This book was written by
David Grayson and published in 1988. It relates the stories of twenty
accidents and near-accidents involving
aircraft that occurred in roughly twenty years prior to its publishing.
The
accounts include, where possible, the
verbatim transcripts of important
conversation that took place in the
cockpit of the aircraft involved, as well as the
radio contact between the aircraft and the
air traffic control towers in case of an accident at or near an
airport. In spite of its often rather
chilling subject, the
book reads very easily and the accounts are very clear and give a good
insight in the series of
breakdowns,
mistakes and
oversights that lead to the actual accidents.
Although the largest and most
devastating accidents of its period are covered in the book, it was written over thirteen years ago, and
airline accidents have not stopped happening since. One would think that it would therefore be less interesting to read now, but this is not the case. Each and every account in the book retains its chilling truth and because the book focuses on the
human element (in good and bad light) it doesn't really matter that the accidents happened so
long ago. Many of the
conclusions and insights reached at the end of these accounts would probably - and
regrettably - be
pertinent to
modern day aircraft disasters, too.
The most important concept that I
distilled from this book is the fact that the
human factor plays such a big
role in nearly all of these accidents, and probably do in most modern day accidents, both in positive and negative ways.
That
negative human factor is probably most chillingly
illustrated by the account of the
Tenerife accident on
March 27, 1977. The
Captain of a
KLM Boeing 747 is in a hurry, and causes the greatest aircraft disaster in
history1 whereby 583 people meet their
deaths in a
collision between the KLM
747 and a
Pan American 747.
In contrast is the account of the near-accident where the human factor enters in a positive light. On
April 4, 1979, a
Trans World Airlines Boeing 727 is put in a rather
embarrassing predicament when, due probably to a
mechanical problem with one of the
control surfaces on its right
wing, it starts to
roll to the right and continues until at one point it finds itself completely
inverted. The aircraft continues to roll and as it embarks on a second
barrel roll it adds another dimension to the fun by lowering the
nose until it is diving straight down to earth. This with a
complement of 89 persons
on board, mind you. Through a number of
daring and
innovative actions taken by the
pilot, he manages to
regain control of the aircraft before it plummets into the ground with just nine seconds to spare. One of the facts to
emerge from the
subsequent investigation was that the pilot was an
experienced aerobatic pilot and the authorities can't help but factor this into the
miraculous recovery of the aircraft.
Accidents
Apart from the above accounts, the book also relates, among others, the stories behind the following
accidents:
This book was first
published a while ago and my recent searches to see if I could find a copy on
Amazon.com only brought up the possibility to search for it in the
used book section. The search also brought up a rather less positive '
wu' on this book.
I've been on the
lookout for a
sequel of sorts, covering more
recent air disasters, but I haven't been able to find anything yet.
Sources:
Amazon.com
The book itself
1 At that time and for a long time since then
August 24, 2001