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"How on earth are we going to find our highway landing strip if the weather is this bad in the South?" Jennie asked.
Jack and I looked at each other. "I really don't know," I replied. "They won't have any approach beacons that will guide us in. It will have to be done all visually. We'll just have to wait and see."
Fifteen minutes later we were in bright sunshine again. At 38,000 feet we were above the storm that stretched far to the East, and partly over the Pacific.
We had just over an hour now before we had to descend again. I used this time to familiarize Igor with the cabin doors and the telephone system. I asked him to come downstairs with me and with Orlando. It was important that everyone understands the responsibilities one shoulders during boarding. Jennie had already told them what it was like in Abbotsford. "It won't be any less difficult," she promised them. Most likely she would be right.
Igor was highly impressed by the enormous size of the airplane, much more than he was about the job that lay ahead. He had no idea of what lay before us. He still lived in a dream world in this regard. There might even be shooting again as people scramble to get on board.
"It seems remarkable that this beast gets off the ground with a thousand people on board, plus fuel," he remarked.
"It is only remarkable if you don't recognize the principles involved," I replied. "Once the fundamental principles are understood and applied in the form of technologies, the seemingly impossible becomes reality. Technology is the natural extension of the human intellect, the only extension of power that makes any sense. From the moment on that mankind has conspired to take to the air like the birds, it has begun a series of research efforts to search for the principles of flight which lies behind the flight of birds."
I asked Igor to look at the airplane as a testament of the human spirit that always explores the unknown and enables discoveries that enrich human existence. "This applies to every aspect of life," I added, "even to rescue missions. Only in this case we don't have centuries of experiences to make the necessary discoveries in order to make the rescue operations more efficient. That's why we will probably fail in comparison to the real need."
When I left Igor and Orlando behind to let them discuss their task between them, I felt that they were beginning to understand to some degree what we would be facing once again. Compared to that, the weather and the task of flying in it, seemed more predictable and less precarious than what we would face if we did actually succeed to land our aircraft in the panic stricken crisis zone.
We were advised in Alaska to follow the coast to Vancouver Island, then use Queen Charlotte Strait as a guide to get us to the north end of the Strait of Georgia, and from there approach Campbell River from the sea. A few miles south of the city would be our highway. I also asked Jennie to go downstairs and join the crew on lookout duty. I made it clear to them that we would require their services as never before. I turned the lights off, assigned everyone a window and then conducted an intercom test. Thanks to the cordless phones that had become a standard feature on the newer aircraft, the test worked great!
At around ten o'clock, Jack initiated our descent. Within minutes the sunshine ended. We became submerged once again into a world of fog mixed with smoke and brown muck.
"This is getting serious," said Jack and motioned that it was my turn from here on, "to drive the ship," as he put it. He leaned back into his seat, took his hands off the controls and called for Jennie to pour him a cup of coffee.
It took him a moment to realize that everyone was already at the lookout posts. Without comment he climbed out of his seat and poured the coffee himself. "It won't be fun!" he said quietly as he sipped on the steaming coffee. "Let's hope that the tower is wrong about conditions at our destination."
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