about
incidents, we’re talking about ADs, and there are only two ADs.” He was getting angry, his face flushed.

“I see,” Malone said. “So. Norton had two design problems on the slats for this aircraft.”

“There were two corrections.”

“Two corrections of your original erroneous design,” Malone said. “And that’s just for slats. We haven’t gotten to the flaps or the rudder or the fuel tanks and the rest of the airplane. Just in this one tiny system, two corrections. Didn’t you test this aircraft, before you sold it to unsuspecting customers?”

“Of course we tested it,” Marder said, through clenched teeth. “But you have to realize—”

“What I realize,” Malone said, “is that people have died because of your design errors, Mr. Marder. That plane is a deathtrap. And you don’t seem to care about that at all.”

“
Oh for Christ’s fucking sake!
” Marder threw up his hands and jumped out of his seat. He stomped around the room. “I can’t fucking believe this!”

It was almost too easy, Jennifer thought. In fact, it
was
too easy. She was suspicious of Marder’s histrionic outburst. During the interview, she’d formed a different impression of this man. He wasn’t the assistant principal. He was much smarter than that. She realized it from watching his eyes. Most people made an involuntary eye movement when asked a question. They looked up, down, or sideways. But Marder’s gaze was steady, calm. He was completely in control.

And she suspected he was in control now, deliberately losing his temper. Why?

She didn’t really care. Her goal from the beginning had been to blow these people out. To make them worried enough to pass her on to the president. Jennifer wanted Marty Reardon to interview the president.

This was vital to her story. It would undermine the segment if
Newsline
made serious charges against the N-22, and the
company fielded a middle-level flunky or a press nerd to respond. But if she could get the president on camera, her whole segment attained a new level of credibility.

She wanted the president.

Things were going well.

Marder said, “You explain it, Casey.”

Casey had been appalled by Marder’s explosion. Marder was famously bad tempered, but it was a major tactical error to blow up in front of a reporter. And now, still red faced and huffing behind his desk, Marder said, “You explain it, Casey.”

She turned to face Malone.

“Ms. Malone,” Casey said, “I think everyone here is deeply committed to flight safety.” She hoped that would explain Marder’s outburst. “We’re committed to product safety, and the N-22 has an excellent safety record. And if something does go wrong with one of our planes—”

“Something
did
go wrong,” Malone said, looking evenly at Casey.

“Yes,” Casey said. “And we’re investigating that incident now. I’m on the team conducting that investigation, and we are working around the clock to understand what happened.”

“You mean why the slats extended? But you must know. It’s happened so many times before.”

Casey said, “At this point—”

“Listen,” Marder said, breaking in, “it wasn’t the damn slats. Frederick Barker is a hopeless alcoholic and a paid liar who works for a sleazebag lawyer. No one in his right mind would listen to him.”

Casey bit her lip. She couldn’t contradict Marder in front of the reporter, but—

Malone said, “If it wasn’t the slats—”

“It wasn’t the slats,” Marder said firmly. “We’ll issue a preliminary report in the next twenty-four hours that will conclusively demonstrate that.”

Casey thought:
What?
What was he saying? There was no such thing as a preliminary report.

“Really,” Malone said, softly.

“That’s right,” Marder said. “Casey Singleton’s the press liaison on the IRT. We’ll be getting back to you, Ms. Malone.”

Malone seemed to realize that Marder was terminating the interview. She said, “But there’s much more we need to go over, Mr. Marder. There is also the Miami rotor burst. And union opposition to the China sale—”

“Oh,
come on
,” Marder said.

“Given the seriousness of these charges,” she continued, “I think that you may want to consider our offer to give your president, Mr. Edgarton, an opportunity to respond.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Marder said.

“It’s for your own benefit,” Malone said. “If we have to say that the president refused to talk to us, that sounds—”

“Look,” Marder said. “Let’s cut the crap. Without TransPacific, you have no story. And we are going to issue a preliminary report on TransPacific tomorrow. You’ll be informed when. That’s all we have for the moment, Ms. Malone. Thank you for coming by.”