Air Canada flight 110 departed Toronto at 14:00 January 16, 2017 bound for Vancouver on what turned out to be one of the oddest, most intriguing and by any stretch of the imagination unlikely flights yet recorded by civil aviation of any flag. The weather was fair as the almost new Boeing 787 ‘Dreamliner’ climbed to its assigned cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. However some unusual flight deck/cabin crew interactions that occurred en-route coupled with a situation already extant that most people would consider unthinkable puts this flight firmly in the ‘how could this possibly happen’ category.
With large airlines it is not unusual for the captain and first officer i.e. co-pilot to have not previously flown together or indeed to have even met in person as was the case on flight 110. Air Canada in fact has over 3,000 pilots. Similarly, the cabin crew may or may not have worked other flights with each other or with one, both or neither of the flight deck crew. Thanks to long established airline flight and cabin staff standardized training procedures, at least at the mainstream international carrier level, this lack of familiarity is not normally an issue with regard to safety or other operational considerations.
It seems from the cabin staffs’ perspective things began to unravel somewhat as the flight, according to their recollections of elapsed time from take off, was nearing Vancouver. Waiting for the instruction from the flight deck to prepare the cabin for descent and landing, one of the cabin staff, a twenty year veteran in the business and on this flight in fact the chief flight attendant began to feel a sense of unease as, even allowing for strong weather related headwinds and/or high velocities from the west to east flowing jet stream there had been no noticeable engine power reduction or hint of descent. This in spite of the fact that the flight duration was already almost an hour beyond the typical elapsed time for the east to west flight of roughly five and a half hours and was thus running considerably behind schedule.
It was still daylight but barely and they were above unbroken cloud hence no landmarks were visible not even 10,000 feet plus British Columbia mountain tops were penetrating the cloud. Thus none of the usual markers readily identifying the Vancouver approach area from the east were visible from the cabin windows. Concerned given the already well extended flight duration and after a discussion with colleagues the chief flight attendant decided to page the flight deck. There was no response. She tried again assuming the pilots had been momentarily fully occupied presumably with the upcoming landing tasks. Again there was no response.
Not wishing to risk breaking protocol with a visit to the cockpit close to landing for what was hopefully and indeed likely no good reason, after further discussion with the other cabin crew, the chief attendant decided to wait a further ten minutes before paging the flight deck again. After all the aircraft was in stable and level flight. They were probably just running late for whatever valid reason and of course aircraft are required to carry fuel sufficient to reach an alternate airport within forty five minutes flying time of the destination airport should there be a weather or other issue preventing a landing at the target destination. She in fact allowed close to twenty minutes to go by but with still no landing instructions from the cockpit and still no discernible change in course or altitude, the attendant picked up the microphone once again. Still there was no response. A trip to the cockpit for information was she felt by then more than justified. Not wishing to raise any concerns among the passengers, she made her way slowly towards the cockpit. She noted some anxiety on the faces of some of the frequent flyer passengers she recognized. She knocked on the cockpit door. No response. She knocked again with increasing concern. Again no response.
Since the German Wings flight 9525 incident over the French Alps in March 2015, whereby a suicidal co-pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and then deliberately crash dived the aircraft into mountainous terrain at very high speed killing all on board, cabin staff not surprisingly have been wary any time there is a deviation from the norm regarding pilot communications with them. A further attempt at knocking this time very loudly on the cockpit door and in doing so almost certainly raising anxious concerns among the nearby first class passengers did, after a worrisome pause, produce a response from the co-pilot who, with a smartphone to his ear, appologised for the delay and invited her into the cockpit.
She found the captain poring over a laptop computer and talking on the radio as the co-pilot immediately returned to the conversation he was having on his phone. The captain further appologised for their slow response to the door knocks (the intercom it turned out was not working although neither pilots nor cabin staff knew that at this point) and explained that they had a problem with the autopilot in that it would not dis-engage. He explained that he was it touch with Boeing by radio and that the co-pitot was on the phone with Air Canada engineers. He asked the attendant to return to her station, to notify the other cabin staff of the situation and then wait for further updates that the co-pilot would provide in person before passing any information on to the passengers as clearly at that point such would be counterproductive and hopefully ultimately unnecessary.
The autopilot of course has to be disengaged in order to fly manually. An autopilot can be programmed to make a hands-off landing however with an apparent malfunction extant, no pilot would go ahead and trust the autopilot with the landing supposing even that it was indeed still programmable. Clearly they had to quickly find a way to disengage it as they had just overflown Vancouver, were closing in on Vancouver Island further west beyond which, assuming sufficient fuel to maintain flight, would put them over the open Pacific ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island with by then no runway within remaining range.
