UAAG CH53

The exposure from public opinion was like a raging fire, roasting the NTSB and the GCAA over the coals.

While fending off the storm of prying eyes and interviews from reporters, both sides coincidentally accelerated their experiments. Three days later, the NTSB and GCAA obtained their results at almost the exact same moment.

Maha flipped through the experiment report as he spoke: “Judging by the shedding of the flap fragments, the experiments estimate an 80% probability that the aluminum alloy skin on the upper surface of the flap peeled off, and a 20% probability that a flap segment fell off directly. The Boeing 777 used for Flight 411 had only been in service for four months at the time of the crash. The possibility of metal fatigue is extremely low; we preliminarily suspect maintenance errors, such as issues with screws.”

As soon as his words fell, the airline representative’s face darkened instantly. “Our airline has never made a mistake in maintenance. We would rather ground a plane forever than repair it sloppily!”

Maha looked up at him. “It is merely a suspicion. It doesn’t necessarily mean the airline erred intentionally. In the accident of British Airways Flight 5390 in 1990, the maintenance department used screws that were 2 millimeters smaller than the standard size when fixing the windscreen, relying solely on visual estimation. This ultimately caused the windscreen to blow out at high altitude, and the captain was sucked halfway out of the cockpit. If it was a careless maintenance error, it is not impossible.”

The airline representative still disagreed with Maha’s view, yet he couldn’t completely refute the judgment.

The wreckage of the plane had been destroyed over twenty years ago.

Maha couldn’t produce evidence to prove the airline’s maintenance was at fault; likewise, the airline couldn’t produce evidence to prove they were faultless.

At this moment, NTSB Director Lawrance stood up to report on the engine blade fracture tests. “After conducting 76 live tests on the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engine, we have reached the following conclusions.”

“First, when heat resistance reaches 1050°C, and at a speed of over 32 knots, the test material can pass through the fuel chamber almost undamaged.”

“Second, if the material has a Mohs hardness above 4—specifically 4.25 or higher—it can withstand the internal pressure of the engine.”

“Third, materials with a ductility of 3.2N/mm can, under certain conditions, pass through the fan blades of the front low-pressure module almost undamaged.”

Lawrance raised his head. “These are the NTSB’s experimental data and results from the last four days. Physical materials satisfying these properties are not rare. However, achieving a relative speed of over 32 knots without being shredded by the low-pressure fan blades is extremely difficult. My suggestion is to look for aircraft that were in the same or higher airspace as Flight 411 at the time. Flight 411 exploded suddenly during takeoff; there were many other planes departing from Dubai in the nearby airspace.”

Hearing this, everyone looked at Lawrance.

Old Joseph asked, “You mean to say it’s possible a part fell off another plane and, by a one-in-a-million coincidence, flew right into Flight 411’s engine?”

Maha frowned. “The probability is too low. What kind of coincidence would that have to be!”

Lawrance countered, “Isn’t an air crash exactly caused by a series of coincidences?”

No one could refute his words.

The conference room fell into silence.

Lawrance looked up at Zhuo Huan. “Patrick, what do you think?”

Zhuo Huan pondered for a long time. He looked at his team members. Old Joseph shook his head at him; clearly, neither Maha’s “maintenance error” reason nor Lawrance’ “falling part from the sky” reason was very convincing. He then looked at Fu Cheng, who also looked at him seriously and gently shook his head.

Zhuo Huan withdrew his gaze, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the table. “Find the survivors again.”

Lawrance was stunned. “We’ve reviewed Yamila Betty’s witness report countless times, and she has repeated it to us many times. We need to find her again? She probably can’t provide any more clues.”

Zhuo Huan said, “Find the other survivors who were on the plane. There were over a hundred survivors. Statistically speaking, it shouldn’t be only Yamila Betty who sensed something abnormal.”

Soon, the GCAA investigators dug through the accident files and found the information on all the survivors of Flight 411.

However, twenty-three years had passed, and many survivors had passed away for various reasons. Of the more than 100 passengers who survived back then, only 63 could be contacted today. Half of them were unwilling to recall the crash, or due to PTSD, had chosen to selectively forget everything that happened.

