Red Line

Working a real job and being able to get a short glimpse into the future changed the outcome of a bad situation. I was working for Eastern Airlines and I was based at JFK Int't. I was working the midnight shift as a crew scheduler. One of my responsibilities was to make sure that a front end (Captain, first officer, second officer) and a navigator (Saturn Airlines) were on all over water international flights. Sound easy into you factor in is all we had was teletype communications of take off and landings. We were working with yesterday, today and tomorrow time zones as my crews were circling the globe in every direction. It was a real headache from a scheduling standpoint.

In any event (like in the movies) we had a red phone for the MAC Operation. Everyone knew when it rang that there was a problem on the other end of the phone. The phone rang and of course everyone looked at me to answer the phone. I was working with 5 other crew schedulers but I was the only one qualified to answer the phone.

It was the tower controller at DaNang Airforce Base in South Vietnam He says that he has one of my Captain's on the line. What's the problem I asked? My Captain informed me he was on the end of the runway and the military wanted him to pull onto the grass to let the F-15's take off. I could hear they were under a mortar attack and they were getting louder as they zeroed in on their location. The aircraft was a stretch version of the DC-8 aircraft holding 258 passengers. I said, for whatever reason, "How many souls on board"? and he replied "We are full." Okay, I said, "Disregard the military and you have my permission to RED LINE the engines and get the hell out of there. With that I could hear the 4 massive engines roar to life like I had never heard them before. The sound of mortars were ever closer. I heard the aircraft leap off the runway and shoot into the sky like a rocket.
I hung up.
I did some research on the consequences of RED LINE the engines. When you use this much power it over torques the engines. The phone rang again.
The Captain said, "Jim the engines are running hot." I said, "Throttle back one third and continue on to Wake Island. I have another Eastern Aircraft en-route with two engines and mechanics. Braniff Airlines let us strap two more engines under the wing next to the fuselage on the way to WAKE Island. Both of us had the contract to move military soldiers around the World.

When the aircraft landed all four engines seized up and became scrap....All lives were saved. The government paid for the engines and no F-15's were damaged. Yes, in the blink of an eye I saw the aircraft being blown up with no survivors. I also saw the fire trucks chasing the aircraft down the runway in Wake Island to cool the hot engines and prevent a fire. I was called on the carpet for burning up four engines and telling the military tower operator to F--k off.. I survived the meeting and ended up with a raise and a hug from the returning crew. I sounded great on the recording - I did not know I had it in me but remember I had an edge and could see the future. Or did I make it?