Following the incident, Aloha, Boeing, and the FAA formed a circular firing squad. The undetected structural damage in Aloha's fleet was variously attributed to poor management, poor maintenance, poor FAA inspection, poor engineering. Accusations ricocheted back and forth for years afterward.
But the Aloha flight had also focused industry attention on the problem of aging aircraft, and it had made Amos famous within Norton. He'd convinced management to begin buying more old aircraft, turning wings and fuselages into proof test articles. Day after day, his test fixtures applied repetitive pressures to aging aircraft, stressing them to simulate takeoffs and landings, wind shear and turbulence, so Amos could study how and where they cracked.
"Amos," she said, coming up to him, "it's me. Casey Singleton."
He blinked myopically. "Oh. Casey. Didn't recognize you." He squinted at her. "Doctor gave me a new prescription ... Oh. Huh. How are you?" He gestured for her to walk with him, and he headed toward a small building a few yards away.
No one at Norton could understand how Casey was able to get along with Amos, but they were neighbors; he lived alone with his pug dog, and she had taken to cooking him a meal every month or so. In return, Amos regaled her with stories of aircraft accidents he'd worked on, going back to the first BO AC Comet crashes in the 1950s. Amos had an encyclopedic knowledge of airplanes. She had learned a tremendous amount from him, and he had become a sort of adviser to her.
"Didn't I see you the other morning?" he said.
"Yes. With my daughter."
"Thought so. Want coffee?" He opened the door to a shed, and she smelted the sharp odor of burned grounds. His coffee was always terrible.
"Sounds great, Amos," she said.
He poured her a cup. "Hope black is okay. Ran out of that creamer stuff."
"Black is fine, Amos." He hadn't had creamer for a year.
Amos poured a cup for himself in a stained mug, and waved her to a battered chair, facing his desk. The desk was piled high with thick reports. FAA/NASA International Symposium on Advanced Structural Integrity. Airframe Durability and Damage Tolerance. Thermographic Inspection Techniques. Corrosion Control and Structures Technology.
He put his feet up on the desk, cleared a path through the journals, so he could see her. "I tell you, Casey. It's tedious working with these old hulks. I long for the day when we have another T2 article in here."
"T2?" she said.
"Of course you wouldn't know," Amos said. "You've been here five years, and we haven't made a new model aircraft in all that time. But when there's a new aircraft, the first one off the line is called Tl. Test Article 1. It goes to Static Test - we put it on the test bed and shake it to pieces. Find out where the weaknesses are. The second plane off the line is T2. It's used for fatigue testing - a more difficult problem. Over time, metal loses tensile strength, gets brittle. So we take T2, put it in a jig, and accelerate fatigue testing. Day after day, year after year, we simulate takeoffs and landings. Norton's policy is we fatigue test to more than twice the design life of the aircraft. If the engineers design an aircraft for a twenty-year life span - say, fifty thousand hours and twenty thousand cycles - we'll do more than twice that in the pit, before we ever deliver to a customer. We know the planes will stand up. How's your coffee?"
She took a small sip, managed not to wince. Amos ran water through the same old grinds, all day long. That was how it got this distinctive flavor. "Good, Amos."
"Just ask. There's more where that came from. Anyway, most manufacturers test to twice the design life. We test up to four times the spec. That's why we always say, the other companies make doughnuts, Norton makes croissants."
Casey said, "And John Marder always says, That's why the others make money, and we don't."
"Marder." Amos snorted. "It's all money with him, all bottom line. In the old days, the front office told us, Make the best damn airplane you can. Now they say, Make the best airplane you can for a price. Different instruction, you know what I mean?" He slurped his coffee. "So. What is it, Casey - 545?"
She nodded.
"Can't help you there," he said.
"Why do you say that?"
"The plane's new. Fatigue's not a factor."
"There's a question about a part, Amos," she said. She showed him the pin, in a plastic bag.
"Hmm." He turned it over in his hands, held it up to the light. 'This would be - don't tell me - this would be an anterior locking pin for the second inboard slat."
"That's right."
"Of course it's right." He frowned. "But this part's bad."
"Yes, I know."
"So what's your question?'
"Doherty thinks it failed the aircraft. Could it?"
"Well..." Amos stared at the ceiling, thinking. "No. I got a hundred bucks says it didn 't fail the aircraft."
Casey sighed. She was back to square one. They had no leads.
"Discouraged?" Amos said.
"Yes, frankly."
"Then you're not paying attention," he said. "This is a very valuable lead."
"But why? You just said yourself - it didn't fail the aircraft."
"Casey, Casey." Amos shook his head. "Think."
She tried to think, sitting there, smelling his bad coffee. She tried to see what he was driving at. But her mind was blank. She looked at him across the desk. "Just tell me. What am I missing?"
"Were the other locking pins replaced?'
"No."
"Just this one?'