Without delay, the three parties cooperated, and investigators began video inquiries with the 35 survivors willing to provide testimony and recall the crash.

That evening, at the investigation headquarters, in the conference room.

Fu Cheng stood in front of the whiteboard, looking at everyone before his eyes finally met his companion’s. After a nod, he spoke: “Let’s review the entire sequence of events again. First, regrettably, Flight 411’s black box was completely destroyed in the explosion following the crash. At the same time, because the nose hit the ground first, all three pilots in the cockpit perished. So, no one knows what the plane actually experienced when the crash occurred. Under these circumstances, we can only confirm the general flight state through survivor interviews.”

The NTSB investigators had done this twenty-three years ago.

No black box, no video records, no pilots. How do you know what a plane, blown almost to pieces, experienced before it crashed?

You can only ask the survivors, piecing together the truth from their scattered fragments of memory.

Fu Cheng continued, “On the morning of July 11, 1998, at 10:31 AM, Flight 411 took off from Dubai International Airport bound for Sydney with tower clearance. Takeoff was smooth. It was a sunny day in Dubai, but there was a tropical airflow swirling in the skies east of the airport.”

“The flight was stable, and communication with the tower was steady. When it flew near the tropical cyclone, it experienced the expected turbulence. Afterward, the NTSB interviewed other pilots in the same airspace and confirmed that this tropical cyclone would at most cause bumps but would not affect normal flight safety.”

“During the turbulence, according to the testimony of witness Yamila Betty, she saw a fragment fly out from the flap on the right wing.”

Old Joseph frowned and asked, “What is the probability of a tropical cyclone causing surface material to fall off and destroy an engine?”

Fu Cheng paused, looked at him, and said steadily, “What do you think?”

Old Joseph shrugged, resigned. “I was joking.”

That was probably less likely than the airline going bankrupt today.

Fu Cheng continued, “After Yamila Betty saw the fragment fly off the flap, she recalled hearing a ‘boom’ within three seconds. Other passengers corroborated her testimony; none of them saw the fragment fly off the flap, but they all heard the massive explosion. It was later proven to be the sound of the engine exploding.”

“After the explosion, the plane began violent, irregular movements, and about five minutes later, it crashed into the desert by the Persian Gulf.”

“That concludes the recollections of all survivors.”

After speaking, Fu Cheng looked at the man sitting at the very front.

Zhuo Huan was spinning a fountain pen in one hand, looking down at the ground, thinking silently.

After a moment of silence, Fu Cheng spoke up, “Teacher Zhuo, what do you think?”

Zhuo Huan raised his eyes and looked at him. After their eyes met, Zhuo Huan stood up and walked to the whiteboard. Fu Cheng walked down quite naturally and sat in his own seat.

Zhuo Huan stood by the whiteboard, swept his gaze across the room, and pointed the tip of his pen directly at Lawrance. “PASS on the possibility of a foreign flying object.”

Lawrance was stunned and exclaimed, “Why? It is a possibility, even if it sounds a bit absurd. But as far as I know, Dubai International Airport was extremely busy that day, with over 70 planes taking off and landing within five minutes.”

A sarcastic smile touched the corner of Zhuo Huan’s mouth. “Are you questioning your superior’s ability? If there really was a foreign object that got churned into the engine, no matter how shattered it was by the explosion, that boss of yours could find it in the endless sand and nail it to the chain of evidence. Levi Andrew could find fan blades even when they were shattered like that and conduct experiments on them; you think he couldn’t find a piece of foreign material that didn’t belong to the plane?”

Lawrance was left speechless.

Zhuo Huan continued, “We will set aside the airline’s maintenance issues for now, keeping them only as a final reference. First, we must clarify one issue: the thing that tore apart this Boeing 777’s fan blade definitely originated from the plane itself.”

Fu Cheng thought for a moment and raised his hand. “Only from the engine?”

Zhuo Huan looked at him. “Not necessarily.”

