Read any good books?
 

Just read Dean Koontz' novel Sole Survivor...wish I hadn't bothered. What a load of tosh.

Can anyone recommend a good civil aviation thriller. Or is this a lost cause?

Try the classic "Fate is the Hunter" by Ernest K. Gann. An exceptionally good read. ISBN 0-671-63603-0.

Cheers



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Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down.

Canuck Av8r
ICQ 26305263

Also try "Hostage to Fortune" by Ernest K. Gann ,that is if you can find it.

Neil

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bart.northnet.com.au/~amcgann/website/Landing_on_the_Moon.htm

You might like to check out "Tiger Tales", an anecdotal history of the Flying Tiger Line. It's mainly freight operations since right after the war (WW2) until 1989. Good reading and you might pick out a few things that might just help you out in a jam. Amazon.com has them in stock a few months ago. ISBN# 0-9649498-5-7
Enjoy.

Totally agree with comments about "Fate is the Hunter". Superb read about Gann's early flying experiences flying DC2/DC3 etc.
Available through Amazon in the UK for about £10-00 including postage.
Excellent nightstop/deadheading material.

"Slipping the Surly Bonds"
by Dave English (he has a site)
I bought mine from my favourite shop Skylines!!

I read Airframe by Micheal Crichton in under 48hrs. Loved it. WWW

Here's a few aviation books I've read lately which kicked **** :

"A Likely Story" and "Another Likely Story" both by Guy Clapshaw: an ex-pom who set up a charter airline in the UK in the 60's (Airlinks I think) and migrated to NZ to eventually work for AirNZ or T.E.A.L as it was known in those days. If you can get a hold of them they're extremely good reading.

"21st Century Jet" I don't know who wrote this one but it follows the evolution of the 777 from the initial conception up to the first revenue flight. Some very good chapters on the test flying process.

Check them out and enjoy!

WWW is right.

Airframe is a top read.

"Birds of Prey - Boeing V Airbus, A Battle for the Skies" by Matthew Lynn,
ISBN 0-7493-1402-8

"Nuts - Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success" by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg,
ISBN 0-7679-0184-3

"Dirty Tricks - BA's Secret War Against Virgin Atlantic" by Martyn Gregory,
ISBN 0-7515-10637-7

"From Worst to First - Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback" by Gordon Bethune
ISBN 0-471-24835-5


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Not much of an engineer

FLY ME by Bill Wenzel (Fawcett Pub. 1974). :)

Found Airframe to be a bit awful, actually - too forced, too obvious. Not really good enough for anybody that works in the industry, I would have thought (?)

John Nichol's books "Point of Impact" (ISBN 0 340 67181 5)and "Vanishing Point" (0 340 67184 X) are both excellent, as is Dale "Flight of the Old Dog" Brown's new book "The Tin Man".

Currently reading ATPL notes, which I can't really recommend as "exciting".

The Invisible Air Force... The true story of the CIA's secret Airlines.... Vietnam / Southeast Asia in the 1960/1970's . Published in the USA as Air America... Movie was only the comical side, the book appears to give mostly believable events. Author Christopher Robins. Published 1979

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"Gentlemen of Adventure" Ernest Gann.
Brilliant.

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reddo
1000 posts and still going

You may like to try "Beyond The Blue Horizon" by Alexander Frater, published by Penguin Books.
Alexander Frater is an Oz journo who retraces the steps of the Imperial Airways Eastbound Empire service, (London to Sydney), fifty years on, great anecdotal stuff, really interesting book.
(First published by Penguin in 1987).

[This message has been edited by Methusalah (edited 28 July 1999).]

If You are looking for an aviation thriller read HARD LANDING of Thomas Petzinger,jr, ISBN 0-8129-2186-0

i.e. " The game we are playing is closest to the old game of "Cristians and lions"

You will find this in the thriller, words of CEO Robert Crandall of American Airlines. he was not talking about history....

Every Ernest K. Gann book was good. Fate was the Hunter was possibly one of his better efforts. He even flew DC3's in the Pacific, with PH sometime early to mid '60's I believe.
Airframe appears to have been based on a number of incidents and, as indicated above, is very predictable, as all the data came out in the relevant incident reports. It was not a bad read, but there have been better.


[This message has been edited by Ball Bay (edited 28 July 1999).]

I've generally found aviation fiction to be rather disappointing and invariably full of technical boobs. If you know the subject intimately it is hard to ignore these even if the rest of the yarn itself is quite well put together. A few aviators, like Ernie Gann, have been exceptions to this for probably obvious reasons.

It is often said that fact is more exciting than fiction. Apollo 13, for example, must rate with any of Roddenberry's best Star Trek episodes, excellent as they were. The development of aerospace in such a short time period has been full of all the excitement, drama and humour that can be found in the best novels. Fortunately, there have always been participants able to record these events in books that are highly readable to those who love this subject.

Some of those books are now hard to find but they are still out there somewhere. Some of my personal favourites are mentioned on this post, especially FATE IS THE HUNTER which was reprinted after Gann's death, a few years back. What is so striking about this book is that, although the equipment has advanced enormously, the actual problems, personalities and way of life of airline flying remain almost unchanged. The numbers game, the introduction of new designs which may not be fully tested, the politics, management. The parallels are endless. It's a sobering thought.

One of my favourite (British) books is CROYDON TO CONCORDE (ISBN: 0-7195-3741-X) by the late Capt Ron E Gillman, a founder member of BEA.

Of the space-age books, THE RIGHT STUFF (ISBN: 0-224-01443-9), by Tom Wolfe, still contains caveats for those now running NASA and Congress who ignore the past at their (usually, someone else's) peril. In conjunction, STARFALL (ISBN: 0-690-00473-7), by Betty Grissom and Henry Still, adds to "TRS" with a personal view of the life and untimely death of Gus Grissom. The US space programme returns $7+ into the economy for every $1 spent but a $1 billion cut in the venture still looks great on the balance sheet when you are aiming for the social workers' votes.

Finally, for the thrill of the post-WW2 years when, for a brief moment, the development of aviation seemed to know no bounds, YEAGER (ISBN:0-553-05093-1), by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, tells it how it was when it was vital to the politicians.

Never mind the novels, read the events!

Yes, I can read ! - here are a few suggestions.

Stanley Stewart - Emergency, Crisis on the Flight Deck, excellent accounts of near disasters.

Stanley Stewart - Air Disasters, ones which didn't make it into the above !

Stephen Coonts ( don't confuse with Dean Koonts)

Flight of the Intruder
Under Siege

Both fiction and worth a read

Cannibal Queen

True account of his flights round America by Stearman - wonderfully written.

Roger's Profanasaurus - Your body will ache !

Looks like DrSyn and I share identical tastes in aviation literature although he is so much more eloquent than me.

Just like to add one more to his list, Chickenhawk. Can't remember the authors name but it's an autobiography of a Vietnam War UH1 pilot.

There are some fascinating biographies and autobiographies of pilots from thefirst and second world war eras that are also fascinating reads. Try your local library.

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Capt PPRuNe