Descending from the Skies

September 15, 20xx, Friday, Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, cloudy turning to overcast, just an ordinary day. The cabin crew of Air China Flight 1332 had finished counting the blankets, headphones, and other items, and everything was ready, just waiting for the flight crew to come in. "Today, I'm actually flying with Brother Jia, I really want to post a moment on my social media," the new flight attendant Yang Feifei was quite excited, and after speaking, she opened the front camera of her phone to tidy up her bangs. The chief flight attendant, Cheng Xuan, had been through everything and had already seen the crew at the pre-flight briefing, so she didn't feel anything unusual. Takeoff, landing, Guangzhou to Beijing, Beijing to Guangzhou, the same route, repeated thousands of times. Except that today's captain is a celebrity of Air China, there is no difference. "You're going to take a selfie," Cheng Xuan teased Yang Feifei, "Then take it after the flight." Yang Feifei nodded: "That's for sure, Sister Xuan, work comes first." In a short while, the crew came in, Captain Chen Jiayu, and the co-pilot was Xu Hengyuan. They politely greeted the flight attendants one by one. In fact, there are many rumors about Chen Jiayu in Air China. Three years ago, he encountered one of the most serious aviation accidents in the past five years in China's civil aviation. The Airbus A330 he was flying, Flight 416, had serious engine failures at the cruising altitude due to the construction of the airport's aviation fuel pipeline at Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, which caused the fuel inside to be mixed with impurities. At that time, Chen Jiayu had just been promoted to captain for more than a year. When he called for mayday at a distance of fifty nautical miles from Hong Kong International Airport, the news was almost simultaneously transmitted to the ears of all civil aviation people on the mainland. Yang Feifei was still in the aviation university at that time and only learned about it afterwards, but Cheng Xuan had an impression. She was on a break from her shift at the time and was at another flight attendant's house, watching the live broadcast of Chen Jiayu's emergency landing at Hong Kong Airport on television. The original destination was Shanghai. Whether the plane could successfully reach the land and make an emergency landing at an airport with a runway was unknown. If it had to make an emergency landing at sea, most of the 238 people on the plane would have no chance of survival. The reason why Captain Sully of US Airways made the Hudson River landing a miracle is not without reason. But that was the calm Hudson River, not the rough South China Sea. The waves in the South China Sea were two meters high, and they could tear the plane apart the moment they touched the sea surface, or cause a rollover, leading to a disaster in minutes. The most serious thing was that one of his engines lost speed due to the lack of fuel supply, and the other engine, although he managed to slowly increase the thrust to 70% after more than ten minutes of groping, was completely stuck at 70% afterwards. Although it could provide enough thrust to fly back to Hong Kong and avoid a disastrous sea landing, it also directly led to his inability to slow down when landing. In the end, Chen Jiayu controlled the Airbus A330 and slid into the longest runway of Hong Kong International Airport at a dangerous speed more than 100 knots over the normal approach speed. After landing, the right reverse thruster did not respond in time, and he could only step on the emergency brake to the end. In the end, the plane slid almost the entire runway and barely stopped 200 meters away from the end of the runway by the sea. The Hong Kong media broadcast this thrilling landing live, calling it the "416th Miracle," and some even said it was the most successful forced landing in domestic civil aviation in the past decade. From the crew to the passengers, there were no casualties, and the most serious was just a scratch. After evacuating all the passengers, Chen Jiayu and his co-pilot, Chang Bin, came out of the cockpit. Almost at the moment they jumped out, the tires caught fire due to the high temperature friction when landing. This scene of successful escape that could enter the annals of history was captured by the reporter who arrived at the scene and has been broadcast countless times by domestic and foreign media. At first, Air China intended to suppress this news because the cause of the accident was still under investigation. However, the video of the scene and some photos and videos taken by the passengers quickly spread on the Internet, and naturally, people in the civil aviation circle also knew who this heroic captain was. With the investigation over, the cause of the accident was obviously a problem with the aviation oil pipeline used by Jakarta Airport, and Chen Jiayu and Chang Bin did not make any operational mistakes. On the contrary, their excellent flying ability and unchanging quality directly led to everyone's ability to escape. Therefore, the higher-ups did not suppress the news anymore, but instead greatly publicized their heroic deeds. Chen Jiayu appeared in countless news, interviews, programs, and even live broadcasts. He initially did not want