Final Approach by John J. Nance Page A

her, but part of the wreckage holding her prisoner was from the plane’s galley, and there had been an unopened milk carton by her side. She had poured it in her eyes—rubbed the milk in her eyes—and they felt much better. God had sent her the milk. That meant she was supposed to survive. She had to survive. It was her duty. The milk carton proved it.
    â€œHow much longer?” She heard Jill’s father yell the question, and the same answer as before came back from the faceless forms above. “Soon.” Always soon. Soon was becoming an eternity. The fuzziness returned and the University of Missouri sophomore felt herself surrendering to it. She would sleep awhile. Soon they would be out, and safe.

5
    Saturday morning, October 13
    North America 135 was the first Saturday flight in from Dallas, a point not lost on most members of the media, who had positioned themselves to meet it. Passengers with no connection to the crash and grieving family members alike emerged from the jetway unprepared, blinking into the confusing glare of TV lights, a forest of camera lenses recording their varied expressions.
    Among the first wave, Bill Deason, a harried-looking man in his thirties, emerged with only a topcoat, read the Gate 10 sign quickly, and turned right, hurrying past several gates before finding the appropriate door he had noted on his hastily copied instructions. He pushed his way inside, past a departing priest, and immediately spotted his brother-in-law sitting alone near a corner in the club room. Mark Weiss heard his name as Bill approached and nodded weakly, both of them standing for a few seconds in awkward silence before Bill hugged Mark, a gesture that at any other time might have been embarrassing to the two men, but in the pain of the moment was merely a background to the tears cascading from both faces.
    As the passengers continued to flow into the terminal from the Dallas flight, a North America executive emerged with a contingent of other airline personnel behind, each escorting family members of those lost or injured in the crash. Two buses waited at the curb, exhaust fumes curling around their undercarriages in the moisture-laden air, one bound for the hospital with the relatives of survivors, the other with instructions to proceed to a nearby hotel, where the airline would help make arrangements for such painful tasks as body identification and shipment.
    When the other passengers had all emerged, a lone figure stepped out of the jetway, her face a haunted study in panic and grief, her clothes stylish but hastily donned. She wore the telltale signs of tears instead of makeup and carried only a handbag, and to one curious reporter, there was something strange and wrenching about the nervous self-consciousness with which she tried to move across the gate area as anonymously as possible, avoiding both of the buses and heading instead for a taxi stand, where she disappeared quickly into the first cab in line. Mrs. Richard Timson repeated the name of the hospital to the cabby and sank back in the seat, her mind racing—her badly injured pilot husband some 12 miles away. The taxi sped toward the freeway past the airport hotel where at that moment Joe Wallingford was beginning the task of organizing the NTSB’s search for the answer to the burning question on everyone’s mind: Why?
    In the small conference room at the Marriott, Dr. Susan Kelly was fighting hard to concentrate—to keep the awful images of the crash site from controlling her mind and her feelings. The agony of the kids in the wreckage kept pulling her away. She had not seen their faces, of course, but she could feel their agony. This was not what she had imagined accident investigation would be.
    She had watched Joe Wallingford with growing admiration as he assembled the staffers and went over a short, concise list of priorities and assignments. Each staff member was to head up one or another of the investigatory