Charlie Victor Romeo

It’s the tenth anniversary of Charlie Victor Romeo.

Charlie Victor Romeo is a play that interprets, word for word, cockpit voice recordings of real plane crashes. It was created by members of Collective: Unconscious, the experimental theater that I often performed in when I lived in NYC.

I was able to see Charlie Victor Romeo (C.V.R. – “cockpit voice recording”) and it was a riveting experience. The play was created not to provide cheap exploitative entertainment, but rather to explore the idea of “individuals performing under extraordinary circumstances” — pilots forced to make split-second decisions in the midst of catastrophe.

Bob Berger, the founder of Collective:Unconscious, at the time was working as a cameraman for CNN. He came up with the idea after spending a summer working on one of his most harrowing assignments: filming the aftermath of TWA Flight 800, the 747 passenger jet en route to France that blew up shortly after takeoff and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard.

Bob and fellow Collective members began a months-long study of aviation disasters, selecting a number of cockpit voice transcripts to adapt to the stage. They selected the various disasters to show a variety of factors: human error, mechanical failure, etc. The intent was to remain faithful to the reality of the flight recordings. They made no alterations in the transcripts and kept the sets minimalistic. The focus was on the actors, who had to turn the transcripts into conversations.

Once it debuted, the play received many awards and recognitions. Curiously enough, the U.S. Defense Department found it highly educational for its portrayal of human error and endeavor under stressful circumstances, and contracted it in video form as part of pilot training. (In fact, my brother Sam, who is a pilot, saw the video when he was in pilot training).

One extraordinary thing to come out of the experience was that the play’s creators were able to meet one of the heroes of the story: pilot Al Haynes, the real-life protagonist of  perhaps the most memorable story in Charlie Victor Romeo. Now in his late sixties and retired, Haynes traveled all the way from Seattle to New York to see the play, giving it his seal of approval.

Al Haynes was the captain on the doomed United Airlines Flight 232, which suffered an explosion in one of its engines in a flight from Denver to Chicago in 1989. The explosion caused shrapnel to sever the hydraulics systems, which are needed to control the plane.

It was like trying to drive a car with no steering wheel.

Haynes and his crew succeeded in landing the plane making only right turns. But because there were no controls, there was no way for it to come down other than a controlled crash landing. The plane hit the runway at Sioux City airport — with hundreds of emergency rescue vehicles waiting nearby.

But when it touched down, it was tipped on an angle, and one of its wings caught the ground. This caused the plane to cartwheel down the runway and it split apart and caught fire, killing 111 passengers.

However:

185 passengers — over half — survived. The cockpit separated from the plane, and Haynes survived as well.

If Haynes hadn’t kept his cool and hadn’t been able to find a creative way to bring the plane down, no one would have survived.

Al Haynes was an individual operating under extraordinary circumstances.

Happy 10th, Charlie Victor Romeo.