to go, but the secretary forced him to go, so in the end, except for "Touching China" contacting Air China, he refused hard, and he did not refuse the others. Air China may have really hit the jackpot. Not only was there no death or injury in the accident, but there was not even a fracture. Even Chen Jiayu, who is a star captain, is tall, handsome, and comes from a family of pilots. He has a pilot father and a flight attendant mother, and a grandfather in the air force. He is a publicity material that is set in stone. His fame has spread beyond the civil aviation circle, so the new flight attendants like Yang Feifei, who think it's a piece of cake to fly with him, are also very natural. The crew just finished the pre-flight checklist, and Xu Hengyuan asked Chen Jiayu, "Brother Jia, is this your last flight this week?" Chen Jiayu nodded: "Well, I will rest for two days in Beijing, and then come back." In fact, no matter Chen Jiayu's qualifications, flight records, or fame, he was flying international long-haul flights in Air China a few years ago, and only flew Airbus, especially the international four-segment flights, which are easy to get hours, and one round trip a week. These flights are undoubtedly the most sought-after in any airline. However, Chen Jiayu did not fly the international long-haul flights that he should have, but also trained for the Boeing license, and just transferred to fly short-haul flights a while ago. Xu Hengyuan didn't understand why, but he was not familiar with Chen Jiayu and didn't want to ask him rashly. Although Chen Jiayu is the captain, he doesn't plan to be the main pilot this time, but let Xu Hengyuan take the lead in controlling the plane, which is a good exercise for him to accumulate main pilot experience and hours. He is responsible for executing the checklist and radio communication. This is also a good exercise for Xu Hengyuan. They finished early, but there was a bit of a problem with the Baiyun Airport dispatch, which made them wait for another half hour. Xu Hengyuan is from Guangzhou and often flies from Baiyun. He saw that Chen Jiayu was a bit impatient, but he was still holding on, so he explained: "It's been like this recently, I don't know if it's because the ground is short of people, or if the flow is particularly large recently. The last time I flew with another captain, we were delayed by four hours." Chen Jiayu opened a joke and said, "If it's delayed by four hours, you guys might as well not fly." Xu Hengyuan said helplessly, "There's nothing we can do, the tower is not strong. The airport should be expanded." Chen Jiayu watched the Eastern and Cathay Pacific planes that arrived later than him slide out in front of him, and he was a bit annoyed. However, Guangzhou is not his territory, he opened the radio and wanted to argue with the ground, but he felt it was unnecessary, so he turned off the radio. The cabin was very noisy because of the delay, and a few passengers made all kinds of troubles, and almost made Yang Feifei cry, and even Chen Jiayu came out of the cockpit to check the situation - today Xu Hengyuan is the main pilot, so he took on all other tasks, and of course, including ensuring that the cabin is in order. He saw at a glance that Yang Feifei was secretly wiping tears with a tissue. He frowned, but saw the chief flight attendant Cheng Xuan holding Yang Feifei's shoulder and giving him an affirmative nod, so Chen Jiayu sat back. "Whats wrong, Brother Jia?" Xu Hengyuan asked him. Chen Jiayu said, "Nothing, you fly your own." He took out his mobile phone to check, there was no message or WeChat, and then he slid the phone into his pocket. Contrary to the cabin, the cockpit is quiet and silent. After a 40-minute wait, Xu Hengyuan quietly manipulated the Boeing 737 and slid it out of the runway. From time to time, Chen Jiayu would think of that day two years and ten months ago, when he didn't know what fate was waiting for him when he flew into the sky. Not only he and his co-pilot Chang Bin, who were the exemplary captains with four stripes on their shoulders, but also the hundreds of passengers on Flight 416, from successful bankers to entrepreneurs who are always in the air, or even backpackers with little money, more than two hundred lives have been changed forever since that day. They have become "survivors." He remembers the initial shock when the engine made a clunk, the swaying of the fuselage, and the moment when the dashboard showed that the thrust on both sides of the engine suddenly slid to the dazzling 0%. The plane, in a gliding posture, plummeted thousands of meters in the sky over the South China Sea. He clearly remembers every second of this process, as if the phonograph engraved it deeply in his mind, and like reading a disc, it has been replayed over and over again in the more than a thousand days since then. Whenever this happens, he forces himself to forget. "Air China 1332, taxi out, Runway 2R, turn right to departure heading 090." He picked up the radio and recited the instructions from the tower in a low voice. Under the huge thrust, the speed of the plane quickly increased, and he stared at the speedometer: "V1." This is the decision speed, after reaching this speed, the plane must take off no matter what. "Rotate." The nose of the Boeing 737 lifted, flying towards the sky above Baiyun Airport.