UAAG CH8

Piloting an aircraft is not like riding a bicycle, where one can simply adjust the handlebars or pedal harder to achieve the desired result.

An airplane is indisputably a massive behemoth.

Even a small flap weighs dozens of kilograms, making it difficult for an ordinary person to budge.

Therefore, pilots certainly do not rely on brute force to control the aircraft, but rather on a complete control system.

A hundred years ago, this system was realized through the simplest pulleys and steel cables, utilizing the principle of leverage; this was known as a mechanical system.

Later, it evolved into a hydraulic system. Through hydraulic pumps, human strength was amplified to achieve control over the aircraft. For instance, if a pilot exerted only 1 Newton of force, the hydraulic pump could amplify it hundreds or thousands of times, thus allowing the manipulation of this massive machine.

And now, with the development of computers, the fly-by-wire system has gradually become mainstream.

Fly-by-wire allows computers to control the aircraft.

This viewpoint still holds a certain degree of controversy within the industry.

Whether the pilot should be the primary authority or the computer should take precedence is a subject of endless debate among major aircraft manufacturers, each having its own focus.

However, what is undisputed is that they all use fly-by-wire systems on their new aircraft.

The McFly F435 uses a fly-by-wire system.

The fly-by-wire system encompasses every aspect of the aircraft; the computer can control the takeoff and landing, rudder angle changes, and engine thrust.

Since EASA confirmed “quadruple engine flameout” as the cause of the accident, they first ruled out fuel exhaustion and weather factors. What they suspected next was not human factors, but the fly-by-wire system.

Computers can make mistakes.

A computer error shutting down four engines simultaneously was the most probable cause of the accident.

Yet now, Zhuo Huan was telling him to investigate the engines.

To investigate the engines related to the fly-by-wire system, not the fly-by-wire system related to the engines.

The engine was the subject, and the fly-by-wire system was secondary.

This decision was baffling.

Just as Fu Cheng had said, all four engines had flamed out together.

If there really was a problem with the engines themselves, how could all four fail at the same time? But now that Zhuo Huan had ordered them to start investigating the engines, everyone found it incredible, yet they had no choice but to start checking for metal fatigue.

Metal fatigue.

Metal materials will experience structural damage after long periods of repeating the same tasks.

Quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes; when microscopic cracks and damage accumulate to a certain degree, a fracture will occur.

Previous investigators hadn’t conducted a detailed inspection of the engines, so it was very likely that they had mistaken engine part damage caused by metal fatigue for damage caused by the explosion after the crash.

What everyone had to do now was to find every key component, inspect it in detail, and determine whether it was damaged before the crash or only after.

This was physically demanding work.

Everyone inspected together for a whole day, yet they only covered one-twentieth of the work.

At this moment, the black box was delivered by McFly.

The moment he saw the black box, Su Fei, with tears in his eyes, ran up excitedly. “Is this for me?”

Old Joseph didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Look how happy you are.”

Su Fei was overjoyed. After following the staff to deliver the black box upstairs, he ran back down and said to Fu Cheng, “Brother, sorry, I have to leave you alone. I’m going to do another great undertaking. Don’t worry, once I fix the black box, I can prove RIP is wrong and save you from this sea of bitterness.”

Fu Cheng smiled. “Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

Su Fei immediately felt as if he were shouldering the hopes of the entire village to defeat the Great Demon King. With a noble mood, he returned to the second floor. As he left, he even kicked the air in Zhuo Huan’s direction. Fu Cheng’s eyes widened in surprise. After Su Fei left, he turned his head and looked in the direction Su Fei had just kicked.

That person didn’t look like a Great Demon King at all.

He was wearing a white T-shirt, with a black jacket tied casually around his waist. His somewhat long hair had been swept back a few times by its owner and tied into a small bun. He held a flashlight in his right hand and a metal fatigue detector in his left. Sitting on a high stool inside the No. 1 engine, with the flashlight beam directed upward, he was carefully inspecting every component inside the upper part of the engine.

He was incredibly focused, as if a curtain of water separated him from the noisy human voices outside.

There seemed to be light in his eyes.

Fu Cheng calmly looked away.

The repair of the black box was even more difficult than Su Fei had imagined.

It made sense; if this black box were so easy to repair, McFly wouldn’t have spent months on it without finishing.

