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The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World's Most Mysterious Air Disasters
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Negroni is a talented aviation journalist who clearly understands the critically important part the human factor plays in aviation safety.” —Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways 1549, the Miracle on the Hudson
A fascinating exploration of how humans and machines fail—leading to air disasters from Amelia Earhart to MH370—and how the lessons learned from these accidents have made flying safer.
In The Crash Detectives , veteran aviation journalist and air safety investigator Christine Negroni takes us inside crash investigations from the early days of the jet age to the present, including the search for answers about what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. As Negroni dissects what happened and why, she explores their common themes and, most important, what has been learned from them to make planes safer. Indeed, as Negroni shows, virtually every aspect of modern pilot training, airline operation, and airplane design has been shaped by lessons learned from disaster. Along the way, she also details some miraculous saves, when quick-thinking pilots averted catastrophe and kept hundreds of people alive.
Tying in aviation science, performance psychology, and extensive interviews with pilots, engineers, human factors specialists, crash survivors, and others involved in accidents all over the world, The Crash Detectives is an alternately terrifying and inspiring book that might just cure your fear of flying, and will definitely make you a more informed passenger.
“Christine Negroni combines her investigative reporting skills with an understanding of the complexities of air accident investigations to bring to life some of history’s most intriguing and heartbreaking cases.” —Bob Woodruff, ABC News
“Negroni is a talented aviation journalist who clearly understands the critically important part the human factor plays in aviation safety.” —Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways 1549, the Miracle on the Hudson
A fascinating exploration of how humans and machines fail—leading to air disasters from Amelia Earhart to MH370—and how the lessons learned from these accidents have made flying safer.
In The Crash Detectives , veteran aviation journalist and air safety investigator Christine Negroni takes us inside crash investigations from the early days of the jet age to the present, including the search for answers about what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. As Negroni dissects what happened and why, she explores their common themes and, most important, what has been learned from them to make planes safer. Indeed, as Negroni shows, virtually every aspect of modern pilot training, airline operation, and airplane design has been shaped by lessons learned from disaster. Along the way, she also details some miraculous saves, when quick-thinking pilots averted catastrophe and kept hundreds of people alive.
Tying in aviation science, performance psychology, and extensive interviews with pilots, engineers, human factors specialists, crash survivors, and others involved in accidents all over the world, The Crash Detectives is an alternately terrifying and inspiring book that might just cure your fear of flying, and will definitely make you a more informed passenger.
“Christine Negroni combines her investigative reporting skills with an understanding of the complexities of air accident investigations to bring to life some of history’s most intriguing and heartbreaking cases.” —Bob Woodruff, ABC News
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2016
About the author
Christine Negroni
5 books13 followersI write about all kinds of aviation and specialize in airline safety. I follow the relationship between humans and machines. I also travel frequently and write about the places I go and the ways I move on the journey. My Flying Lessons (aviation) blog and on my travel blog (GoHowKnowHow) can be found on my website christinenegroni dot com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
November 23, 2023
“After years of accidents attributable to pilot error, automating some functions was intended to make flying more precise, more efficient, and of course safer. A look at the decline in the rate of air accidents since the arrival of the digital airplane shows the benefits. The number of crashes resulting in the loss of the airplane…has remained stable over the years, while the number of flights increased from half a million a year in 1960 to nearly thirty million in 2013. The third and fourth generation of automated airplanes, those with digital displays and computers that protect the airplane from maneuvers outside a predetermined range of safe flight parameters, are even more effective. Automation’s downside is that it creates both complexity and complacency. The complexity can cause pilots to misunderstand what the airplane is doing or how it works…”
- Christine Negroni, The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters
As you’ve probably been told – perhaps by your pilot – the most dangerous part of air travel is when you leave the airplane and get in your car to drive home. The safety of air travel is striking, especially given that you are strapped into an uncomfortable chair in a metal tube traveling hundreds of miles-per-hour several miles off the ground. But year after year, statistics show that nothing is more reliable in getting a person from one place to another.
This reliability and safety did not – pardon the expression – come about by accident. Well, in a way, I suppose, it did. To a remarkable extent, partly out of self-preservation, the airline industry has used the lessons from various disasters to create better aircraft, train better pilots, and write better regulations.
Having recently read about the fatal mishaps aboard the Boeing 737 MAX – and with another Boeing jet recently plunging to earth in China – I was interested in a deeper look at this process. When I picked up Christine Negroni’s The Crash Detectives, I expected to learn a bit about why airplane crashes occur, how they are dissected, and the way in which a tragedy today can be used to avoid tragedies tomorrow. I expected this because that’s what the book promised.
Unfortunately, it does not deliver.
***
The Crash Detectives starts with Negroni theorizing about the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370, which flew off into eternity somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in 2014. This is a perfect jumping off point, because there is no airline mystery quite so incredible as this, with a fully modernized jet vanishing without a distress call, without signs of terrorism, and without leaving behind a black box. Negroni has a credible idea of what might have happened – she believes it was hypoxia – and compares MH 370 to other similar calamities to support her hypothesis.
So far, so good.
Using Malaysia Air as the narrative backbone for a look at other inexplicable catastrophes is a fine idea. Well executed, it would have made for a great book. Even competently executed, this would have been perfectly enjoyable.
Regrettably, this is neither well nor competently executed.
***
The problem is all in the presentation, which is slapdash, ramshackle, and often incoherent. Topics are poorly introduced, insufficiently discussed, and then left dangling, without any conclusion. There is a great deal of repetition, as certain themes are repeated, leaving other themes entirely undeveloped. Negroni purports to separate The Crash Detectives into five different sections, but aside from the Table of Contents, there is no order or discernible structure.
My chief complaint is that Negroni jumps so quickly from subject to subject that the separate crashes blend together. Without belaboring the point, I will give but one example. Over the course of seven pages, Negroni starts out talking about the turbulence-induced crash of United Airlines 585 in 1992. Without making a point, she leaves UA 585 to introduce US Air 427 and its malfunctioning rudder. Then Negroni veers into the Dreamliner’s battery problems (with a sidenote about an earlier book she wrote), before ending with TWA 800, which exploded twelve minutes after takeoff due to flammable vapors in the center fuel tank. By the time I reached the end of this section, I had forgotten where we had started, and I certainly had no idea what conclusion Negroni wanted me to draw.
