They had finally managed to find the black box amongst all of the rubble. Rossi, Kate and I were sitting at a table in a small room with a laptop open. I reached forward and hit the spacebar, prompting the audio from the black box to play.
"What did you do to the autopilot?" The captain of the plane said
"Nothing." Frank, the co-pilot replied
"You must have hit it. It's off now." The captain said. There was some beeping before he spoke again. "No. I can't set a new altitude. Are you messing with me?"
"Calm down." Frank said
"Don't tell me to calm down." The captain said agitatedly.
A whirring sound could be heard before the Co-pilot spoke again. "What the hell? Why did you deploy the slats?"
"It just happened." The captain said
"What are you doing with the yoke? Just stop it!" Frank yelled
"I'm trying to keep her steady. Okay, this is ridiculous. Something's buggy in the system. Let's reset it all. Shut everything down." The captain said
Rossi reached over and paused the audio. "So they shut down ACRAS just to reset the flight system. Sounds like there was a catastrophic system failure."
"This audio rules out suicide from the captain and the co-pilot. From the tone in their voices, they wanted everything to be safe and normal." I said
"So that's what the argument was about." Kate said
"We just reviewed the flight data recorder. The plane porpoised on and off for the last three minutes it was airborne." Spencer said as he came into the room.
"But there was no indication of system or mechanical malfunction. Everything was working normally." The man who had come in with Spencer said
"Including the autopilot? Cause it sounded like they couldn't override it." Kate asked
"There's one theory we haven't considered. Someone other than the pilot or the co-pilot was controlling the plane." Rossi said
"Maybe that someone wasn't even on board, what if they hacked the system somehow." I added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Okay, let me get this straight. The way the plane broke up proves there was no missile. The crash was caused by something internal. But the pilot and co-pilot have been cleared, so that means someone from the ground hacked into the plane's computers?" The commander asked us with a look of disbelief on her face.
"It makes sense with the data from the black box." Hotch said
"Guys, that's a bit of a reach." Charlie, one of the men from the task force, said.
"Boeing had expressed concerns about in-flight entertainment systems and USB connections that could give hackers access to a plane's computer." Spencer said
"Hack in the box, Amsterdam, April 2013. A security consultant from Germany demonstrated how an airliner could be hacked using a smartphone app that he developed." Rossi said
"That test was only on pilot-training software. There's no proof it could happen in real life." Charlie said
"And we all know how forthcoming the FAA would be if something like that could really happen." Rossi said
"So, what, this UnSub just flew the plane by remote control?" The commander asked
"We've seen it before with a helicopter." Spencer said
YOU ARE READING
Golden | S.Reid
FanfictionSSA Natasha Solace has been apart of Interpol for as long as she can remember. When she received the offer to join the infamous BAU, how could she refuse? The prospect of working for the team, and getting to stay in one country was too good to pass...
