1045 Tuesday 5 August 1997
Tanker Airlift Control Center
Scott Air Force Base
Belleville, Illinois
America is hope. It is compassion. It is excellence. It is valor.
—SENATOR PAUL TSONGAS (D), MASSACHUSETTS
The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
—DR. ALBERT SCHWEITZER, HUMANITARIAN, PHILOSOPHER, AND PHYSICIAN
We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.
—ELLEN DEGENERES, COMEDIAN AND TALK SHOW HOST
After four hours running missions and making sure high-priority cargo moved, the Tanker Airlift Control Center West Cell tempo slowed down on 5 August 1997. The “Breaking News” banner appeared on a flat-screen TV across from me, and CNN’s videographer pointed the camera behind the reporter at a burning airplane in a driving rainstorm. They stood on Nimitz Hill, a seven-hundred-foot-high peak in the middle of Guam. I recognized the terrain immediately from flying approaches into Agana International Airport. CNN’s reporter stated, “A Korean Air 747 jetliner, Flight 801 from Seoul, crashed on Nimitz Hill at approximately 1:42 a.m. this morning. You can see the fires are still burning behind me. I’m hearing rescue vehicles coming from below us now; rescue crews are having a very hard time approaching the crash site in the storm.”
I reached over and grabbed Lieutenant Colonel Kay by the arm and pointed at the flat-screen.
“Sir—are you watching this?”
Lieutenant Colonel Kay turned in his swivel chair, and we watched the news report. Lieutenant Colonel Kay hollered over to Senior Controller Colonel Bailey standing at his desk. “Colonel Bailey, incoming CNN news report from Guam is on the flat-screen. It looks like a plane crash.”
Colonel Bailey had his own flat-screen above his desk. His TV’s volume bars increased as he pointed the remote at the screen.
CNN’s videographer caught something. “Some of the survivors are walking around the crash site . . .”
Colonel Bailey quipped, “That looks like Nimitz Hill.”
Nimitz Hill’s radio navigation aid appeared on the right side of the screen. Korean Air Flight 801’s wreckage rested in a ravine down the slope from Nimitz Hill. All of us were thinking the same thing, but Colonel Bailey was the only one who said out loud, “Did he miss the step-down altitude?”
Instrument approaches to Agana’s runway 06 left have an altitude restriction keeping aircraft safely above Nimitz Hill’s peak. Colonel Bailey, Lieutenant Colonel Kay, and I had flown approaches into Agana International Airport numerous times. As you passed over Nimitz Hill, it felt like you could reach down and touch it. We concluded that Flight 801 crashed into the terrain because the pilot missed the approach step-down altitude.
At the end of the news report, Colonel Bailey said what Lieutenant Colonel Kay and I already knew: “Okay, guys, come up with a plan. You know in thirty minutes my phone will ring with someone in Washington, DC, on the other end. My bet is either the State Department or the National Transportation Safety Board. Mark, you lived over there and understand the area, so come up with a plan.”
Lieutenant Colonel Kay turned to me and said, “Do your magic.”
The first step was finding a ride. My gut feeling told me to look at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, DC, but I kept pushing the thought out of my mind, since my group controlled everything west of the Mississippi to Mumbai, TACC’s geographical east-west boundaries. I finally listened to my gut when no aircraft were available on the West Coast. Pulling up the Andrews AFB schedule page, I saw that one Presidential Support C-141 Starlifter crew was scheduled to show up for their flight home to South Carolina in an hour and forty-five minutes. It was perfect for this rescue mission. I told Lieutenant Colonel Kay I wanted to rip off Andrews’s Presidential Support Starlifter, which required a lot of coordination. He walked over to the East Cell director and told him the West Cell needed the C-141 at Andrews. When told why, he had no problem.
The East Cell director asked if we were sure the call was coming. Of course we didn’t know. Invoking the Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared,” I took the Starlifter and its crew for the mission, now called REACH 1267. My gut feeling was that the call would come from the State Department or higher because of the news reports. If no call arrived, the C-141 crew would hop into their jet and go home. Rescheduling REACH 1267’s mission into the computer and coordinating with Andrews took twenty minutes.
“Man, is this crew going to be surprised when they come in to fly!”
I sat down at my desk as Colonel Bailey hollered over to Lieutenant Colonel Kay and me, “Hey, guys, it’s the vice president’s office. I bet it’s our Guam phone call!”
Colonel Bailey picked up the phone and began talking to someone and saying “Yes, sir” a lot. The phone conversation lasted less than two minutes, ending with “West Cell already worked up a plan, Mr. Vice President.”
Well, not entirely.
“There’s your authorization to put your plan in motion. Eighteen members of the NTSB Go Team, their equipment, and their bags need a ride to Guam. They need to be there in eighteen to twenty-four hours. Work a plan and come see me.”
“Colonel Bailey, I think we already have a partial plan. We just need to work in a gas stop.”
REACH 1267’s crew was augmented, meaning it had two additional pilots, navigators, and loadmasters, and so could operate for twenty-four hours. The biggest problem was range. Doing gas math in my head, I figured the crew would drop dead in Hawaii without air refueling over the West Coast. None of the KC-135 bases on the West Coast had jets available. I scanned Travis Air Force Base’s KC-10 schedule to see what they had: no aircraft on alert, ready to go on a moment’s notice. I was not finding anything to keep 1267 going. No refueling meant we were screwed.