***
Weak framework aside, I found Negroni’s prose to be a bit ragged, with sentences that didn’t quite fit together, and paragraphs that didn’t quite flow. There are distracting interjections, needless asides, and some really strange word choices. For instance, early in the The Crash Detectives, Negroni talks about American Trans Air 406, in which improper pressurization led to oxygen depletion in the cockpit. Unknowingly dying, the pilots started making some bad decisions. Negroni refers to this as “lunacy,” which I found a really inappropriate way to describe the effects of hypoxia. This seems like a churlishly small point to make, but over the course of 260-pages, the small annoyances start to accumulate. A below average book, like an airliner disaster, is seldom about one thing.
***
At this point, I feel the need to explain my star-rating, an issue I usually avoid. To me, the stars mean almost nothing. My thoughts on a book are contained in my review, and the stars are an afterthought, an algorithmic chore imposed by a big corporation to help them sell books. Yet I understand that others find them useful. To that end, the two stars here mean exactly what Goodreads intends them to mean: “it’s okay.”
I did not hate The Crash Detectives. It is not offensive or harmful or mean-spirited. Writing is hard, and rating writing is subjective, and so I hesitated to even review this, hewing to the belief that there is enough negativity in the world. Alas, I need this title for my reading challenge, so here I am, struggling to find something nice to say.
***
Though poorly delivered, there is an important message to be found in these pages. Specifically, safety is not something we should take for granted. It didn’t just happen on its own.
Though flight is a marvel, humans have been flying for roughly 120 years, and it has become routinized. When you get on a plane, you are likely not thinking about plummeting to your death, the cabin filled with screams, the oxygen masks dangling, alarms and mechanical voices ringing from the cockpit, the world outside your window nothing but a smear of color. Rather, you are probably focused on the thousands of irritations and indignities that come with boarding a commercial passenger jet.
At the very least, The Crash Detectives reminds us that every step towards safety and reliability and routinization has come at a steep cost in human lives. It should also remind us that if we let down our guard – if important regulations are jettisoned; if important decisions are put into the hands of profit-worshipping corporations – all those gains can be lost quite quickly, obliterated in a smoking hole in the ground.
- Christine Negroni, The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters
As you’ve probably been told – perhaps by your pilot – the most dangerous part of air travel is when you leave the airplane and get in your car to drive home. The safety of air travel is striking, especially given that you are strapped into an uncomfortable chair in a metal tube traveling hundreds of miles-per-hour several miles off the ground. But year after year, statistics show that nothing is more reliable in getting a person from one place to another.
This reliability and safety did not – pardon the expression – come about by accident. Well, in a way, I suppose, it did. To a remarkable extent, partly out of self-preservation, the airline industry has used the lessons from various disasters to create better aircraft, train better pilots, and write better regulations.
Having recently read about the fatal mishaps aboard the Boeing 737 MAX – and with another Boeing jet recently plunging to earth in China – I was interested in a deeper look at this process. When I picked up Christine Negroni’s The Crash Detectives, I expected to learn a bit about why airplane crashes occur, how they are dissected, and the way in which a tragedy today can be used to avoid tragedies tomorrow. I expected this because that’s what the book promised.
Unfortunately, it does not deliver.
***
The Crash Detectives starts with Negroni theorizing about the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370, which flew off into eternity somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in 2014. This is a perfect jumping off point, because there is no airline mystery quite so incredible as this, with a fully modernized jet vanishing without a distress call, without signs of terrorism, and without leaving behind a black box. Negroni has a credible idea of what might have happened – she believes it was hypoxia – and compares MH 370 to other similar calamities to support her hypothesis.
So far, so good.
Using Malaysia Air as the narrative backbone for a look at other inexplicable catastrophes is a fine idea. Well executed, it would have made for a great book. Even competently executed, this would have been perfectly enjoyable.
Regrettably, this is neither well nor competently executed.
***
The problem is all in the presentation, which is slapdash, ramshackle, and often incoherent. Topics are poorly introduced, insufficiently discussed, and then left dangling, without any conclusion. There is a great deal of repetition, as certain themes are repeated, leaving other themes entirely undeveloped. Negroni purports to separate The Crash Detectives into five different sections, but aside from the Table of Contents, there is no order or discernible structure.
My chief complaint is that Negroni jumps so quickly from subject to subject that the separate crashes blend together. Without belaboring the point, I will give but one example. Over the course of seven pages, Negroni starts out talking about the turbulence-induced crash of United Airlines 585 in 1992. Without making a point, she leaves UA 585 to introduce US Air 427 and its malfunctioning rudder. Then Negroni veers into the Dreamliner’s battery problems (with a sidenote about an earlier book she wrote), before ending with TWA 800, which exploded twelve minutes after takeoff due to flammable vapors in the center fuel tank. By the time I reached the end of this section, I had forgotten where we had started, and I certainly had no idea what conclusion Negroni wanted me to draw.
***
Weak framework aside, I found Negroni’s prose to be a bit ragged, with sentences that didn’t quite fit together, and paragraphs that didn’t quite flow. There are distracting interjections, needless asides, and some really strange word choices. For instance, early in the The Crash Detectives, Negroni talks about American Trans Air 406, in which improper pressurization led to oxygen depletion in the cockpit. Unknowingly dying, the pilots started making some bad decisions. Negroni refers to this as “lunacy,” which I found a really inappropriate way to describe the effects of hypoxia. This seems like a churlishly small point to make, but over the course of 260-pages, the small annoyances start to accumulate. A below average book, like an airliner disaster, is seldom about one thing.
***
At this point, I feel the need to explain my star-rating, an issue I usually avoid. To me, the stars mean almost nothing. My thoughts on a book are contained in my review, and the stars are an afterthought, an algorithmic chore imposed by a big corporation to help them sell books. Yet I understand that others find them useful. To that end, the two stars here mean exactly what Goodreads intends them to mean: “it’s okay.”
I did not hate The Crash Detectives. It is not offensive or harmful or mean-spirited. Writing is hard, and rating writing is subjective, and so I hesitated to even review this, hewing to the belief that there is enough negativity in the world. Alas, I need this title for my reading challenge, so here I am, struggling to find something nice to say.
***
Though poorly delivered, there is an important message to be found in these pages. Specifically, safety is not something we should take for granted. It didn’t just happen on its own.
Though flight is a marvel, humans have been flying for roughly 120 years, and it has become routinized. When you get on a plane, you are likely not thinking about plummeting to your death, the cabin filled with screams, the oxygen masks dangling, alarms and mechanical voices ringing from the cockpit, the world outside your window nothing but a smear of color. Rather, you are probably focused on the thousands of irritations and indignities that come with boarding a commercial passenger jet.
