Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If you really liked the first Air Disaster book, then get this one, because it is fascinating stuff.
In my opinion, the most tragic accidents are the ones outlined in chapters 2 to 7 and 9 & 10. For me, the most interesting read was concerning an American Airlines DC10; just after takeoff at Chicago O'Hare airport - the left engine ripped off by itself and separated from the wing, tumbling out of control down the runway. As you can imagine, the subsequent scene as the aircraft careened out of control were horrific.
It was eventually found that this incident was caused by Continental's air maintenance crews, who removed the engines and mounts as one piece instead of the way that McDonnell Douglas had specified them to be removed separately, and consequently the engine mounts were damaged. So there you go: human error after all!
Yet another unique crash involved a collision between a 727 and a Cessna. How could two planes collide you wonder? Only one way to find out...
And also included is the infamous Air New Zealand DC-10 that crashed into Mt Erebus during a scenic flight over Antarctica.
This edition includes two photos (one is especially spine-chilling) of planes that are within [split]seconds of crashing. One can only imagine how the crew and passengers felt at that time.
This book also made me aware of one very ubiquitous misconception: people think that if you're flying on a 747 at 37,000 feet and all four engines fail, you'll hit the ground like a dart. This simply isn't true. A 747 with no engines takes roughly 23 minutes with a 3-degree glide slope to reach the ground from this altitude! Moreover, it can resume level flight on only one engine! Incredible.
If there's something else that this series has taught me, it's that an accident is most likely to occur immediately after takeoff, or sometime within half an hour of takeoff.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Air Disaster (Vol. 2)
Air Disaster Volume 2 continues the theme established inVolume 1, examining the way the unforeseen hazards of jet age aviationprogressively came to light through costly real world experience - oftenwith an inevitable toll in tragedy and human lives. Yet for all their grim, spectacular consequences, these harsh lessons havehelped to evolve a global transport system on a scale beyond anything theworld has ever seen, and at a level of safety that statistically surpasseseven the normal hazards of everyday life. Despite all of aviation's quite astonishing technical successes, and theoverall standards of safety it has achieved, the art and science ofadvanced aeronautics and their associated technologies are not yet fullyperfected. This book examines instances in which flying conditions were soadverse that accepted aviation wisdom, even after so many years andcountless thousands of flying hours, was shown to be lacking. The fate ofa DC-9 enroute to Atlanta in April 1977, a Boeing 727 taking off from NewOrleans in July, 1982, and a Boeing 747 which flew into a cloud ofvolcanic dust over the Timor Sea in June of the same year, all furtherattest to the truth so clearly spelt out in Volume 1, that air safetystandards are won at a price. Nor has the complex relationship between technological progress andexpertise on the one hand, and human frailty on the other, been fullyresolved. In aviation, perhaps more so than in other fields of humanendeavour, mankind remains as much a victim of himself as of the elementsaround him. It is ironic that while one facet of the world airlineindustry was operating supersonic aircraft designed to stretch one foot inlength as a result of atmospheric frictional heating at Mach 2 airspeeds,another was "saving" time and effort by using a forklift to change thewing engines of a widebodied trijet - with fatal consequences to all onboard a DC-10 at Chicago in May 1979. Other tragedies examined in thisbook, in which human failings negated state-of-the-art technology ineither flying operations or engineering maintenance, tell of similarcontradictions. In this second volume, covering the years 1977 to 1991, specialist airsafety author Macarthur Job and noted aviation artist Matthew Teschcontinue their collaborative efforts, combining their skills and flyingexperiences to provide detailed, lucid analyses of the stories behind afurther 15 significant jet airline disasters - and one amazing neartragedy. Based primarily on official investigation reports, supplemented byextensive external research, each of these events has been carefullyselected to exemplify the problems encountered, both operational andhuman, as jet airline flying moved into its second quarter century.Liberally complemented with photographs and diagrams, Air Disaster Volume2 continues the unique style set in Volume 1, with many specially drawndiagrams and explanatory graphics. Clear and accurate, they blend actualpiloting experience with artistic skill to enable readers to properlyvisualise the compelling events related in the text.
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