Fu Cheng was silent for a moment before speaking. “Last year, when we investigated the JAL 917 crash, there was an invisible culprit. It was electromagnetic waves. If the NTSB’s ace investigator, Mr. Andrew, combined with everyone here today, cannot find a culprit capable of simultaneously severing the fan blade and the flap… could it be that it has already disappeared, or was invisible from the start?”

As Fu Cheng’s voice faded, Zhuo Huan suddenly froze.

At the same time, Old Joseph, Lawrance, and the others showed expressions of astonishment.

Rustling whispers of discussion filled the conference room.

Zhuo Huan looked at Fu Cheng, his gaze sharp. “Reason.”

The reason—the reason for suddenly proposing this view.

Fu Cheng looked back at him seriously and gave his answer. “I just feel that if I were investigating a crash of a top-tier, practically perfect aircraft, where a low-pressure fan blade located in front of the tail cone suddenly broke off, and after so many people searched together afterwards, the culprit still couldn’t be found… then… when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” His voice paused; Fu Cheng seemed to want to say something else, but he closed his mouth and spoke no further.

Zhuo Huan’s gaze lingered on him for a few seconds, then he looked at everyone sitting around the table and said, “An invisible killer—it’s not impossible. For the next phase of the investigation, start from this angle.”

In the UAAG office, everyone began discussing possible causes of the accident.

Su Fei spoke without hesitation: “Electromagnetic waves. JAL 917 was affected by aurorae, causing magnetic turbulence in the plane’s MCD magnetic chip detector, which finally affected the plane’s fly-by-wire system.”

Fu Cheng shook his head. “It can’t be electromagnetic waves. EM waves might cause engine abnormalities, but they absolutely wouldn’t cause the skin of the flaps to peel off.” He paused, then added, “The peeling of the flap is definitely caused by an objectively visible physical reason.”

“You are contradicting yourself.”

Everyone snapped their heads around to look at the man sitting by the window.

Zhuo Huan, chewing gum, stood up and calmly dragged his chair into the middle of the group.

Lina was somewhat surprised. “Reid?”

Master Zhuo sat down carelessly on the chair, crossed his legs, and looked at Fu Cheng. “Your proposal is an invisible killer. But you also say the shedding of the flap fragment was a visible physical action.”

Fu Cheng’s lips moved slightly.

Old Joseph came up with a reason. “Perhaps these two events really aren’t connected, just a coincidence? The flap fragment peeling off might be an airline maintenance error, or an extremely rare material fracture. Or to put it simply, maybe Yamila Betty just saw it wrong, or… she made it all up. She never saw any flap peeling; she just didn’t want to be deported, so she concocted this lie.”

The office suddenly fell quiet.

After a long while, Zhuo Huan scoffed. “Treat that as the last possibility.”

Su Fei: “If it’s not electromagnetic waves, what is it?”

Old Joseph thought for a moment. “When investigating the JAL 917 crash last year, we mentioned the 2008 British Airways Flight 38 crash, where ice crystals clogged the fuel pipes, eventually causing the engines to flame out. Of course, this accident happened in Dubai in the summer; ice is absolutely impossible. But is it possible… the culprit is water?”

Fu Cheng shook his head. “Water, even ice, cannot sever the fan blades of an aircraft engine.”

Although Lina couldn’t insert herself into these topics, she was full of love for airplanes; otherwise, she wouldn’t have resigned from the UN to come to UAAG. She poured coffee for everyone and smiled. “No need to rush. It’s been twenty-three years; a few more days won’t matter.”

Su Fei: “Invisible killer… not water, not electromagnetic waves… is it temperature? Extremely high temperature?”

Zhuo Huan glanced at him and let out a cold sneer through his nose. “I asked you to think; did I ask you to spout nonsense? How high a temperature? Over 1000°C? Oh, the fuel chamber of the Trent 800 engine itself reaches temperatures of 1000°C.”

Su Fei: “…”

“Then how am I supposed to think! It has to be invisible, and it has to be able to break the internal fan of the plane AND the external flap at the same time! Does this thing have three heads and six arms? And why did it only target the right wing and the right engine? Does it look down on the left engine?”