At the very least, The Crash Detectives reminds us that every step towards safety and reliability and routinization has come at a steep cost in human lives. It should also remind us that if we let down our guard – if important regulations are jettisoned; if important decisions are put into the hands of profit-worshipping corporations – all those gains can be lost quite quickly, obliterated in a smoking hole in the ground.
September 11, 2016
I had the same thoughts about this book as another reviewer: first, I thought the title was misleading and, second, I thought it could use some editing and a change in focus. The title Crash Detectives led me to think the book would be about the people who actually investigate plane crashes. Instead it's more of a scattered collection of stories about various airplane mishaps and, in some cases, the politics behind assigning blame. At times the book felt more like a summary of other people's books about air disasters rather than a complete narrative. I almost always wanted more details, either about the disaster itself, the crew, or the passengers. And I wanted her to tell me a story from start to finish rather than jumping away in the middle while acknowledging that she was leaving the reader hanging. If you know you're leaving me hanging, please don't. Also, the author inserts herself into the narrative at random times. I didn't find anything wrong with this on the face of it but if she was going to do so, I really wanted to know more. Who is she? How is she connected to the airline industry? What's her actual job or her expertise?
All in all, this was an interesting look at air disasters and mishaps and the airline industry's responses to disaster, but it felt like a keynote speech for an industry conference rather than a nonfiction book for the layperson.
All in all, this was an interesting look at air disasters and mishaps and the airline industry's responses to disaster, but it felt like a keynote speech for an industry conference rather than a nonfiction book for the layperson.
May 20, 2023
Take Flying Seriously
As I began to read Christine Negroni’s 2016 book, I thought to myself: If I keep reading this, I may be too anxious to fly any time soon. Then, I kept going because her case-by-case reporting is so compelling. Finally, I came away from the book both glad I had read her no-nonsense account of air safety, and airline accidents—and resolved to take my future opportunities to fly more seriously.
Case in point: We’ve all sighed when the safety instructions are presented at the start of a flight, haven’t we? Well, I now know that hypoxia from loss of cabin pressure is a lethal threat that hits within minutes of a drop in oxygen. There’s the reason parents are urged to start by putting on their own oxygen mask, before putting them on their children. The reason is that within a minute or two, we can lose the ability to think rationally and move purposefully. If we spend precious moments adjusting a child’s mask, we may not be able to adjust our own or to help others. So, overall, I’m not going to sigh at safety instructions ever again.
I’m not overly worried. Air travel is safe. Period. The chances that any one person will be involved in an airplane accident are far less than being involved in a car accident. Negroni explains all of that. But air disasters are spectacularly horrendous. And there are a few things we can do avoid disaster in some cases: like knowing the importance of those oxygen masks and how to find the nearest exit.
I had to open this review with such a personal note, because Negroni writes this book in a very compelling, personal way. Her prose feels like she’s sitting across from us at dinner, telling one true story after another.
Negroni is famous both in the journalistic and in the aviation professions. In fact, this book was recommended to me by someone who works with the FAA and who knows that I’m a journalist. “This is the book to read, if you want to know about crashes,” he said. “Negroni has been all over the world and she knows her stuff.”
In the 1990s, Negroni created CNN’s aviation beat. She became so deeply involved in aviation investigations, over the years, that she served from 2001-2008 as part of a legal team investigating the aviation side of the 9/11 attacks. She served for a number of years as an official advisor to the FAA on behalf of the flying public. She continues to appear on television and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In the chapters of this new book, she includes flights from the Wright Brothers through the dawn of passenger travel to the relatively recent era of tragedies such as Malaysia Flight 370 that disappeared in 2014. Parts of that global mystery unfold throughout the book.
Negroni is known as a consumer advocate within the airline industry, but this book does not come across as an indictment of airline manufacturers or airlines. She has huge respect for pilots, so she argues against the all-too-easy assumption that pilot error is responsible for most disasters. At several points in this book, she does level pointed criticism at corporations and, in a couple of cases, at government agencies. However, overall, her focus here is explaining why mistakes happen and how even the smallest mistakes can cascade into catastrophe.
This is really a journey inside the decades-long quest for air safety and provides a dramatic look at how those leading that quest sometimes go tragically awry.
As I began to read Christine Negroni’s 2016 book, I thought to myself: If I keep reading this, I may be too anxious to fly any time soon. Then, I kept going because her case-by-case reporting is so compelling. Finally, I came away from the book both glad I had read her no-nonsense account of air safety, and airline accidents—and resolved to take my future opportunities to fly more seriously.
Case in point: We’ve all sighed when the safety instructions are presented at the start of a flight, haven’t we? Well, I now know that hypoxia from loss of cabin pressure is a lethal threat that hits within minutes of a drop in oxygen. There’s the reason parents are urged to start by putting on their own oxygen mask, before putting them on their children. The reason is that within a minute or two, we can lose the ability to think rationally and move purposefully. If we spend precious moments adjusting a child’s mask, we may not be able to adjust our own or to help others. So, overall, I’m not going to sigh at safety instructions ever again.
I’m not overly worried. Air travel is safe. Period. The chances that any one person will be involved in an airplane accident are far less than being involved in a car accident. Negroni explains all of that. But air disasters are spectacularly horrendous. And there are a few things we can do avoid disaster in some cases: like knowing the importance of those oxygen masks and how to find the nearest exit.
I had to open this review with such a personal note, because Negroni writes this book in a very compelling, personal way. Her prose feels like she’s sitting across from us at dinner, telling one true story after another.
Negroni is famous both in the journalistic and in the aviation professions. In fact, this book was recommended to me by someone who works with the FAA and who knows that I’m a journalist. “This is the book to read, if you want to know about crashes,” he said. “Negroni has been all over the world and she knows her stuff.”
In the 1990s, Negroni created CNN’s aviation beat. She became so deeply involved in aviation investigations, over the years, that she served from 2001-2008 as part of a legal team investigating the aviation side of the 9/11 attacks. She served for a number of years as an official advisor to the FAA on behalf of the flying public. She continues to appear on television and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In the chapters of this new book, she includes flights from the Wright Brothers through the dawn of passenger travel to the relatively recent era of tragedies such as Malaysia Flight 370 that disappeared in 2014. Parts of that global mystery unfold throughout the book.
Negroni is known as a consumer advocate within the airline industry, but this book does not come across as an indictment of airline manufacturers or airlines. She has huge respect for pilots, so she argues against the all-too-easy assumption that pilot error is responsible for most disasters. At several points in this book, she does level pointed criticism at corporations and, in a couple of cases, at government agencies. However, overall, her focus here is explaining why mistakes happen and how even the smallest mistakes can cascade into catastrophe.
