Once back safely on solid earth Jennifer makes one last effort to ignore the truth that has just been demonstrated to her; her arrogance tries to make a comeback, bolstered by her humiliation at having gotten herself in such a frightening and helpless position in front of the very people she has being bullying. She bellows at Casey, not unlike a brat having a tantrum, that the story is going on the air anyway, only to be stopped by a simple question: How did Jennifer get hold of the enhanced version of the tape that Newsline would be using for its segment? Answer: Norton gave it to her through one of their attorneys, so Jennifer can hardly claim now that the company tried to bury evidence. The young producer is so taken aback that she finally starts paying attention to the remaining evidence. Casey shows her two versions of the flight crew roster, a letter confirming the recent death of John Chang in an Orange County hospital, a translation of an audio recording made in the cockpit as the accident was happening, then the last moments on the video showing the person at the controls of Flight 545. Jennifer can see for herself that it is not Captain John Chang at all, but his son Tom, who is a pilot but not rated to fly the N-22. All the pilot would have had to do to end the incident on the fatal flight was to simply let go of the controls and allow the autopilot to take over, but Tom did not know that and his father was not in the cockpit where he belonged. John Chang was at the other end of the plane, getting himself coffee in the galley, when the accident happened and he was wedged headfirst into a break in the ceiling, sustaining massive injuries. "He let his kid fly the plane," concludes a stunned, disbelieving Jennifer.

The truth has saved Norton, and Casey's job; however it will not save Jennifer Malone's. Her boss wants no less than a story about the N-22 being a flying deathtrap, and the truth, that the incident was caused by the combination of a bad sensor and an unqualified Chinese pilot, is not "politically correct" enough for a man who survives on manipulating public opinion. In the epilogue it is noted that John Marder is given an insincere congratulatory sendoff on his way out of Norton Aircraft to work for the company's European competitors. Bob Richman ends up in a Singapore jail on drug charges, where he is about to discover that the "global economy" he so casually mentioned to Casey as a rationale for his betrayal of his family does not translate into a global standard for sentencing drug peddlers or their customers. Unlike the United States, Singapore executes such people. Considering the grief and dislocation of thousands of people employed by Norton, the stress of which might kill a few of the more vulnerable, Richman's fate does not seem at all unjust. It is worth noting that the revelation of truth does not guarantee the equal distribution of justice in this realist novel, or Marder's fate would be far more uncomfortable than a quiet boot out of the company into a similar job elsewhere.