Into the Abyss (25 page)

“It would be after midnight,” Erik answered.

“And what time did you retire for the night?”

“I had made a phone call home. I have a fiancée in Vancouver, and I retired after that. Twelve-thirty, one.”

“Then your time on duty would have totalled fifteen- or fifteen-and-a-half hours, is that correct?”

“That sounds correct,” Erik confirmed.

“And that was following two-and-a-half-hours’ sleep?”

“Yes.”

“How were you feeling by the time you went to bed that night?” Dr. Hansen asked.

“I was tired,” Erik said, adding that he’d let his co-pilot fly the leg back from Edmonton so he could rest.

Dr. Hansen nodded. “But to reiterate, you did not have an opportunity during the day or during the flight to sleep?”

Erik said that he had not. He also detailed his three uncomfortable exchanges with company management.

“Would you describe how these incidents affected your state of mind at the time,” Dr. Hansen asked.

“Besides being uptight, it weighed heavily. You keep wondering if you are going to keep working tomorrow.”

By that point, the sympathy of the audience was with the young pilot. Quiet murmurs of dismay began to ripple around the room and reporters scribbled furiously. Dr. Hanson picked up steam as he neared the finish line.

“And calculating duty time for the three days previous, the sleep over that same period of time was nine hours … are those totals correct?”

“That sounds correct,” Erik answered.

“As a final question,” Dr. Hansen concluded, “in any of your training as a professional pilot have you been required to receive any instruction in aeromedical subjects, things like disorientation, hypoglycemia, fatigue, illness …?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Thank you,” Dr. Hansen said with a note of satisfied finality. “I have no further questions.”

With that, the inquiry chairman adjourned the first day’s proceedings. It was 5:30, and Erik had been on the stand for six hours. He felt completely wrung out, but as his lawyer, CASB investigators, his father, and many former Wapiti pilots who attended the inquiry to support Erik gathered around, he felt a glimmer of redemption. When the crowd cleared, Erik saw two women patiently waiting to speak to him: Sally Swanson and Virginia Peever, the widows of two of the men who had died on Flight 402.

They thanked him for telling the truth.

The next morning, Erik walked a little straighter as he entered Conference Room A. His nerves felt less jagged and he found a moment to talk to his fellow survivors. Reporters asked the four men to stand together for a picture and in that one Erik smiled broadly.

At 9:05, he took the stand for the second day. This time, he fielded questions from John Bassie, the chief counsel representing Wapiti Aviation. Not more than a minute had passed before Bassie asked Erik where his pilot’s logbook was.

“
I burned it in the fire,” Erik told him.

“I see,” Bassie replied, and then asked Erik about what the notes were that he had with him on the witness stand the day before.

Erik frowned. “An outline from one of the reports.”

Bassie regarded him steadily. “And I take it from that, you have problems recalling?”

Uneasiness rippled through Erik. After circling around seemingly peripheral issues about Wapiti’s flight checklist and flight dispatch system, Bassie began his assault.

“Mr. Vogel, yesterday you mentioned a medivac flight which you said was October 17, 1984. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir …”

“And are you sure about your date being October 17, 1984?”

“Yes, I believe I am.”

Bassie turned and plucked a paper from the tabletop behind him. “Have you seen this before?”

In his hand was a Wapiti charter invoice. Bassie placed it on the stand under Erik’s nose and Erik nodded.

“And you recognize your signature where it says pilot’s signature?”

“Yes.”

“And that document is dated October 16, 1984?”

“That is correct.”

“So your medivac flight was October 16, 1984. Is that correct?”

“That one, yes.”

“That’s the flight you were talking about yesterday, is that correct?”

“I believe it was,” Erik said.

“Mr. Vogel, now that we know that the medivac flight was on the 16th and not the 17th, could you tell us what you did on the 17th?”

Erik flushed, his memory completely blank. “I’m afraid I can’t. I was under the impression … in the hospital when we were going over this, that that was the date …”

“If I told you you went to Fort McMurray at 14:05 with Mr. Powell. Do you recall that?”

Erik began to sweat. “I recall that, yes.”

“It was not an authorized flight by the company, was it?”