This is really a journey inside the decades-long quest for air safety and provides a dramatic look at how those leading that quest sometimes go tragically awry.
November 9, 2016
I am not the ideal person to have read this book because flying terrifies me. And to be honest, those reviews who contend that the book is somewhat mis-titled are correct. I'll get to that in a minute.
First, I have to thank My Book Box because I doubt I would have read this if it hadn't been a selection for Oct 2016.
Negroni's somewhat mis-titled book isn't about those who investigate the crashes of airplanes, but more about why those crashes occur. Once you realize this, the book is highly enjoyable and readable. And at times a bit scary. But I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The analysis of various incidents seems spot on and there is a nice variety in terms of reasons for the crashes.
First, I have to thank My Book Box because I doubt I would have read this if it hadn't been a selection for Oct 2016.
Negroni's somewhat mis-titled book isn't about those who investigate the crashes of airplanes, but more about why those crashes occur. Once you realize this, the book is highly enjoyable and readable. And at times a bit scary. But I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The analysis of various incidents seems spot on and there is a nice variety in terms of reasons for the crashes.
July 28, 2023
The Crash Detectives tells the story of modern aviation safety. Author Christine Negroni details crashes, near-misses, and boring non-events, using each chapter to focus on a different lesson.
December 5, 2016
I'll echo what some other reviewers have said—this is an interesting topic, but the book badly needed an editor to impose some order. The stories and topics are all jumbled up, as if the author put everything in a blender, then poured it onto the page. In particular, I will wait a little longer for a fuller, more orderly book to cover the MH370 story.
March 3, 2017
This is in my wheelhouse and there is some good stuff there, but I put this away after 70 pages, not being able to get over the weird colloquial style and a lot of grammar mistakes. Not sure if the author or editor is to blame, but this reads like a rushed blog post.
September 2, 2018
An excellent book about many recent air crashes, why they happened, and why they didn't. Among the evidence: the collision of two jumbo jets on Tenerife in 1977 was an example of "everything gone wrong" exacerbated by one pilot's desire to keep his on-time record intact; the crash of a sightseeing jet over Antarctica was due to bad preparation, bad documentation and governmental cover-up; nobody shot at TWA 800 over Long Island in 1996 -- the crash was most likely a flaw in the way fuel is stored. Among the myths debunked are that the disappearance of an Air France Rio - to - Paris flight over the South Atlantic had anything at all to do with terrorism.
Commercial flying has never been safer, but in the era of fly-by-wire and nearly total computer control of avionics and the flying process, new ills emerge. Some governments overstate their air-traffic systems' ability to follow aircraft in their space, which helps explain the multiple misstatements and incompetencies surrounding Malayasian 370, in a country where civilian and military control of aircraft are under the direction of the same government minister. Christine Negroni is our leading "civilian expert" concerning crashes like these, and CRASH DETECTIVES makes for lively reading. It is true that she sometimes indulges in sarcasm and humor, but in dealing with preventable ills like corporate greed and governmental cupidity, a light tone is not out of place. My only gripe is that the story of a Canadian jet that left Montreal with only half the fuel it needed to reach its destination had not been so disjointed in the telling. High recommendation.
Updated: September 1, 2018
Commercial flying has never been safer, but in the era of fly-by-wire and nearly total computer control of avionics and the flying process, new ills emerge. Some governments overstate their air-traffic systems' ability to follow aircraft in their space, which helps explain the multiple misstatements and incompetencies surrounding Malayasian 370, in a country where civilian and military control of aircraft are under the direction of the same government minister. Christine Negroni is our leading "civilian expert" concerning crashes like these, and CRASH DETECTIVES makes for lively reading. It is true that she sometimes indulges in sarcasm and humor, but in dealing with preventable ills like corporate greed and governmental cupidity, a light tone is not out of place. My only gripe is that the story of a Canadian jet that left Montreal with only half the fuel it needed to reach its destination had not been so disjointed in the telling. High recommendation.
Updated: September 1, 2018
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2020
When I see a book called 'The Crash Detectives' with a blurb claiming it "takes us inside crash investigations" I expect to read a book about how plane crashes are investigated to find out what happened.
No. This is a random collection of stories about plane crashes, interspersed every four sentences or so with the author reminding us she has a vague theory what happened to the missing Malaysia Air flight.
There's no insight here as to how plane crashes are investigated. Well, maybe there is the latter half of the book, but I didn't get that far.
No. This is a random collection of stories about plane crashes, interspersed every four sentences or so with the author reminding us she has a vague theory what happened to the missing Malaysia Air flight.
There's no insight here as to how plane crashes are investigated. Well, maybe there is the latter half of the book, but I didn't get that far.
September 22, 2020
Benim gibi Air Crash Investigation hastası birinin bu kitabı okuması gerekiyordu elbette. Ana konu elbette 2014’te kaybolan Malezya Havayolları MH370 nolu uçak. Diğer uçak kazalarındaki benzerlikler ile MH370’e ait teoriler üretmiş. Anlatılan kazaların çoğunun belgeselini izlediğim için hiç yavan gelmedi. Aktı gitti. Teknik okumayı da sevdiğim için hiç zorlanmadım. Uçakların tekniğine meraklıysanız çok hoşunuza gider. Okuyun.
March 14, 2019
This is an interesting book about aviation disasters and the author clearly knows this space well. I found it hard to follow in spots due to the way the book jumped between air disasters. Nonetheless an interesting read.
March 21, 2019
I wish this had been so much more detailed - it seemed very superficial and it was a shame. I wanted to get really deep and into details which each case and that just didn't happen, unfortunately. I also wish the stories hadn't been mixed together; it was hard to keep track of which story was which. I'd rather have the stories seperated and worked through one by one. It would have given the book a lot more clarity and depth that it was lacking.
June 7, 2019
Commercial air crashes have attracted a great deal of attention recently. With the crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX (Lion and Ethiopian), the safety of flying has been forced back into the public consciousness. In "The Crash Detectives," Christine Negroni has done a fantastic job of putting together an engaging, accessible, and interesting volume on why planes crash.
The biggest advantages of this book are its breadth and readability. Negroni covers a huge number of different accidents, and her book is a 'Greatest Hits' tape of all the crashes I would expect an observer of aviation to know well. In other words, if you want to become familiar with the key case studies in plane crashes, this is a great starting point. While the book doesn't often provide as much detail as I would expect from someone studying the field, Negroni's writing more than makes up for it in accessible prose. The book is an engaging page turner.
