I know you got soul: machines with that certain something (8 page)

Arthur, on the other hand, is streaked with rust
and the little room behind that pointy thing in the middle of his dish looks like the storeroom at a builders’ merchant.

What they’re asking of him is no different from asking Jack Charlton to play for England. That Arthur can do it, and does, is testimony to the brilliance of the men who designed and built him all those years ago.

That’s the thing about Big Art. He knows what the weather will be like before Michael Fish. He knows how much you spent on ice creams last time you went to St Lucia. He knows what sort of pornography they like in India. And he knows about your mistress in New Jersey. It’s probably not that far from the truth to say that these days Arthur knows more about the workings of our world than God.

At lunchtime on 27 March 1977 a terrorist bomb exploded at Las Palmas airport in the Canary Islands. And since there were threats of more bombs in the terminal building, all incoming flights were diverted to the islands’ other airport at Los Rodeos.

One of the first to land there was Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten, aboard a KLM Jumbo. He’d been with the airline for 30 years and was responsible for training other Dutch pilots.

He was ordered by air traffic control to park his 747 on one of the taxiways and wait for Las Palmas to reopen. Suspecting that it might not take long, he initially refused to let the passengers off because then they’d have to be reloaded, and by the time he actually got them to the right place his permitted time in the cockpit would be up, and he’d be unable to fly back to Holland. He was so worried about time, in fact, that he asked for the plane to be refuelled while it was parked. This
would mean he would have no need to top up the tanks at Las Palmas.

Meanwhile the airport was filling up with other planes, including a Pan Am Jumbo that was bringing a party of old people from Los Angeles to meet their cruise ship in the Canaries. This was being flown by Captain Victor Grubbs, a 57-year-old with 21,000 flying hours under his belt.

His plane was pretty special too, since it was the Clipper Victor, the first Jumbo ever to fly with passengers on board. If you watch the news-reel footage of that first flight, from New York to London on 21 January 1970, this is the plane you will see. And now, seven years later, it was bumbling around a small airport in the middle of the Atlantic looking for somewhere to park.

When Las Palmas finally reopened the Pan Am plane was boxed in by van Zanten’s KLM plane and its refuelling tanker. The crew actually paced out the gap but figured that while it was close, they’d probably be better off waiting for the Dutch jet to move first.

By the time its tanks were full, at 4.26 in the afternoon, fog had settled on the airport like a big damp blanket and visibility was down to just 300 metres.

Nevertheless, the KLM jet was ordered to taxi down Runway 30 and wait at the far end for clearance to go. Meanwhile the Pan Am plane was ordered onto Runway 30, and to pull off at the third taxiway and wait until the Dutch plane had gone. At this point the fog was so bad that the air traffic controller couldn’t see the planes, the Dutch couldn’t see the Americans and the Americans weren’t sure where they were supposed to be going.

Flight-deck recordings show confusion in the cockpit. The first officer thought he’d been asked to pull off on the first taxiway – impossible since it was a logjam of parked planes. This time the controller was clear: ‘The third one, sir. One, two, three. Third one.’

By the time the confusion was cleared up the Americans, still trundling in the pea-souper towards the stationary KLM plane, had no idea how many taxiway turn-off points they’d passed. The black box recorded the captain and first officer trying to decide which was their turn-off. In the event they had missed the third taxiway and were heading for the fourth, all the while getting nearer and nearer to van Zanten.

He, in the meantime, had turned his plane
around and was desperate to get going. So desperate, in fact, that he immediately opened the taps on the four engines. First Officer Klaus Meurs plainly sensed this was premature, since he was recorded saying, ‘Wait. We don’t have clearance.’

Van Zanten immediately applied the brakes and asked his first officer to get on the radio and get clearance. This is what the air traffic controller said: ‘KL4805. You are cleared to the Papa beacon. Climb to and maintain Flight Level 90. Right turn after take-off. Proceed with heading 040 until intercepting the 325 radial from Las Palmas VOR.’

These instructions were directions for after the plane had taken off. At no point did the controller actually say they were cleared to go. But van Zanten didn’t realise that and released the brakes.