Twenty-three days later, the metal fatigue assessment of the engines was completed, and no signs of metal fatigue were found.

On the other hand, the black box repair was still not finished.

Spending a full twenty-three days inspecting four engines from the inside out, only to find nothing. The UAAG team didn’t have much to say, but investigators from other organizations privately voiced some objections.

When Fu Cheng came out of the pantry with water, he heard an EASA investigator whispering to a companion, “Although Mr. Patrick is recognized in the industry as a genius aircraft designer, this is an accident investigation, not designing a plane. This is only his second time participating in an aircraft accident investigation, right? He has no experience at all; he’s wasted over twenty days for nothing.”

“To be accurate, this could count as his first time. In the Rogue Aviation crash four years ago, the black box was never recovered from the sea, and after more than three years of investigation, no clues were found at all.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Patrick, but perhaps he is more suited to building planes than investigating air crashes… er…”

Fu Cheng walked past the two of them, holding his cup.

One of them hurriedly said, “Fu, don’t misunderstand, we didn’t mean it that way.”

Stopping in his tracks, Fu Cheng turned around, looked at them, and said word by word in a calm but firm voice, “He is Reid Irvin Patrick.”

After speaking, he walked away.

Behind him, the two EASA investigators froze in place, silent.

The black-haired young man, holding his cup, had only walked a few steps to the corner when he suddenly stopped.

After a long while, Fu Cheng’s voice was calm: “Teacher Zhuo.”

Zhuo Huan held a cup of coffee in his right hand, his back leaning lightly against the wall. He lowered his head to take a sip of coffee, then turned his head to look at Fu Cheng. “You seem to always have this expression.”

“Teacher Zhuo?”

“Calm, peaceful, neither sad nor happy.” Straightening up, Zhuo Huan thought for a moment. “When you smile, it’s polite and distant; when you don’t smile, you stand there like a statue. Oh right, a bit like that.”

Fu Cheng looked in the direction his finger was pointing.

Lina was a standard Frenchwoman, full of romance and a sense of ritual. Even working temporarily in a foreign country, she had a SEEROSE preserved flower bear on her desk. The pink rose bear was cherished inside a glass dome, tied with a black ribbon bow.

Withdrawing his gaze, Fu Cheng said, “I don’t understand what you are saying, Teacher Zhuo.”

Zhuo Huan looked at him deeply.

For a long time.

Mr. Long Legs strode forward, issuing a command: “Let’s go, let’s go downstairs and have a look.”

Night had fallen, and the staff had all returned to the second floor to organize the metal fatigue data inspected earlier. The first floor was empty, housing only the four massive engines.

There were confidential parts everywhere, so the two threw their disposable cups into the trash bin while going downstairs to prevent any accidents.

As he walked, Zhuo Huan said, “Excluding weather causes and human factors, if the flight system was at fault, where do you think the error most likely occurred?”

“The fly-by-wire system.”

“So certain?”

“Yes.” Fu Cheng added, “You only asked for the most likely place, not 100%.”

“What if it must be the engines?”

Fu Cheng looked up at him, finally revealing a puzzled expression. “Why must it be the engines?”

Zhuo Huan pointed to his own brain. “Intuition.”

Fu Cheng: “The current monitoring results show that no part of the engine is damaged. Except for damage caused by the explosion after the crash, it is intact.”

Zhuo Huan spoke as if to himself, “On January 17, 2008, British Airways Flight 38 suffered a simultaneous flameout of all four engines while landing at Heathrow Airport, finally crash-landing on the grass before the runway. Fortunately, no one died. The subsequent investigation showed the cause was poor design of the engine’s heat exchanger. When the plane flew over Russia, the temperature was too low, causing moisture in the fuel to freeze into ice. The ice slush blocked the fuel pipes. Without fuel, the engines naturally flamed out. Sound familiar?”

Fu Cheng nodded.

He used to be a pilot, but after being transferred to UAAG a month ago, he had crammed a lot of accident investigation materials. The British Airways Flight 38 accident was within the scope of his reading.

Fu Cheng: “Because that accident was caused by icing, after the plane crashed, all the ice melted into water and vanished. This created a huge obstacle for the investigation process. It took the AAIB eight months to find out the truth.”

Zhuo Huan: “Sound familiar?”

Fu Cheng was stunned.