Fu Cheng suddenly froze. He said with surprise, “No, it’s not that it didn’t target the left wing and left engine; it’s that its range of influence was only on the right side.”

Old Joseph also snapped to attention. He quickly said to Lina, “Lina, can you print me a 3D structural diagram of the Boeing 777?”

Lina smiled gently. “Of course.”

But Zhuo Huan said, “Too slow.”

Everyone looked at him in surprise.

Zhuo Huan turned sideways, reached out his long arm to grab a blank sheet of paper from his desk. Holding a pen, he quickly drew a smooth curve on the white paper. Then, curve after curve spread across the paper at high speed. The black ink continuously bloomed on the white paper, as if he didn’t need to think at all; in just thirty seconds, a hollowed-out Boeing 777 appeared on the paper.

Of course, only half of it—only the right wing, the engine beneath the wing, and the individual fan blades inside that engine.

Fu Cheng reached out and pointed to the flap at the rear of the wing. “Here. Betty said the ‘fragment’ she saw flew out from here.”

Zhuo Huan drew a circle on the flap. Then, he drew another circle on the low-pressure fan blades at the rear of the engine.

Everyone looked at the diagram he had drawn.

Old Joseph stared at the structure on the paper in astonishment. “Actually, the flap fragment and the broken fan blade… aren’t very far apart.”

Yes, although one is on the upper surface of the wing and the other is inside the engine, if you ignore the layers of metal separating them and look only at the straight-line distance, the flap fragment and the fan blade fragment are almost right next to each other!

Fu Cheng immediately said, “We should see exactly how far apart they are, check the actual distance…”

“1.9 meters.”

The voice stopped abruptly, and Fu Cheng looked at Zhuo Huan.

Zhuo Huan lowered his eyes, gazing calmly at the black lines on the paper. As if sensing the young man’s stare, he looked up. “Visual estimation. The ratio of the wing’s maximum thickness t to the chord length c is the relative thickness. The relative thickness of the Boeing 777 is about 14%…”

Just then, there was a knock on the office door.

Everyone turned to the entrance. Outside the glass door, Lawrance was holding a document in one hand while craning his neck to look at the group inside. Seeing that everyone had noticed him, he waved, a look of delight actually on his face—clearly, he was in a good mood.

After receiving permission, he pushed the door open and said happily, “Fu, regarding that invisible killer you mentioned yesterday, I went back and thought about it for a long time. I found a document. July 1996, TWA Flight 800 crash. That was a Boeing 747. Because it sat on the tarmac for three hours in the heat before takeoff, the fuel vapor in the center wing tank became flammable. This caused the fuel vapor temperature to reach 114°F after takeoff. The high temperature combined with a short circuit led to a fuel tank explosion, a chain reaction that caused the engine to explode.”

Lawrance couldn’t hide his excitement. “Look, an invisible killer—it’s temperature!”

Su Fei looked at Lawrance like he was an idiot. Mimicking Zhuo Huan’s tone from earlier, he said sarcastically, “I asked you to think; did I ask you to spout nonsense?”

Lawrance froze.

Su Fei continued, “High temperature? Fuel tank explosion? Are you doubting your boss’s ability? If the fuel tank had actually exploded, would he not have found out twenty-three years ago?”

Lawrance was left stunned by Su Fei’s words, completely unable to react.

The punk teenager was quite proud of himself. He looked at his companions, hoping to garner some praise and approval. However, under the bright office lights, Fu Cheng was frowning slightly, and Old Joseph also wore a peculiar expression. Zhuo Huan looked up at Lawrance. After a long while, he let out a scoffing laugh, his voice lazy. “Did you find that document, or did that boss of yours find it?”

Lawrance: “…”

Sighing, Lawrance said helplessly, “Yes, it was Deputy Director Andrew who found the case file; he suggested this direction. Hey, don’t look at me like that, Patrick. You said it before—I am Deputy Director Andrew’s subordinate. That’s right, I am his trusted aide. You all know the reason I came to Dubai, so is there any problem with me reporting the investigation progress to the Deputy Director every day?”

