We'll finish the fleet by Wednesday. Aircraft 6 goes nowhere until the fuel system is rebuilt from scratch, he said. Not a patch, not a component replacement, the whole assembly. Agreed, Susan said. And I want to know, he said, before I leave this airfield today, which aircraft in this fleet has the highest total hours since its last deep inspection because that's the one that worries me most.
Susan nodded. She had one of her team members pull the records. The answer came back in 8 minutes. Aircraft 9, a Bombardier Challenger, 461 hours since its last major inspection. Operated on international routes.
Malcolm looked at the report. Pull aircraft 9 out of rotation tonight. He said, "Don't wait for Wednesday." Susan was already on her radio. Victoria Sterling arrived at the airfield at 5:30. She didn't come to manage the situation.
She came Malcolm would later understand because she needed to see it. Not through a report, not through her executives. With her own eyes, she walked through the hanger. She stopped at aircraft 6. She listened to Susan explain the valve.
She looked at the fuel system diagram. She asked three precise technical questions that told Malcolm she'd been doing her homework, not pretending to understand aviation, but actually trying to. When Susan finished, Victoria looked at Malcolm. "How many flights did Aircraft 6 make?" she said slowly. After that valve was installed, Susan checked.
"41." Victoria absorbed that number. He watched her absorb it, not with guilt performance, not with the careful management of public emotion, with genuine private horror. 41 Flights, she said. Nobody answered her. She looked at you said you were going to walk away, she said.
After I refused to pay you. You said you were going to walk away and let my attorneys make it expensive for you. I did say that, he said. Why didn't you? He looked at her.
I told you in my shop, he said because it stopped being about the money. When when Rachel counted 11 components in an aircraft that manifested four, he said that's when Victoria looked at aircraft 6 at the open cell at the taped off fuel system that her company had been operating for months without knowing what was inside it. Malcolm, she said, I need to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly. All right. If I had paid your invoice on the first day, she said, if I had looked at it and said yes and written the check and handed it over, would you have stayed?
Would you have kept looking? It was the real question, the one underneath everything. He thought about it honestly. I would have resolved the discrepancy in the primary aircraft, he said. I would have documented it, flagged it for your fleet coordinator, filed the appropriate paperwork, and waited for a response.
He paused. If your fleet coordinator had responded appropriately, the investigation would have started from your side sooner probably. And if they hadn't responded, then I would have done what I did anyway, he said. I would have documented everything and reported it because that's the job. She looked at him for a long time.