In any book attempting to summarize air crashes, however, there are two major challenges. The first difficulty is that almost all accidents have a number of causal factors that combine human and technical elements. This makes it tricky to write about because accidents tend to bely simple categories... each accident could fit into a number of themes and analyses. Second, because they have so many dimensions - and therefore points of similarity - it's hard to talk about one crash without wanting to reference five more. Unfortunately, as accessible as the writing is at the sentence level, the book as a whole falls victim to both of these issues.
The book is broadly divided into five themes: Mystery, Conspiracy, Fallibility, Humanity, and Resiliency. Yet, this is where the volume becomes a little weaker - the organization scheme doesn't really help to parse out the accidents, which tend to reappear over multiple sections and are often only told in part. Nor do themes 1, 3, or 4 lend themselves to neat definitions: fallibility and humanity, for instance, bleed into each other, making it somewhat difficult to tell why the arbitrary division was used.
This leads to the second problem. Not only do individual examples get spread out throughout the book, but there was a real whiplash in jumping from story to story. While I assume this is done to help show core ideas/explanations, it has the effect of not only discombobulating the reader, but also creating an air of cherrypicking. When the examples come so fast, it begins to seem like the disasters get simplified down to reinforce rhetorical points rather than explore each of this complexity.
Finally, through no fault of her own, the book was published at an unfortunate time. With the two 737 MAX crashes - as well as the new round of 787 problems - the book already feels a little dated. The problem is deeper than simply not having those examples. Rather, those examples reveal a fundamental problem about how we govern safety in the air and the regulatory capture (i.e., inappropriate deferral to the companies themselves) that has resulted from the emergence of increasingly complicated aircraft. The book would have been richer - and had more staying power - if this had been given more attention, even without the 737 MAX examples.
That said, I'd reiterate that the book is a really great introduction to the field. It's a solid sampler of the core crashes that define our understanding of aviation safety, and hopefully inspires reader interest in getting to know those cases in more meaningful depth.
The biggest advantages of this book are its breadth and readability. Negroni covers a huge number of different accidents, and her book is a 'Greatest Hits' tape of all the crashes I would expect an observer of aviation to know well. In other words, if you want to become familiar with the key case studies in plane crashes, this is a great starting point. While the book doesn't often provide as much detail as I would expect from someone studying the field, Negroni's writing more than makes up for it in accessible prose. The book is an engaging page turner.
In any book attempting to summarize air crashes, however, there are two major challenges. The first difficulty is that almost all accidents have a number of causal factors that combine human and technical elements. This makes it tricky to write about because accidents tend to bely simple categories... each accident could fit into a number of themes and analyses. Second, because they have so many dimensions - and therefore points of similarity - it's hard to talk about one crash without wanting to reference five more. Unfortunately, as accessible as the writing is at the sentence level, the book as a whole falls victim to both of these issues.
The book is broadly divided into five themes: Mystery, Conspiracy, Fallibility, Humanity, and Resiliency. Yet, this is where the volume becomes a little weaker - the organization scheme doesn't really help to parse out the accidents, which tend to reappear over multiple sections and are often only told in part. Nor do themes 1, 3, or 4 lend themselves to neat definitions: fallibility and humanity, for instance, bleed into each other, making it somewhat difficult to tell why the arbitrary division was used.
This leads to the second problem. Not only do individual examples get spread out throughout the book, but there was a real whiplash in jumping from story to story. While I assume this is done to help show core ideas/explanations, it has the effect of not only discombobulating the reader, but also creating an air of cherrypicking. When the examples come so fast, it begins to seem like the disasters get simplified down to reinforce rhetorical points rather than explore each of this complexity.
Finally, through no fault of her own, the book was published at an unfortunate time. With the two 737 MAX crashes - as well as the new round of 787 problems - the book already feels a little dated. The problem is deeper than simply not having those examples. Rather, those examples reveal a fundamental problem about how we govern safety in the air and the regulatory capture (i.e., inappropriate deferral to the companies themselves) that has resulted from the emergence of increasingly complicated aircraft. The book would have been richer - and had more staying power - if this had been given more attention, even without the 737 MAX examples.
That said, I'd reiterate that the book is a really great introduction to the field. It's a solid sampler of the core crashes that define our understanding of aviation safety, and hopefully inspires reader interest in getting to know those cases in more meaningful depth.
October 11, 2021
N͜͡a͜͡ t͜͡r͜͡o͜͡p͜͡i͜͡e͜͡ n͜͡i͜͡e͜͡w͜͡y͜͡j͜͡a͜͡ś͜͡n͜͡i͜͡o͜͡n͜͡y͜͡c͜͡h͜͡ k͜͡a͜͡t͜͡a͜͡s͜͡t͜͡r͜͡o͜͡f͜͡ l͜͡o͜͡t͜͡n͜͡i͜͡c͜͡z͜͡y͜͡c͜͡h͜͡- 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗶
Z tej książki dowiemy się wielu ciekawych wiadomości związanych z lotnictwem oraz samymi samolotami, nad którymi napewno każda osoba się kiedyś zastanawiała. Autorka szczegółowo omawia najpopularniejsze katastrofy lotnicze, ale również wydarzenia, kiedy udało się uratować setki żyć.
W reportażu można znaleźć także informacje na temat przebiegu procesu budowy samolotu, najlepszych pilotów, warunków panujących w kokpicie podczas różnych tragedii oraz o typowych zagadnieniach związanych z lataniem w obłokach!
Styl pisania autorki jest naprawdę przystępny i łatwy do przyswojenia, o co szczerze najbardziej się obawiałam. Informacje i ciekawostki przestawione w książce są niestety nierówne- raz dowiadujemy się o przyczynach katastrof lotniczych, co jest moim zdaniem bardzo interesujące. Innym razem całe rozdziały są poświęcone pilotom i ich mało istotnym aspektom w zawodzie w stosunku do reportażu. Druga połowa mnie dosyć znużyła, miałam wrażenie, że czytam w kółko o tym samym.
Dla osób, które interesują się tematem jest to ciekawa pozycja, ale moim zdaniem nieobowiązkowa.
Zachęcam jednak do pogłębienia swojej wiedzy i sięgniecie po ,,Na tropie niewyjaśnionych katastrof lotniczych”!