As the plane began to move, towards the unseen Pan Am Jumbo, his first officer repeated the message, as is customary. ‘Roger, sir, we are cleared to the Papa beacon, Flight Level 90 until intercepting the 325. We’re now at take-off.’

And again there was confusion. The controller took ‘we’re now at take-off’ to mean that they were at the take-off position, not that they were
actually accelerating at full tilt down the runway towards the Clipper Victor.

On board the Dutch jet were 14 crew and 234 passengers, including 48 children and 3 babies. On board the Pan Am jet there were 16 crew and 396 passengers. That’s a total of 660 people. And they were on a collision course.

As the KLM jet picked up speed its flight officer, Willem Schreuder, heard the tower ask the Pan Am crew to report when they’d cleared the runway.

Assuming, incorrectly, that his captain had heard this too, he said, ‘Did he not clear the runway then?’

The reply sealed everyone’s fate. ‘Oh yes,’ said van Zanten.

On board the Pan Am plane the first officer was the first to see the KLM jet bearing down on them. ‘There he is,’ he shouted. ‘Look at him. Goddam. That son of a bitch is coming. Get off. Get off. Get off.’

Captain Grubbs was trying. He slammed the throttles wide open but it was too late. At the last moment van Zanten had spotted the Clipper and had tried to get airborne. He made it too but not quite enough; the bottom of his plane hit the
roof of the American jet. It burst into flames and smashed back into the runway. Everyone on board was killed instantly.

Aboard the Clipper the first officer reached up after the impact to shut down the howling engines, but the roof on which the switches were located had gone. So too had most of his passengers, in the initial explosion. But miraculously 70 people were pulled out alive, including all the crew of the flight deck.

The total death toll, after nine had died in hospital, was 583, making this the worst accident in the 100-year history of aviation. And therein lies the biggest problem with the 747. When one of them goes down the loss of life is always so horrific no one gives a stuff about the plane itself.

Happily, however, very few are lost. Between 1970 and 2000 1,000 Jumbos were wheeled out of Boeing’s factory and only 28 have been written off in accidents.

Seven of those accidents happened on the ground while the plane was being manoeuvred, four were down to terrorists, one was destroyed by shelling in the first Gulf War and one was shot down in error by the Russians. So, of the 1,000 made only fifteen have been lost in genuine
accidents. And most of those were down to human error.

To get an idea of how tough a Jumbo is, look at that photograph of the decapitated nose cone lying in a field outside Lockerbie. One of the windows is still intact.

To give you a better idea, let me take you back to the first ever ‘incident’ on a commercial flight. It was 1971, and for all sorts of reasons a 747 was trying to take off with too much weight from a runway at San Francisco that was too short. As it reached 165 knots it ploughed into a timber pier that ran from the end of the runway into the sea.

The steel gantries ripped through the cabin floor, destroyed the wing flaps, bent the landing gear and shattered the bulkheads. Wooden shards scythed through the tail, and through the cabin too, amputating the legs of one passenger and crushing the arm of another. But somehow the pilot managed to get the plane airborne. And even more somehow he managed to land it again. And not a single person was killed.

As a piece of design the 747 is astonishing. I mean, when the TWA Jumbo exploded shortly after leaving New York in July 1996 people assumed it must have been hit by a stray missile or
a giant meteorite. The notion that a 747 had actually ‘gone wrong’ in some way was just too preposterous.

Actually, I still think it is preposterous. I mean, when you examine all the evidence it does look like it was blown out of the sky by someone – the US Navy was operating nearby and the Americans, let’s be honest, are no strangers to the concept of friendly fire. Whatever, the US authorities say the central fuel tank exploded and, hey, these guys never lie so there you have it.

Whatever, safety is not the thing that makes the 747 stand out. The modern jet engine is now so reliable, and the on-board computers so foolproof, that all commercial airliners have a safety record that makes granite look tricky and unstable. The fact is that if you flew on a plane every day, statistically it would be 13,000 years before you hit the ground in a big fireball.

Nor, actually, am I drawn to the Jumbo because of its speed, though God knows it’s still the jackrabbit of the skies. The newer 777 cruises at 565 mph. The 747 is a full 20 mph faster and, over 11,000 miles, that makes a big difference to your deep-vein thrombosis.

