Intervention
By Peter Garrison
October 2008
I went to a Catholic grammar school (where they actually taught grammar, by the way -- a dying art). The Sisters of the Holy Cross, always eager to tamp down heresy among the 10-year-olds, dealt with the conundrum of evil and God's will (if God is all-good, why does He allow bad things to happen?) by the example of two trains heading in opposite directions on the same track, but hidden from one another by a hill. A human observer atop the hill sees the disaster impending, but is powerless to prevent it. God, on the other hand, sees all, and has the power. Why does He not act?
Unfortunately, I've forgotten the punch line. I suspect it must have had something to do with our not understanding the big picture. This was the '50s; maybe there was a communist on one of the trains.
Anyway, intervening in the lives and affairs of our fellow human beings has always been difficult. When, and how, do we take away Grandpa's car keys? Has the time come to jeopardize our lifelong friendship with Sally by telling her she's drinking too much? Should teenaged Josh be forbidden to hang out with Josh (everybody is named Josh these days), or should we gamble that he will figure it out for himself before he becomes a meth addict?
Such questions are all but impossible to answer. You only hope that it never becomes necessary to say, "If I had only known!"
In October 2007 a 63-year-old instrument-rated private pilot, who was both a priest and the owner of a four-seat J Bonanza, borrowed the five-seat A36 Bonanza of a friend (the A36, normally fitted with six seats, had only five, according to the National Transportation Safety Board) to transport four members of a family from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Houston, Texas. It would be a 385 nm flight, heading almost due south. The pilot was quite familiar with the A36, having logged 200 of his 1,500 hours in it.
The pilot had obtained the weather forecast from a DUATs site, and called Fort Worth Flight Service at 12:40 to "make sure things were holding together okay." He mentioned that he was concerned about weather "hazards," because he would have children aboard the airplane. The weather report included thunderstorms at Tulsa after 3:00, with gusty surface winds and a likelihood of moderate turbulence up to 15,000 feet. It was not the best day to take children flying, perhaps, but not the worst either.
Takeoff was planned for 1:30, but didn't actually happen until a little before 2 o'clock. By then weather was approaching from the west, and distant lightning could be seen. The wind was blowing 16 knots with occasional gusts to 29, but the tower received no reports of wind shear from arriving and departing aircraft. There were broken cloud layers at 3,400 and 4,300 feet, and the temperature was 80° F.
The A36 was cleared for takeoff at 1:57, with an IFR clearance. The tower controller watched the airplane depart and noted that the gear seemed to come up sooner "than what seemed normal," though this might be expected if the pilot were trying to build a speed cushion as rapidly as possible in view of the gusty conditions. She also noticed that the airplane did not seem to be climbing very fast. She instructed the pilot to contact departure control, but there was no response. Departure control made several attempts to contact him, likewise without success.
Radar showed the airplane climbing to about 650 agl, then beginning to descend. Its groundspeed was 70 knots, corresponding to an indicated airspeed of perhaps 90 knots.
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