Comment
Stanley Stewart is well known in the field of aircraft writing, and has written a number of books - all of which are to be recommended. The great thing about his books - and especially this one - is that he can take a subject, and make it into an interesting story which would be of interest to any reader, but he also comes at it from a technical background: he was a 747 captain for many years. You know you're getting the facts from someone who knows what they're talking about. This book, which is essentially a collection of stories of pilots (of various sorts of aircraft) who were involved in incidents that could have gone very wrong but in fact, because of the pilots' skill (and yes, sometimes luck) were able to avoid disaster and in none of the incidents was anybody killed. This book looks at each incident in detail, and covers many of the well known incidents - the 747 with 4-engine failure, "The Windsor Incident" as well as other less well known stories. This is not one of those books that gives you the gist of the event in a couple of pages: they're all about 30 pages long! Stewart has gone and interviewed the pilots personally and for many of the stories has a selection of photos to accompany the text. This is, as they say, a definite must for anybody interested in this field. Erudite and smooth, this book comes well recommended.