Zhuo Huan didn’t even spare Lawrance a glance from his peripheral vision, leaving him only a contemptuous sneer.

Su Fei was confused. “Wait, what does this mean? I said temperature, and RIP mocked me. Lawrance says temperature, and you guys are praising him?”

Old Joseph: “Sigh, how do you still not get it! Temperature isn’t the point; the point is the Fuel Tank Explosion! In the TWA 800 crash, the engine explosion, and even the fuel tank explosion, were easily discovered afterward. But Flight 411 is different. Twenty-three years ago, it was blown to smithereens, and the investigation team only found the engine explosion. But perhaps, back then, they didn’t discover that this plane’s fuel tank also suffered a minor explosion. It was just an extremely small explosion, masked by the conditions of the larger explosion.”

Lina also asked curiously, “Wait a minute, I’m a little confused. Since you said they didn’t find a fuel tank explosion back then, on what basis can you deduce today, twenty-three years later, that a fuel tank explosion occurred? This time, you don’t even have the battered wreckage.”

Master Zhuo gave a light snort. Once his mood soured, his face would darken instantly. He stood up, hands in his pockets, and began to walk out of the office.

Everyone called out to him in surprise: “Reid?”

As he walked past Fu Cheng, he stuffed the paper with the drawing of the Boeing 777’s right-side structure into the young man’s arms.

Fu Cheng turned his head. “Teacher Zhuo?”

Zhuo Huan stopped by the door and looked back at him. “When I am angry, you either do my work for me and tell that foolish Harvard graduate where he is wrong. Or…” The corners of his lips curled up slowly, and Zhuo Huan raised an eyebrow at Fu Cheng. “Or, you can do another thing to make me stop being angry.”

Su Fei raged, “Who is the foolish Harvard graduate?!”

Old Joseph and Lina, however, were wondering…

Old Joseph: “What is the other thing?”

Lina knitted her slender brows. “Another thing?”

His fingers tightened, and his ears felt slightly warm. The heart in his chest skipped a beat, but when their eyes met, the young man’s gaze upon Zhuo Huan remained incredibly calm.

Fu Cheng’s voice was steady. “If you want to smoke, you can go outside. Teacher Zhuo, smoking is prohibited inside the investigation headquarters.”

“…Tsk.”

Zhuo Huan turned and left.

In the office, Fu Cheng withdrew his gaze and explained, “TWA 800… that fuel tank explosion had a massive impact; it was almost impossible to ignore during the investigation, and the remnants of the explosion were obvious. But for the Flight 411 crash, the reason we suspect a difficult-to-detect, small-scale fuel tank explosion is because of the flap fragment and the severed fan blade.”

When he threw the paper to Fu Cheng, Zhuo Huan had tossed his commonly used fountain pen to him as well. It was a Montblanc, the classic black 146 model.

Fu Cheng took the pen and drew a circle on the white paper, encompassing both the flap and the engine.

“If a tiny, localized explosion occurred inside the fuel tank—one difficult to see with the naked eye and causing no external changes—then the fracture of the flap and the fracture of the engine fan both have a reason.”

“That invisible killer…” Fu Cheng looked up at Su Fei. “The shockwave from the explosion.“

“The shockwave from the explosion directly cracked the alloy material on the upper surface of the flap and also severed the nearest, weakest part of the fan blade.”

“This explosion was simply too small. At the time, the plane happened to encounter a tropical cyclone and was in a state of turbulence. The small-scale explosion inside the fuel tank was masked by the violent turbulence when it happened, and its traces were wiped away by the subsequent plane explosion. Only that spreading shockwave… it cut the fan blade, cracked the flap surface, and left the key evidence.”

Author’s Note:
Zhuo ‘RIP (Reid): Fu Cheng, kiss me.
Fu Chengcheng: [Silence] Mm, take care, Teacher Zhuo.

Support me on Ko-fi