Extract: Human Error, by Patricia Dunmore

It is late in the evening when a fully-loaded Dreamliner begins its final approach to Auckland airport after a long flight from Hong Kong. Passengers are getting ready to land, air traffic controllers are about to hand the plane over to the local tower, when suddenly the plane vanishes from the radar. No May Day was issued; everything seemed perfectly normal. But the plane, carrying 214 passengers and crew, has vanished. Extract from Human Error by Patricia Dunmore, Upstart Press, $37.99 RRP. Spring can be fickle in New Zealand, and October 10th was no exception. It was 2032 hrs local time as Oceanic Airways Flight 462 approached the coast of New Zealand — 8.32 p.m. to those passengers who had adjusted their watches to destination time after the flight left Hong Kong. Everyone was awake, dinner having been cleared away under the watchful eye of the chief purser. Queues for the bathrooms in tourist class were finally dwindling, but in the hushed realm of first class, there was only calm, steaming facecloths handed around with silver tongs, and murmurings. At 2056 hrs, exactly twenty-four minutes after the flight crossed into New Zealand airspace, the autopilot was engaged in descent mode. It would bring the heavy jet smoothly down from its cruising altitude through a wide preprogrammed loop over the Waitakere Ranges in the west, across the city to the sea on the other side of the island, and then back in a smooth glide into Auckland International Airport. Touchdown was scheduled for 9.30 p.m. It was dark now, well past sunset, and the mountains were cloaked in rolling fog that slid rapidly up and over the hills like wraiths from the ocean. It was impossible to see through, but that’s what instruments were for. The Dreamliner was equipped with all the latest bells and whistles, its ADS-B system flawlessly relaying data between plane, ground surveillance, satellites and the Traffic Control Centre. At 2109 hrs, the 190-tonne plane was travelling at 280 knots at an altitude of 11,252 ft and had been in the air for nearly eleven hours. Stewards were handing out boiled sweets in cellophane wrappers. In tourist class, a small Japanese boy, excited to be finally landing in his new country, was allowed to help. He was puzzled as to why so many people said no. Who said no to free candy? Then he offered the basket of lollies to the gaggle of young teenage girls, all busy tidying their hair and gathering up their belongings, and the sweets disappeared by the handful, with giggles and talk of keeping some to share with their friends and families after touchdown.

Precisely fifty-nine seconds later, just as the boy was offering sweets to the last girl at the end of the centre row, the basket shot out of his hands and curiously, as his little brain saw it, his hand flew away with it. There was a great roar of noise that he couldn’t make sense of because he was only six, and he attempted to cry out for his father, sitting one row behind. But just as the boy’s mouth opened, his body slammed into the armrest and kept going, propelled right into his father’s chest. Their bodies compressed and then exploded into a spray of red fire that burst back through the cabin and carried on right through the fuselage and out into the clear night air. Father and son never noticed the indescribable roar as the fuselage drove back through the body of the plane, turning itself almost inside out, or the screams of the wings as they tore off. He made no cry as the airplane broke its back or as the tail snapped off and careened away, carrying its own cargo of passengers, their mouths just beginning to open with shock. They were not really capable of thought at that moment. Their last, unexpectedly shared moment. Then the plane went off surveillance. Human Error is available in bookstores now.