The sixth aircraft is clear, he said. She exhaled. The final count is four grounded, two cleared. Yes, I'll have the complete written summary to you by end of day. Everything documented, photographed, cross-referenced against the maintenance records.
The the authority contact is scheduled for 6:00 this evening. I'll have your summary before then. You'll have it by 4. A pause, Caleb. She almost never used his first name.
It arrived with a different weight than his last name did. I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer it honestly. I usually do. I know. That's why I'm asking.
Another pause. Mute. When you present your findings to the aviation authority and they're going to want to speak with you directly, just review the documentation. Is what you found sufficient to establish that the mainten operating systematic outside acceptable standards. Not just making mistakes, actually cutting corners in a pattern.
Caleb thought about it for three full seconds before he answered. Yes, he said. The pattern across four aircraft is consistent enough and the nature of the specific items that were repeatedly under inspected is specific enough that a competent investigator will recognize it for what it is. It won't be my job to characterize it. It'll be my job to present the findings accurately and let the evidence speak, but the evidence speaks clearly.
She was quiet for a moment. Thank you, she said. I'll see you at 4. He spent the next 2 and 1/2 hours at the table in the terminal level conference room that had become something like a secondary workspace over the past week. The same room where he'd first spread out the maintenance records with Derek, where the first difficult conversation about what the documents actually contained had taken place.
Derek was largely absent from the process. Now, he still had his title and his office and his earpiece, but he'd gone quiet in the way of someone who understood that the situation had moved past the point where his particular kind of management was useful. Caleb didn't think Derek was a bad person. He thought Derek was a person who had spent years in a system that rewarded certain behaviors and penalized others and who had made enough small accommodations to that system that he'd stopped being able to see clearly where the incom ended and the job began was a common enough condition. It didn't make the outcomes acceptable.
He finished the summary at 3:49, printed two copies on the conference room printer, and left one on the table for Vanessa, and kept one in his folder. She arrived at 4:03, which was the closest to late he'd seen her. She was carrying coffee, two cups, from the small cafe at the terminal's public entrance, not from the executive lounge. She set one in front of him, without asking if he wanted it. Picked it up.
You look like you've been awake since Tuesday," she said, sitting down across from him. "I sleep fine." "Your eyes suggested otherwise. I have an 8-year-old. My eyes have looked like this for 8 years." She almost smiled. She pulled the summary toward her and opened it.
He watched her read. She was a fast reader. Her eyes moved across the pages with the efficiency of someone who trained herself to extract information quickly from large amounts of text. But she slowed down at certain sections. the Falcon 8X fuel system findings, the global 6000 hydraulic routing. She stopped completely at the section on the pattern analysis, his consolidated assessment of what the findings across all six aircraft taken together indicated about the maintenance contractor's practices.
She read that section twice. Then she set the document down and picked up her coffee. "My board is going to tell me this is going to cost $40 million to fix correctly," she said. your board is probably right. They're going to tell me that the reputational damage combined with the cost of the maintenance overhaul is going to create a liquidity problem. Might also be right.
They're going to recommend I explore a settlement with the maintenance contractor rather than a regulatory complaint. Faster, quieter avoids the public findings. Caleb looked at her. What are you going to tell them? She looked at the document.
I'm I'm going to tell them that four of my aircraft were flying in conditions that could have killed people and that the regulatory authority exists precisely for this situation and a private settlement that keeps the maintenance contractor operational is not an outcome I'm willing to produce. She said it the way she said most things evenly without extra volume with the specific quality of a decision that had already been made and was now simply being communicated. They won't like that. Caleb said no. She picked up the summary again.
They don't have to like it. The board meeting was Thursday afternoon and Caleb was not in it. Which was correct. It was not his meeting and not his company and not his board. He was at Mia's school at 3:15 standing near the pickup area with the other parents mostly mothers. a few fathers, one grandfather who came every day with a thermos and always seemed to be in a better mood than everyone else, which Caleb had come to find genuinely encouraging.
"Mia came out with her backpack half unzipped and one sock noticeably lower than the other." "How was it?" he asked. "We did a project about weather systems," she said. "I made a tornado, a real one, Dad. I'm asking genuinely." "A model one, out of a bottle and food coloring." She fell into step beside him toward the truck. "Mrs. Okafur said mine had good rotation.
High praise. She climbed in and threw her backpack into the foot. So, are you done with the airplane thing? Mostly. Were they broken?