Zhuo Huan laughed, his voice languid. “It’s very similar to this time. Also flying over the Arctic Circle, water disappears, so the culprit can’t be found. The culprit this time has also bizarrely disappeared.”

A buzz exploded in Fu Cheng’s mind.

This face, described as a preserved flower statue, finally transformed with a rich array of emotions. He said hurriedly, “Are you saying that this time it’s also a water problem?!”

“Did I say that?”

Fu Cheng froze. “Teacher Zhuo?”

Zhuo Huan didn’t answer but suddenly asked, “A month ago at the crash site, when you were stroking that piece of scorched earth at the initial impact point, what were you looking at?”

Fu Cheng parted his lips slightly.

“Or rather, what did you see?”

A falcon-like gaze shot straight over, piercing into the depths of the black-haired young man’s eyes.

There was an imperceptible smile at the corner of Zhuo Huan’s mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes; he scrutinized the young man before him sharply. It was hard to describe what kind of look it was, but Fu Cheng sensed a trace of hope and desire in it.

This man seemed to be expecting something, expecting him to give a certain answer, and then use his answer to prove something else.

What was it?

After pondering for a long time, Fu Cheng said, “If I say it, can you promise not to laugh?”

Zhuo Huan hadn’t expected such an answer at all. “What?”

Fu Cheng looked at him earnestly and repeated, word for word, “Can you promise not to laugh?”

“…Mn.”

Fu Cheng: “I feel like it was its fault.”

“Him?”

“It. The McFly F435… that plane.”

Zhuo Huan: “…”

Fu Cheng: “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

Zhuo Huan covered his cheek. “Did I laugh?”

Fu Cheng: “…”

His face gradually grew hot. Fu Cheng regretted it immensely. Why did he give this answer? He could have just made something up, or ignored this man’s question like he did a month ago. The only thing he was thankful for was that it was night, and the lights on the first floor weren’t on; no matter how bright the moonlight was, it couldn’t reveal his slightly red cheeks.

The embarrassment in his heart was gradually turning into anger, but just before that shame and anger could erupt, a hand, so cold it almost made one feel lonely, gently pressed on his head.

Fu Cheng slowly raised his head.

Zhuo Huan rubbed his hair, then curled his finger and flicked him lightly on the forehead.

“Thank you. I like this answer.”

The man stepped around him and turned to walk upstairs.

Halfway up, Zhuo Huan stood in the middle of the stairs and turned his head to look at Fu Cheng. “Su Fei says he can fix the black box by tomorrow. Want to know the answer?”

The moonlight wasn’t particularly bright, yet it illuminated this man, and also illuminated the young pilot standing at the foot of the stairs.

Fu Cheng couldn’t help but step onto the stairs, walking to this person’s side.

The next day, the black box repair was completed. Su Fei imported all the flight data into the computer. Just as he was about to perform a detailed data organization, Zhuo Huan interrupted him: “Listen to the CVR first.”

CVR, Cockpit Voice Recorder, records all sounds in the aircraft.

On the second floor of the investigation headquarters, dozens of people tensed their backs in unison, waiting for this final answer.

Su Fei nodded and began importing the data from the CVR.

In an instant, hundreds of sound wave curves appeared on the computer screen.

Zhuo Huan: “Use Fourier transform to isolate the sounds in the cockpit. I want to hear what the pilots said, as well as the instrument alert tones in the cockpit. Only play the last thirty seconds for now.”

Half an hour later, the sounds of the last thirty seconds before Japan Airlines JL917 crashed slowly rang out from the speakers.

“Confirm throttle retard.”

“Throttle retard confirmed.”

“Flaps 30.”

“Flaps 30 confirmed.”

“Prepare to lower landing gear… Wait, I suddenly lost thrust.”

“Check engine switches.”

“Engine switches are on.”

“What about the throttle?”

“Four engines flamed out. Ah, quick, we’re going to crash!”

“Ah, pull up, pull up!”

A piercing alarm sounded. The McFly F435’s Ground Proximity Warning System announced over and over in a cold voice—

“GLIDE SLOPE! GLIDE SLOPE! GLIDE SLOPE!”

“Ahhhhhhh we’re going to crash!”

Bang—

Dead silence filled the investigation headquarters.

No one knew how much time had passed before a cold, thin voice spoke.

Zhuo Huan: “Japan Airlines JL917 crash accident: Human factors are confirmed to be excluded.”

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