I’m not even that excited by what the 747 did
for mass transportation. It was born in the days when everyone still believed that flying was for the ‘jet set’ and that supersonic travel was the only way forward. No one had foreseen a time when fat women from the North would be going to Spain for £25.

No one, that is, except for the boss of Pan Am. Juan Trippe had noted the failure of America’s aeroplane industry to make a supersonic jetliner and pleaded with them to go the other way, to make an enormous plane that would savage the established economies of scale.

When it finally rolled out of the Seattle factory on 30 September 1968 even the workforce was surprised at its size, and this – this – is the key to my love affair with the Jumbo. The small-boyishness of all its facts and figures. Like, for instance, did you know that on full thrust its engines hurl enough air out of the back to inflate the Goodyear airship in seven seconds?

Or how about this? It does 2.5 miles to the gallon but because it can carry over 500 people it’s actually more economical, per passenger per mile, than a Ford Fiesta.

I can be even more anal if you like. It needs 1.5 miles to reach take-off speed and in a 20-year
career will cover 1,500 miles going backwards. When it’s being pushed back from various gates, obviously. Not when it’s flying. It can’t do that.

You may also be interested to know, if you’re a man, that its wingspan is longer than the Wright Brothers’ first flight, and that its tail is taller than a six-storey building. Also, a Jumbo could fly upside down. Though if you actually tried to turn it over in mid air, the wings would be torn off. Mind you, that said, tests have shown you can bend the wings upwards by 30 feet before they’ll break.

Other things. Well, the factory where it’s made is the largest building, by volume, in the world. The first Jumbo was made out of 4.5 million parts. And some experts said it should only be allowed to fly in storm-free corridors because ‘there’s no way something that big could weather any turbulence’.

Nearly right. So far it’s transported 2.2 billion people, which is nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population, and that isn’t bad for a plane originally designed to carry cargo.

Although Juan Trippe had ordered planes for passengers, Boeing had agreed to the deal because they thought it could also be used as a transporter. That’s why it has the hump – so the cargo could
be loaded more easily via a hinged nose cone into the fuselage. See. I can go on boring for Britain about the 747 until the end of time. And so can everyone else.

The Jumbo has become a modern-day yardstick in the lexicon of superlatives. Like football pitches, and Nelson’s Column and Wales, it is now an established unit of measurement. For instance, I was told the other day that the nets being used by modern supertrawlers are big enough to envelop a dozen 747s. I have no idea how big they are, but I sort of get the picture.

There’s only one thing blokes love more than an interesting fact and that’s a superlative. That’s why I like the 747, because it’s the biggest and the fastest and the heaviest… and the best.

In the beginning it had a rough ride. In the 1,013 test flights the engines had to be changed 55 times. They even overheated on the very first commercial flight, which is why the ill-fated Clipper Victor was brought in as a last-minute replacement. Then there was a recession, which coupled with the technical problems meant the 747 was originally known as the Dumbo Jet.

Oh, how things change. Most people today choose a specific flight because it suits their
requirements on a particular day. Not me though. I tailor my travel arrangements so that I can go on a Jumbo.

777s are rubbish, and while I recognise that the four-engined Airbuses are astonishingly quiet they’re still buses. And where’s the glamour in that?

When I get on a Jumbo I’m always going somewhere exotic – they don’t use them on hops to the Isle of Man – and I want a taste of that on the plane. Which is why I like the stairs. Having decided a hump for the flight deck was a good idea, there was plenty of discussion about what might be placed behind it. A hair salon was one serious suggestion. A casino was another.

It’s perfect now, as the best bit of business class. Up there you don’t have the sense of being a veal calf. And if the airline has its head screwed on, you’re also away from the peril of a screaming baby. Up there you can convince yourself you’re in an exec jet. Only you can’t, of course, because a Jumbo is so much quieter.

The one place you don’t want to be on a 747 is on the flight deck. We sort of assume as we slide down to the runway that all is calm and automated up there at the business end but, let me assure you,
this is not so. Once I was invited to sit in the jump seat for a landing into Houston.