Z tej książki dowiemy się wielu ciekawych wiadomości związanych z lotnictwem oraz samymi samolotami, nad którymi napewno każda osoba się kiedyś zastanawiała. Autorka szczegółowo omawia najpopularniejsze katastrofy lotnicze, ale również wydarzenia, kiedy udało się uratować setki żyć.
W reportażu można znaleźć także informacje na temat przebiegu procesu budowy samolotu, najlepszych pilotów, warunków panujących w kokpicie podczas różnych tragedii oraz o typowych zagadnieniach związanych z lataniem w obłokach!
Styl pisania autorki jest naprawdę przystępny i łatwy do przyswojenia, o co szczerze najbardziej się obawiałam. Informacje i ciekawostki przestawione w książce są niestety nierówne- raz dowiadujemy się o przyczynach katastrof lotniczych, co jest moim zdaniem bardzo interesujące. Innym razem całe rozdziały są poświęcone pilotom i ich mało istotnym aspektom w zawodzie w stosunku do reportażu. Druga połowa mnie dosyć znużyła, miałam wrażenie, że czytam w kółko o tym samym.
Dla osób, które interesują się tematem jest to ciekawa pozycja, ale moim zdaniem nieobowiązkowa.
Zachęcam jednak do pogłębienia swojej wiedzy i sięgniecie po ,,Na tropie niewyjaśnionych katastrof lotniczych”!
April 21, 2022
This is a book and topic that would have deserved so much better. The basic aesop and message that we should not take safety as a given, and need to pay a lot of attention to details and policies, is very valid and important.
Too bad that it is buried under a disjointed mess of writing and a (to me) somewhat sensationalist and misleading title. Shocking, I know, but I was expecting some insight into how NTSB/FAA investigations work, the politicking, pressure, and effort that goes into them, the ways and methods used ... and there practically isn't a single line about any of those things. Admittedly, this is somewhat on me as well, but still..
The basic idea of using the vanished Malaysia Air Flight 370's case as a guideline/framework to discuss interesting or high-profile airplane disasters is great - but the execution fails on basically all levels. The author blazes through several incidents in most already short chapters, almost in a stream-of-consciousness way, and that really undermines the points she's trying to make, especially since it's that much harder to follow. Aside from the table of contents, there is no feeling of the chapters being connected and woven into a logical narrative.
Too bad that it is buried under a disjointed mess of writing and a (to me) somewhat sensationalist and misleading title. Shocking, I know, but I was expecting some insight into how NTSB/FAA investigations work, the politicking, pressure, and effort that goes into them, the ways and methods used ... and there practically isn't a single line about any of those things. Admittedly, this is somewhat on me as well, but still..
The basic idea of using the vanished Malaysia Air Flight 370's case as a guideline/framework to discuss interesting or high-profile airplane disasters is great - but the execution fails on basically all levels. The author blazes through several incidents in most already short chapters, almost in a stream-of-consciousness way, and that really undermines the points she's trying to make, especially since it's that much harder to follow. Aside from the table of contents, there is no feeling of the chapters being connected and woven into a logical narrative.
October 11, 2017
“The Crash Detectives” by Christine Negroni was a good read. To begin with full disclosure…I was given this book through a Goodreads Giveaway. While the title alludes to “detectives,” there really isn’t much of that in the narrative. But that aside, the tale was still very interesting.
The book is a reporting of many of the major air mishaps over the last 50 years. Since the middle-aged reader will remember many of the incidents from newspaper stories and television newsreels...this book is really a recounting of these accidents, and of what went on and what was determined, if anything, to be the cause. Many of the disasters the reader will have heard of…yet some will be new. The author also makes a point of laying out a compelling case of what she thinks happened to Malaysia Flight 370 that took off from Kuala Lumpur in 2014 and seemingly disappeared.
It is a quick read and it is a page turner, but probably not something you want to take with you on your next flight. You will learn a lot about flying and the nomenclature of that business, and you’ll be a better student of what goes on while you sit in your seat and nosh on peanuts. Recommended.
The book is a reporting of many of the major air mishaps over the last 50 years. Since the middle-aged reader will remember many of the incidents from newspaper stories and television newsreels...this book is really a recounting of these accidents, and of what went on and what was determined, if anything, to be the cause. Many of the disasters the reader will have heard of…yet some will be new. The author also makes a point of laying out a compelling case of what she thinks happened to Malaysia Flight 370 that took off from Kuala Lumpur in 2014 and seemingly disappeared.
It is a quick read and it is a page turner, but probably not something you want to take with you on your next flight. You will learn a lot about flying and the nomenclature of that business, and you’ll be a better student of what goes on while you sit in your seat and nosh on peanuts. Recommended.
May 9, 2021
it’s been a while since i read this but this was my bible when aviation was my special interest🥲 still a great book!
February 27, 2024
nothing mysterious about it, all very factual and problem solvey, very good, thanks Christine
October 3, 2016
Airline disasters always inspire a morbid sense of curiosity amongst us all. Hollywood has made hundreds of millions of dollars from this sad bit of human nature. Even when it is real, maybe even more so, we sit glued to the television screen hoping for the best, but nonetheless drawn by the possibility of catastrophe. The Crash Detectives looks into many of these real incidents in an attempt to group the seemingly endless possibilities for disaster into a comprehensible set of themes. The result is fascinating, and at times a little unsettling. If you have any fear of flying, this book will not likely assuage those feelings.
The Crash Detectives begins with the author’s hypothesis about the fate of Malaysia Flight 370 in 2014. I distinctly remember watching the news accounts on the disappearance of this flight over the South China Sea, on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. I remember all the talk of terrorism; the alleged mid-air hijacking of this aircraft for its use in future terrorist attacks. In contrast, the author presents the known facts about the flight and applies Occam’s Razor to propose a more plausible scenario.
From there, the author delves into many other airline incidents. Many of these have fatal outcomes, but others are described where the result was positive. As the author points out, as much can be learned from the positive outcomes as the negative. The book is pretty evenly divided into causes resulting from mechanical and human error, along with discussions about the attempts made to mitigate these errors in the future.
There is also sizable discussion on how the human factor in some of these incidents is what saved the day, decisions made that a computerized system would not have. As the book states, “a computer will continue to do its computing while the building burns around it; a human will adapt to the situation.” There are many examples in this book where the flight crews get their due respect in averting potential disaster.