Erik swallowed. His lawyer, Jim Duke, quickly asked the Chairman, “Sir, is this relevant to safety? Where are we going with this line of questioning?”

“I didn’t hear the question,” the Chairman answered. “Mr. Bassie …?”

“Was it authorized?” Bassie asked again.

“The flight itself was a scheduled, authorized flight, sir,” Erik replied.

“But you were not authorized to go?”

Erik felt the air leave his lungs. “No.”

“That starter problem, then, was on the 16th, was it not?”

“It was the day of the medivac, yes.”

“Would it be fair to say that on the 17th of October, 1984, you did not work at all?”

Erik was flustered now. “Was I not … there are not records of my flying?” he stammered.

“I’ll show you the company records,” Bassie offered, almost congenially. “I’ve marked the area in question with the photostat copies of them, Mr. Vogel, to assist you.”

Erik studied the journey log in front of him. There it was: the medivac to Edmonton had
not
been on Wednesday the 17th, but Tuesday the 16th. He’d slept in the refuelling trailer on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, as a favour to Jim Powell, Erik had flown to Fort McMurray as his co-pilot while awaiting the starter repair. That left Wednesday and Thursday nights during which Erik had presumably gotten plenty of sleep.

Later, after agonizing long and hard about the events of that week, Erik would put the pieces together—how he’d arrived home after the starter fiasco, late on Wednesday, October 17, his one day off that week, and resumed flying the next day, Thursday, October 18. Thursday had been the day he’d picked up the props in Edmonton, banged ice from the wings with a broom handle, and first battled the fierce weather system that would bring down his plane on October 19. But in that moment at the inquiry, Erik was mute, his brain numb.

At the table behind him, members of the CASB investigative team were in shock. They hadn’t thought to question Erik’s recollection of events, to cross-check them against the company records. Phyllis Smith, the CASB’s lawyer, was the first to speak.

“Mr. Chairman … I did want to express a concern … Mr. Bassie
and Wapiti have had the group reports for some five weeks and none of this information has been brought to the attention of the technical panel … And one of the things that was discussed in some detail at the pre-hearing conference is that an ambush of the type we were expected to avoid, has appeared at this hearing.”

Bassie, well seasoned in the thrust and parry of the courtroom, didn’t miss a beat.

“That’s a problem that will always be faced by an inquiry of this type, Mr. Chairman,” he interjected. “Whoever conducted the investigation had access to all these books. There was nothing held back … There is no ambush here. It is just a situation where something was not done.”

“Or missed,” suggested the chairman.

“Or missed,” Bassie concurred.

“Yes,” the chairman agreed, looking at Bassie. “I think we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Bassie pressed his advantage. “And the other problem we faced here is that we did not know what Mr. Vogel would say. We knew he lost a whole day, we knew that this idea that he worked so hard those two or three days … was not correct. We thought that Mr. Vogel would look at it and realize that he was wrong and say so. But he didn’t.”

“Mr. Chairman …” the CASB’s legal council tried again.

“End of argument,” the chairman cut her off. “File the documents.”

The rest of Erik’s testimony unfolded like slow torture. The spirit of “respect and cooperation” the chairman had insisted on during the inquiry did not seem to Erik to be part of Mr. Bassie’s repertoire. He found himself constantly on the defensive, his credibility questioned and undermined at every turn. After another hour of cross-examination, it was the inquiry chairman who finally asked the question Erik had been dreading: “Have you come to an explanation as to why you
were still in the Swan Hills when you descended to the altitude of 2,800 feet?”

“I made an error in navigation,” Erik admitted. “
I believed I was farther ahead than I was.”

When he stepped down from the stand, he felt as if he’d been gutted in front of the entire audience.

His testimony spawned a host of sensational news stories detailing how Erik had recanted his original version of events. Erik’s contradictory account on the second day of the inquiry not only called into question his credibility and skills as a pilot, but completely undermined the CASB’s attempt to show that human factors—particularly fatigue—were a major cause of the crash. As for the CASB’s hopes of making the crash of Wapiti Flight 402 a precedent-setting case that would improve aviation safety—they had been dashed.

