Casey wrote: Flight Crew Unavailable.

"Do, uh, we know who the captain was?' Ron Smith asked timidly.

"We do," Mike Lee said. He consulted a leather notebook. "His name is John Chang. Forty-five years old, resident of Hong Kong, six thousand hours' experience. He's Trans-Pacific's senior pilot for the N-22. Very skilled."

"Oh yeah?" Burne said, leaning forward across the table. "And when was he last recertified?"

"Three months ago."

"Where?"

"Right here," Mike Lee said. "On Norton flight simulators, by Norton instructors."

Burne sat back, snorting unhappily.

"Do we know how he was rated?" Casey asked.

"Outstanding," Lee said. "You can check your records."

Casey wrote: Not Human Error (?)

Marder said to Lee, "Do you think we can get an interview with him, Mike? Will he talk to our service rep at Kaitak?"

"I'm sure the crew will cooperate," Lee said. "Especially if you submit written questions… I'm sure I can get them answered within ten days."

"Hmm," Marder said, distressed. "That long…"

"Unless we get a pilot interview," Van Trung said, "we may have a problem. The incident occurred one hour prior to landing. The cockpit voice recorder only stores the last twenty-five minutes of conversation. So in this case the CVR is useless."

'True. But you still have the FDR."

Casey wrote: Flight Data Recorder.

"Yes, we have the FDR," Trung said. But this clearly didn't assuage his concerns, and Casey knew why. Flight recorders were notoriously unreliable. In the media, they were the mysterious black boxes that revealed all the secrets of a flight. But in reality, they often didn't work.