I remembered a long conversation with Russ, a college classmate who flew KC-10s at Travis. Regular KC-10 training missions schedule two Gucci Birds as partners to practice refueling across northern California on Track 7 Alpha/Bravo. AR 7 Alpha was perfect for REACH 1267 to get fuel. I told Travis’s command post to prepare one of the KC-10s to refuel 1267 on 7 Alpha/Bravo by putting an extra sixty thousand pounds on one KC-10. Delaying their launch by thirty-five minutes would allow them to meet 1267 and provide the gas needed to fly to Hawaii. After landing in Hawaii, the second, fresh 1267 flight crew would jump into the seats and continue on to Guam. The TACC flight plan shop computed fuel and times to every point, which I sent to Andrews’s command post via e-mail. Tammy, one of West Cell’s airmen, put all the changes in the schedule.
After we discussed the plan with Colonel Bailey, he gave Lieutenant Colonel Kay and me a thumbs-up. His only instructions were to watch the mission carefully, because if anything happened, bad news would travel through the State Department and possibly to the White House.
No pressure.
An hour later, caller ID showed that Andrews’s command post was dialing us. Captain Riordon, the aircraft commander, had called for more information. He started the conversation with “Major Hasara, I understand my crew is not going home today. Command post told me to call you.”
“Captain Riordon, have you seen the news out of Guam?”
“Yes, sir, I have. What is going on?”
All flight crews want the chance to do a mission with importance, and nothing was more important than compassionate rescue flights. Complex, high-visibility missions with changes were stressful, as was flying halfway across the world to provide support for an event that had made international news, overseen by the White House and the State Department. I always tried to make sure a good aircrew received the visibility they deserved.
Captain Riordon’s crew did have a vote on my plan. I asked a little bit differently this time: “I need your crew to take this mission to Guam, Captain Riordon.”
“I don’t know, sir . . . Hawaii and Guam. This one’s going to suck eggs!” he said, laughing over the phone.
“I am assuming by the tone of your voice that you don’t mind doing this for us.”
Captain Riordon answered, “Sir, we will take the mission. Anything that can be done to help the victims of Flight 801 we want to be a part of.”
The NTSB Go Team pulled up just before engine start. Loadmasters strapped down their bags as the rear clamshell doors closed. REACH 1267 launched twenty minutes later, two hours after the vice president’s call. Eighteen Go Team members found a warm place for the long flight to Guam. Refueling on AR 7 Alpha went without a hiccup. The second crew hopped into the seats at Hickam Air Force Base for the five-hour flight to Guam. Seventeen hours after leaving Washington, DC, 1267 touched down on Andersen Air Force Base’s rain-soaked runway.
Each day I learned something new about air mobility, knowledge that helped us accomplish missions. The next morning Lieutenant Colonel Kay’s team was back on moving missions. Calls to the States during the night had added a mission for survivors. One of those requirements created the most unusual request I’d received. Two hundred twenty-eight people died from Korean Air Flight 801’s crash and subsequent fire. Twenty-six passengers survived but with serious injuries. Rescue efforts now focused on four of the burn victims, and TACC requested an aircraft be sent to Billings, Montana. In the two years I had worked in the West Cell, TACC had never sent an aircraft to Billings.
I couldn’t figure out what was so important in Billings that a big cargo plane had to stop there before going on to Guam. Medical Evacuation Cell entered the new C-141 information into the computer, a Category 2A mission. Changes in a Cat 2A mission required coordination with and signatures from agencies in the building and the State Department. I walked to the Medical Evacuation Cell and asked one of the flight nurses what was so important in Billings.
I would never have put Korean Air Flight 801; Billings, Montana; and smokejumpers together in my mind.
Billings has a warehouse where equipment used to fight forest fires is stored, and that equipment includes portable burn treatment units. These mobile units were perfect for moving the survivors back to the US. The State Department contacted several doctors who specialized in burn treatment, notifying them that their ride was coming soon. None of us in the West Cell had known this firefighter warehouse and burn treatment equipment existed.
After one hour and thirty-five minutes in flight, REACH 1123 landed in Billings. Three hours later, 1123 flew to Hickam Air Force Base for fuel and then continued on to Guam. While 1123 was in the air, Governor Carl Gutierrez of Guam requested via the State Department that Flight 801’s four most severely burned passengers come to the States. Eleven-year-old Grace Chung, the only American survivor, and three Korean nationals left Guam on 8 August in mobile burn treatment units on REACH 1123 for a twenty-hour flight to San Antonio, Texas. Unfortunately, Grace died three days after arriving in San Antonio, but her three Korean friends recovered and rejoined their families with an amazing story.
Rarely do American citizens see how Air Mobility Command is engaged every day in disasters around the globe. The US military is the only force that can accomplish some of these compassionate missions. I’ve talked to people about how relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans were accomplished from an aircraft carrier and large-deck amphibious assault ships. Large-deck amphibs have four operating rooms and a complete medical team aboard. AMC’s C-5 Galaxy fleet moved helicopters from around the States to Barksdale Air Force Base Louisiana, which operated from the Navy ships. The USS Carl Vinson supported earthquake relief in Haiti because it was capable of producing four hundred thousand gallons of fresh water per day with its desalination systems. These compassionate missions are very gratifying for the troops involved.
Within hours of notification, Colonel Bailey’s TACC team moved the National Transportation Safety Board’s Go Team to Guam. When Governor Gutierrez asked for additional help for burn victims, a C-141 outfitted as an air ambulance delivered doctors and burn units from Billings, Montana, to Guam. All of us have the ability and resources to show compassion. Compassionate service increases the joy and peace in our lives. When I was a young boy, I was taught that when you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are in the service of God. Take the time to experience the peace compassion brings to someone around you who needs it.