By the time Dale Wells took the stand later that day, the CASB’s team of investigators had elected to avoid the now-uncertain territory of pilot fatigue and focus instead on Wapiti’s safety standards. Harry Boyko, the CASB’s head of operations, questioned Dale on everything from his airline’s recent maintenance audits to allegations that management refused to assign co-pilots when the weather was below single pilot minimums.

“Can you tell me … 
has the operations manager ever rejected a request by a pilot for a co-pilot?” Boyko asked, picking up on Erik’s testimony of the previous day during which he’d recounted his uncomfortable exchange with Delbert Wells over wanting a second pilot for the October 16 medivac.

“Not to my knowledge under normal circumstances,” Dale replied.

“Have you ever refused that request?”

“Not when it was required by the weather.”

Boyko persevered, trying another tack. “How many times in situations where a pilot has requested a second pilot have they been refused that second pilot?”

“I can’t think of any instances.”

“So you are saying that you have never really refused a co-pilot in the past twelve months?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Boyko later questioned Dale on Erik’s assertion that, in order to satisfy his boss, he felt he needed to descend as low as 800 feet to get in to High Prairie before bailing on a landing attempt.

Dale’s response was unequivocal: “I have never advised him to go to take a look at 800 feet. We were concerned about, you know, a safe operation and keeping a good reputation and developing our traffic with our passengers. And
I had never at any time told any pilot to go take a look and go down to 800 feet.”

It was John Bassie, Dale’s chief counsel, who revisited the issue of Erik’s fatigue. Bassie carefully led Dale through an accounting of Erik’s scheduled flying hours in the days leading up to and including the crash, beginning with the emergency medivac on October 16, which had resulted in Erik spending the night in the refuelling depot trailer.

“If there was any reason that Mr. Vogel did not receive adequate sleep on the evening of October 16, 1984, do you have any explanation for it?”

“There was no reason for it as far as operation of the air service is concerned,” Dale replied.

“Now, after he returned to Grande Prairie on October 17, was he assigned duties for October 18?”

“He was assigned to fly the evening flight departing Grande Prairie.”

“Do I take it from that that he was assigned no morning duties?”

“He had no morning duties assigned.”

“Okay. If there was any lack of sleep on the part of Mr. Vogel on the evening of October 17, can you give any explanation from the company’s point of view as to why that may have happened?”

“
I could see no reason whatsoever for any lack of sleep,” Dale said.

“Okay. And did Mr. Vogel conduct the flights on the afternoon of October 18?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And how many hours of flying time is that?” Bassie asked.

“Three hours of flight time.”

“When was he next scheduled to work for your company?”

“Well, his next schedule was the same for the Friday as he flew on the Thursday, which is the five o’clock departure from Grande Prairie to Edmonton with a return through High Prairie and Peace River–Fairview.”

“Again, I take it he was not assigned any duties on the morning of October 19?”

“That’s correct.”

“And if he did not get a full night’s sleep on the evening of October 18, is there anything from the point of view of your company that you can give as a reason for that?”

“Nothing in the operation at all that should have kept him from getting a proper rest,” Dale said.

“So is it correct, Mr. Wells,” Bassie concluded, “Mr. Vogel did not have any flying duties with your company for the morning of October 17, the morning of October 18, the morning of October 19, 1984?”

“That’s correct.”

“And is it also correct that for October 17, 18 and 19, he flew only in the afternoon?”

“For assigned duties, that’s correct.”

“On any of those days, October 16, 17, 18 or 19, did Mr. Vogel complain to you about being tired or fatigued?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Wells, is there any doubt that Mr. Vogel was the pilot-in-command … at the time of the fatal crash?”

“There is no doubt whatsoever.”

“He was the pilot-in-command at the time that aircraft took off?”

“Yes.”

“And as a pilot-in-command, is it not correct that he could have declined to depart if he so desired?”

Dale’s answer was unwavering: “Yes, that’s correct.”

During the inquiry, more than twenty witnesses would take the stand, including Larry, Paul and Scott. Mechanics, passengers and pilots—most former Wapiti employees—lined up behind Erik to admit that they, too, had experienced safety deficiencies. In the end, the inquest left many unanswered questions. For Erik, however, it had been a nightmare that was almost as bad as the crash itself.