All of these incidents are fascinating to read about, and at times disturbing. Some time is spent on the politicization of crash investigations; governments intentionally conducting incomplete investigations because they didn’t want some political truth to be known; manufacturers denying culpability in their designs and pointing fingers elsewhere. Other investigations point out dubious decisions made by the FAA, such as allowing flammable insulation to be used in an airliner because it was used in areas away from fire zones. Never mind the fact that power cables, electrical wires, battery packs, and more ran throughout the insulated area. Seems pretty shortsighted, and it killed 229 people on Swissair Flight 111 in 1998.
The Crash Detectives is a fascinating book, though it may not quite be the book you are expecting based on the title. This is not an in depth discussion on the methodology and tools used by crash investigators. You won’t learn how they do their job, but you will read about many lessons learned as a result of their investigations, and how they were used to make air travel safer.
The narrative structure of the Crash Detectives can be a little confusing at times. The book describes many incidents, and the people involved in those incidents. Occasionally the narrative will go on tangents, switching in the middle of a discussion about one incident to an entirely different one, and then later returning to the original. Those sudden narrative shifts require your mind to be in a bit of a multi-tasking mode while reading this book.
We are at the mercy of the planes and the pilots, the engineers and the mechanics, the air traffic controllers and all the rest, for getting us safely to our destinations. They do a spectacular job. But when things fail, we are also at the mercy of the crash investigators to determine the reasons behind the disasters; that they might uncover the faults, be they mechanical or human, and develop corrective measures. This book is a compelling dive into their world.
The Crash Detectives begins with the author’s hypothesis about the fate of Malaysia Flight 370 in 2014. I distinctly remember watching the news accounts on the disappearance of this flight over the South China Sea, on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. I remember all the talk of terrorism; the alleged mid-air hijacking of this aircraft for its use in future terrorist attacks. In contrast, the author presents the known facts about the flight and applies Occam’s Razor to propose a more plausible scenario.
From there, the author delves into many other airline incidents. Many of these have fatal outcomes, but others are described where the result was positive. As the author points out, as much can be learned from the positive outcomes as the negative. The book is pretty evenly divided into causes resulting from mechanical and human error, along with discussions about the attempts made to mitigate these errors in the future.
There is also sizable discussion on how the human factor in some of these incidents is what saved the day, decisions made that a computerized system would not have. As the book states, “a computer will continue to do its computing while the building burns around it; a human will adapt to the situation.” There are many examples in this book where the flight crews get their due respect in averting potential disaster.
All of these incidents are fascinating to read about, and at times disturbing. Some time is spent on the politicization of crash investigations; governments intentionally conducting incomplete investigations because they didn’t want some political truth to be known; manufacturers denying culpability in their designs and pointing fingers elsewhere. Other investigations point out dubious decisions made by the FAA, such as allowing flammable insulation to be used in an airliner because it was used in areas away from fire zones. Never mind the fact that power cables, electrical wires, battery packs, and more ran throughout the insulated area. Seems pretty shortsighted, and it killed 229 people on Swissair Flight 111 in 1998.
The Crash Detectives is a fascinating book, though it may not quite be the book you are expecting based on the title. This is not an in depth discussion on the methodology and tools used by crash investigators. You won’t learn how they do their job, but you will read about many lessons learned as a result of their investigations, and how they were used to make air travel safer.
The narrative structure of the Crash Detectives can be a little confusing at times. The book describes many incidents, and the people involved in those incidents. Occasionally the narrative will go on tangents, switching in the middle of a discussion about one incident to an entirely different one, and then later returning to the original. Those sudden narrative shifts require your mind to be in a bit of a multi-tasking mode while reading this book.
We are at the mercy of the planes and the pilots, the engineers and the mechanics, the air traffic controllers and all the rest, for getting us safely to our destinations. They do a spectacular job. But when things fail, we are also at the mercy of the crash investigators to determine the reasons behind the disasters; that they might uncover the faults, be they mechanical or human, and develop corrective measures. This book is a compelling dive into their world.
October 14, 2016
This probably isn't a good book for nervous fliers, but for those who believe the statistics that say flying is the safest mode of travel, it's quite interesting. The author reviews details of a number of well-known plane incidents and crashes from the past, discussing what is known about the problems, or detailing what did or may have happened to others.
It's NOT a book about how the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducts its investigations into airplane crashes, or about how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversee the airlines. But is does talk about how several investigations have been made, and it was surprising to find out that not all NTSB investigations in the U.S, nor some of those conducted by agencies in other Countries, are as thorough as I would have thought. That's not to say there's a cover up going on in some of the investigations, but as the author points out, there are some unexpected holes in some of the reports, and a failure to consider several more likely explanations in some of those reports. That's not to say that the book is simply a litany of crazy conspiracy theories. It's just that some past investigation results have been disputed or called into question by other interested parties. And in some of the cases which the author includes in her book, mysteries remain. In those, she's able to offer several suggestions or theories as to what may have happened, which I found interesting. But overall, it's good to feel that most investigations are thoroughly and professionally conducted, and corrective action steps are taken to prevent recurrence.
Also, after reading about a number of equipment malfunctions which have occurred on different airplanes, it's a relief to hear about the large number of incidents which don't make lasting headlines because the problems have been handled successfully due to the skill and training of the flight crews. After finishing the book, the reader may not feel any better (or worse) about boarding an airplane, but you'll be more knowledgeable about the types of things that have and could go wrong, and hopefully confident in the skill of the flight crew to handle any emergency.
It's NOT a book about how the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducts its investigations into airplane crashes, or about how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversee the airlines. But is does talk about how several investigations have been made, and it was surprising to find out that not all NTSB investigations in the U.S, nor some of those conducted by agencies in other Countries, are as thorough as I would have thought. That's not to say there's a cover up going on in some of the investigations, but as the author points out, there are some unexpected holes in some of the reports, and a failure to consider several more likely explanations in some of those reports. That's not to say that the book is simply a litany of crazy conspiracy theories. It's just that some past investigation results have been disputed or called into question by other interested parties. And in some of the cases which the author includes in her book, mysteries remain. In those, she's able to offer several suggestions or theories as to what may have happened, which I found interesting. But overall, it's good to feel that most investigations are thoroughly and professionally conducted, and corrective action steps are taken to prevent recurrence.
Also, after reading about a number of equipment malfunctions which have occurred on different airplanes, it's a relief to hear about the large number of incidents which don't make lasting headlines because the problems have been handled successfully due to the skill and training of the flight crews. After finishing the book, the reader may not feel any better (or worse) about boarding an airplane, but you'll be more knowledgeable about the types of things that have and could go wrong, and hopefully confident in the skill of the flight crew to handle any emergency.
