Full Description
Why do planes disappear or fall out of the sky? Brace for Impact traces the evolution of accident investigation and explains why flying is the safest form of travel.
The history of air accidents is a harrowing one. Yet today flying is the safest mode of transportation, thanks in no small part to the work of crash detectives. Whenever a plane falls from the sky, the investigators pick through the wreckage for the clues they need to decipher what happened to that flight. Before the invention of the 'black box' and the evolution of forensic accident investigation, the causes often remained a mystery.
Since the Wright brothers first took flight, aircraft design, pilot training, aircraft maintenance, and air traffic control have all evolved to current standards of safety. Because of lessons learned from tragedies such as what befell the Comets in the 1950s, the Douglas DC-10s in the 1970s, and ill-fated Air India, TWA, and Swissair flights, flight safety continues to improve. In many ways, the history of aviation is the history of air crash investigation.
Contents
Introduction
1 Flying Too Close to the Sun
2 Knights of the Air and the Great War
3 Barnstormers, Flaming Coffins, and Death Mockers
4 Lindbergh, Leo the Lion, and Air Mail Aces
5 Celebrity Deaths and the Rise of Commercial Passenger Flight
6 Lancasters, LORAN, and the Second World War
7 Make Way for Tomorrow: The Comet Crashes
8 A False Start for the Black Box
9 Kicking Tin and Coping with Disaster
10 No Longer Deaf and Mute: FDRs and CVRs Become Law
11 Douglas Death Cruisers and Mourning Becomes Electra
12 Terror in Tenerife, Pilot Error, and Air Traffic Chaos
13 Deregulation and Fighting Fire with Decrees
14 Aviation's Annus Horribilis
15 Regional Air Tragedy: The Kegworth and Dryden Perfect Storms
16 Watchdogs of Air Travel and Accidents
17 Nationair and ValuJet: Folly upon Folly
18 Swissair One-Eleven Heavy
19 Complex Systems Failing in Complex Ways
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index
