Fly by Wire
William Langewiesche
193 pages
published in 2009
I bought Fly by Wire because Alex raved about it a while back. It’s subtitle, “The Geese, The Glide, The ‘Miracle’ on the Hudson” might clue you in that it’s about that US Airways flight that had to crashland in the Hudson back in 2009, after having been hit by geese. Langewiesche is a reporter who has written several books about aviation and here he explains not just what happened that day, but also what made it possible for the pilot, Captain Sullenberger, to land it the way he did and how this fits in with a more general philosophical debate on airplane controls.
An interesting subject, but to be honest I was a bit disappointed with the book as I was expecting something more in-depth after Alex’s review. What it instead reminded me off was one of those interminable New Yorker articles which take a single incident to illuminate a larger social trend. Langewiesche tracks the accident as it evolves, then cuts away to explain one aspect, goes back to the accident, cuts away, ultimately ending when Sullenberger has set down the plane and the rescue boats have brought everybody to the shore. On the whole it was decently done and not nearly as annoying to read than if it had been spread out over ten pages in an online article, but it could’ve done with a bit more depth. Also footnotes.
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