April 10, 2017
I really wanted to read a book about crash detectives. Unfortunately this is not a book about crash detectives, and the way the material was presented drove me nuts.
The book starts out with her personal theory of why Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears. That's fine, but for a book with this title to start out with 70 pages of the author's speculation is ridiculous. The author gave "proof" by citing snippets of disasters that fit her story, which makes it sound nice and tidy but makes a skeptic like me wonder why there isn't an objective telling of all of the facts up front.
The author is an aviation journalist. So I was surprised by the stream-of-consciousness way that the material is presented. Towards the end it was amazingly difficult to keep the stories apart because she was telling several of them side by side. (The author even says that it was done on purpose to give a sense of uncertainty - see page 253.) Also, it was hard to tell how much of the book was the author's original research or just spelling out highlights from other people's books. I got this suspicion partly because I have read Gerry Byrne's book Flight 427 so I could compare her highlights to my memory. (See my short review here.)
I still want to read a book about crash detectives - you know, the folks at the National Transportation Safety Bureau that get to the root cause(s) and make traveling safer for everyone.
The book starts out with her personal theory of why Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears. That's fine, but for a book with this title to start out with 70 pages of the author's speculation is ridiculous. The author gave "proof" by citing snippets of disasters that fit her story, which makes it sound nice and tidy but makes a skeptic like me wonder why there isn't an objective telling of all of the facts up front.
The author is an aviation journalist. So I was surprised by the stream-of-consciousness way that the material is presented. Towards the end it was amazingly difficult to keep the stories apart because she was telling several of them side by side. (The author even says that it was done on purpose to give a sense of uncertainty - see page 253.) Also, it was hard to tell how much of the book was the author's original research or just spelling out highlights from other people's books. I got this suspicion partly because I have read Gerry Byrne's book Flight 427 so I could compare her highlights to my memory. (See my short review here.)
I still want to read a book about crash detectives - you know, the folks at the National Transportation Safety Bureau that get to the root cause(s) and make traveling safer for everyone.
September 15, 2016
This book takes a look inside some airline crash investigations including the author's opinion about what happened on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I have absolutely no experience as pilot but I do watch the tv show Air Disasters from time to time. While there is a lot of technical information provided in the book I thought it was explained in a way that the average person should be able to follow most of it.
The main thing to keep in mind while reading this book is that it is more of an overview about what happened during a few disasters and the investigations that followed. It's a good starting off point for learning of a few cases and how the industry works. It is scary to think how a government or airline's own interests might affect the outcome of an investigation. I also discovered that I don't want to be a passenger on a Dreamliner aircraft anytime soon.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting read that makes me look a bit differently at the aviation industry and the people who are supposed to look out for the safety of the passengers.
This is my fair and honest opinion after winning this book in a giveaway.
The main thing to keep in mind while reading this book is that it is more of an overview about what happened during a few disasters and the investigations that followed. It's a good starting off point for learning of a few cases and how the industry works. It is scary to think how a government or airline's own interests might affect the outcome of an investigation. I also discovered that I don't want to be a passenger on a Dreamliner aircraft anytime soon.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting read that makes me look a bit differently at the aviation industry and the people who are supposed to look out for the safety of the passengers.
This is my fair and honest opinion after winning this book in a giveaway.
August 30, 2020
This is a hard book for me to rate. Based on the title and description, I thought this book would be about aircraft accident investigations and the investigators who conducted them. Maybe each chapter would cover an accident in depth, describing how the investigation was conducted and what the investigators learned from it. That's not at all what it was.
This book was kind of maybe organized by factors that contribute to air emergencies sort of, with Negroni introducing an issue like hypoxia or lithium-ion batteries, then mentioning a parade of incidents where they played a role. The general effect was of the author flitting around from topic to topic like a hummingbird on crack, sometimes circling back to the same incident over and over if more than one factor contributed.
That said, I still found the book interesting and I'm not sorry I read it. I just wish it had been organized differently and actually been about aircraft accident investigation like it said on the tin.
This book was kind of maybe organized by factors that contribute to air emergencies sort of, with Negroni introducing an issue like hypoxia or lithium-ion batteries, then mentioning a parade of incidents where they played a role. The general effect was of the author flitting around from topic to topic like a hummingbird on crack, sometimes circling back to the same incident over and over if more than one factor contributed.
That said, I still found the book interesting and I'm not sorry I read it. I just wish it had been organized differently and actually been about aircraft accident investigation like it said on the tin.
November 3, 2016
The organization of this book is a nightmare. The author tries to make 5 broad points, divided into sections, and support each point by frequently jumping around between multiple, complex airplane crashes, incidents and historical moments. Section 2 is the worst and makes little sense. I almost stopped reading at this point, but thankfully it does get better.
On the positive side, the book starts with a strong, well argued author perspective on the crash of MH370 and it does include many little known, but very interesting, facts on a number of famous air crashes.
I enjoyed this book because I feel like I learned detail about a number of crashes I have studied previously. The writing style and organization was painful. I think the saving grace is that this book is relatively short and despite its organizational flaws, it's also well researched.
On the positive side, the book starts with a strong, well argued author perspective on the crash of MH370 and it does include many little known, but very interesting, facts on a number of famous air crashes.
I enjoyed this book because I feel like I learned detail about a number of crashes I have studied previously. The writing style and organization was painful. I think the saving grace is that this book is relatively short and despite its organizational flaws, it's also well researched.
December 13, 2016
I agree with previous reviewers. The book was not so much about actual crash detectives, but a loose collection of airplane-related incidents. But in that it was still quite interesting. It doesn't go into major details for any incident, but as a collection it shows the general causes for all of them. All in all interesting for the layman, but if you are looking for depth you need to look elsewhere.
February 1, 2017
There's a lot of interest in the book. I agree with other reviewers that the title is misleading. I expected this book to be about, say, the NTSB. It's not. Also, it's not very well edited. The author jumps around a lot, especially in the final chapter, which was super frustrating. But, overall, I liked it. It kept me engaged. Also, I think that Negroni's theory on what happened to MH370 is the most plausible I've ever read.
November 13, 2016
Fascinating in-depth look at airline accidents (and near accidents) and the reasons behind why such disasters occur. The thrust of the book centers on the Malaysia MH-370 plane that went missing in 2014, but others are mentioned that I knew nothing about.
December 21, 2016
This is a very strange book: when most people go for leading the reader to a solution, this author goes for presenting some dry facts and stop, to the next snapshot.
February 15, 2017
Do not read before travel. GOOD LUCK!
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