A small Cessna took a wrong turn in a large airport. The controller never realised and in the fog, no one could see it. By the time the departing Scandinavian 686 saw the Cessna in its path, it was much too late.
When the aircraft disintegrated over Queens in 2001, it's no surprise that everyone's first thought was terrorism. How could they have guessed that a badly trained pilot was actually capable of pulling the tail off the aircraft?
Poor planning and cut costs led to the deadliest air show accident in history when a Sukhoi Su-27 rolled into the crowd. The pilots were sent to prison but they swear it was not their fault.
Training airfields often have many aircraft in the circuit but with varying speeds and heights, it was easy for these two aircraft to miss each other; until one touched down on top of the other on the runway.
Move over Sully! With no engines and no power, the Boeing 737 captain's only option was to find the safest place to ditch. As they broke free of the clouds, he saw the Bengawan Solo River and knew he had only one chance.
The two aircraft transiting the same airspace at 36,000 feet should never have come near each other. But the combination of problems at Zürich air traffic control and poor flight training at Bashkirian Airlines lead to the deaths of all crew and passengers.
The author has done a remarkable job in not only researching the evidence of the accidents she covers and in putting across the problems of an investigation, but she has managed to do this in a way that will interest and appeal to a wide range of readers.
Author of View from the Hover: My Life in Aviation
For those aviation enthusiasts that wish to delve beyond the sensationalist headlines on aviation accidents Sylvia Wrigley's "Why Planes Crash" will satisfy their needs. Informative, critical and insightful.
Stoneworks Aviation
Planes crash for many many reasons, but in our modern media, a complex outcome is usually boiled down to a sound bite (pilot error, for example). Sylvia has gone past this facade and examined in understandable detail the many factors that led to in some examples, their inevitable end. An excellent read for the average man in the street and professional pilot alike, and I'm looking forward to the next book!
The author has done an admirable job in dissecting crashes with the care and attention-to-detail of a trained forensic investigator. She starts well before the final crash sequence, and examines factors leading up to the final impact. The book is imminently readable, and the fact that it is not full of technical jargon will make it attractive to non-aviators as well as flyers alike.
I am a pilot of light aircraft but I don't think any non-pilots should shy away from this book. It gives an interesting and obviously well-researched insight into how easily things can go wrong in the air, and how simple mistakes can aggregate, sometimes fatally. I shall never think about air traffic control in the same way again - and if you fly yourself, neither should you. An excellent and enjoyable read, I didn't want it to end.
Her website fearoflanding.com continues to be a popular reference for aviation accidents, investigations and history, with over 150,000 unique readers in 2015. She'd love it if you came to visit.
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Why Planes Crash