Boeing and company engineers had it turned out instructed the pilots to turn off the circuit breaker associated with the autopilot the panel for which was accessible, albeit with some difficulty, in the cockpit. They had done so to no apparent effect. What they did not know at that point was that they had been misinformed as to how to identify the correct breaker. They had in fact unknowingly disabled the cabin intercom instead. Further discussions with Boeing led to a review of the circuit breaker procedure just followed and the discovery that the wrong breaker had been turned off. The error was quickly resolved, the autopilot disengaged and the intercom restored.
Time was by now rapidly running out and low fuel warnings were flashing. The decision was made to maintain their cruising altitude of 32,000 feet (flight level FL320) for as long as possible to minimize fuel consumption (the air being denser and thus offering more drag at lower altitudes). The Captain at this point radioed a Mayday call thus triggering a full blown emergency response. Since it was now closer, Victoria became the emergency airfield of choice and they were given an immediate straight in approach. Since they would be over water (the Salish Sea) for all of the remaining flight the Captain planned on arriving high for the final approach and then losing altitude quickly by executing a figure eight pattern during descent as a glider pilot might do to come to a lower altitude close to the final landing approach without straying too far from the airfield; this in case they lost one or both engines. Modern airliners with their clean lines and surfaces do make passable gliders in fact as evidenced many years ago by the ‘Gimli’ glider – also an Air Canada Boeing which landed in Gimli, Manitoba completely out of fuel due to a mix up between metric (which was new to Canada at the time) and imperial units of measurement.
With the intercom now serviceable passengers were advised by the co-pilot that a ‘precautionary’ landing due to a now resolved autopilot issue was imminent, that it might be a slightly rougher than normal landing and thus to brace for impact, that it might not be a straight in approach due to ’technical constraints’ (the figure eight turns) and that they would be landing in Victoria. He also instructed passengers and cabin crew to don the under seat life jackets as a precaution.
A few minutes later the port or left engine shut down. They had barely started their descent and now they were indeed on the way to possible glider status. They increased power on the starboard engine to try to compensate. Concerned that they were about to lose it as well, they optimized the angle of and rate of descent for maximum distance to touch down in a glide if it came to that. They were at this point just below cloud and the runway lights were visible and about ten minutes flying time away.
The ‘flight attendants prepare the cabin for landing’ instruction came over the intercom and the attendants tried to assure passengers that all would be well. With one engine out and fuel now critically low, clearly there would be no opportunity for a go around in the event of a missed approach. Keen to touch down short on the runway in case the starboard engine flamed out before or even just after touch down thus depriving the pilots of the usual reverse thrust braking once on the runway, and with the available runway shorter than optimal for a 787, they applied full flaps to reduce airspeed to the bare minimum needed to retain flight control without getting too close to the stall. The rate of descent thus increased due to the slow speed and associated increased drag of the flaps. They delayed lowering the landing gear (more drag) until they were within easy gliding distance of the runway. They were aiming for the slowest, safe and with good control landing speed.
The wheels touched down hard only just inside the runway perimeter. Power was increased immediately and full reverse thrust applied along with and maximum wheel braking. The aircraft slewed briefly to the right due to the starboard engine’s reverse thrust but they managed to keep it within the confines of the runway pavement. Fortunately they soon came to a stop without further mishap. Fire trucks had raced along with them on each side but were not needed. There being no injuries reported by cabin staff the captain elected to taxi to the gate in the usual manner under the still serviceable starboard engine. En-route the captain apologized over the intercom for the incident explaining the autopilot issue that had caused it. The passengers cheered and gave a round of applause to thank the pilots for their professionalism regarding them as heroes for quite possibly saving their lives. Then a very strange thing happened.
On arrival at the gate and very uncharacteristically, both pilots de-planed before even the first class passengers. Even stranger – they have never been seen since and neither of them, it transpired, were Air Canada employees! Conjecture about the how and why of two ‘rogue’ pilots managing to pull off this stunt (for sure they could have done without the autopilot issue) has, not surprisingly, been considerable. The how it was possible was surprisingly simple. Too simple. The internet is notoriously one might say atrociously insecure to the point of farce. Anonymity and hacking have become a way of life for many on-line users. One of the pilots or perhaps a third party (a bored teenager?) simply and all too easily given also the poor security level on Air Canada’s employee website, hacked into it, determined who the two legitimate pilots were that had been assigned to the flight and then from the website sent them emails advising them of a flight crew change on flight 110 and that they would be advised further of their replacement flight assignment.
As to why two clearly well qualified, competent and experienced airline professionals would risk criminal charges, their future careers and employability is an open question perhaps never to be answered. Footage from many cctv cameras at both Toronto and Victoria airports was rigorously screened to no avail. Perhaps they were heavily disguised in anticipation thereof or found a way to avoid the cameras. The next time you take a flight regardless of airline and happen to catch a glimpse of the pilots, you might take a moment to wonder; could one or both of them be culpable for Air Canada flight 110? Or as you read this, could they perhaps be at altitude happily flying incognito for Air Generic?