Flight 232 Audiobook By Laurence Gonzales cover art

Flight 232

A Story of Disaster and Survival

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Flight 232

By: Laurence Gonzales
Narrated by: Victor Bevine
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $29.95

Buy for $29.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Twenty-five years after the catastrophe, a dramatic and extraordinarily rare 360-degree view of the crash of a fully loaded jumbo jet.

As hundreds of rescue workers waited on the ground, United Airlines Flight 232 wallowed drunkenly over the bluffs northwest of Sioux City. The plane slammed onto the runway and burst into a vast fireball. The rescuers didn't move at first: nobody could possibly survive that crash. And then people began emerging from the summer corn that lined the runways. Miraculously, 184 of 296 passengers lived. No one has ever attempted the complete reconstruction of a crash of this magnitude. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, crew, and airport and rescue personnel, Laurence Gonzales, a commercial pilot himself, captures, minute-by-minute, the harrowing journey of pilots flying a plane with no controls and flight attendants keeping their calm in the face of certain death. He plumbs the hearts and minds of passengers as they pray, bargain with God, plot their strategies for survival, and sacrifice themselves to save others.

Ultimately he takes us, step-by-step, through the gripping scientific detective work in super-secret labs to dive into the heart of a flaw smaller than a grain of rice that shows what brought the aircraft down. An unforgettable drama of the triumph of heroism over tragedy and human ingenuity over technological breakdown, Flight 232 is a masterpiece in the tradition of the greatest aviation stories ever told.

©2014 Laurence Gonzales (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Aviation Disaster Relief Engineering Social Sciences Transportation
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_T1_webcro805_stickypopup
Compelling Survivor Stories • Meticulous Research • Excellent Narration • Respectful Storytelling • Emotional Impact
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
I'm a former Eastern flight attendant and I had a very similar incident (that ended well), so this was a riveting story from beginning to end. Great writing and presentation kept me awake trying to finish this remarkable story!

Riveting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Very thorough in terms of how it approached this incident on both a human and technical level. My one complaint was the authors apparent fascination with people's religious (Christian) observations during and after the crash. Would have appreciated a more well rounded survey of the spiritual impact for other religions/athesists/etc, as in the end sharing the Christian perspective over and over came across as a bit preachy

Quite good!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

thank you. what a wonderful way to deliver such a detailed description of this tragedy.

Perfect description

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You get to hear all the stories from the survivors back then and now. You also hear the real reason on what happened to the airplane.

Exceptional Story of Survival

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I have landed jets as a captain on that very runway myself and visited the museum. It’s interesting to hear the story now.

Well written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Gets a little dull towards the end. Identifies many individuals but fails to tell the complete story for several leaving the reader to guess as to the outcome.

Starts out strong

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Based on other reviews, I chose this book and agree that there is a great mix of technical/practical/emotional.

Really enjoyed it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The amount of research and details of this accident and the investigation is astounding! At times, difficult to listen but was done well.

Intense!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Very interesting story that touches the human aspect along with the technical and mechanical aspects. As the story evolves with the stories of the people involved in the crash the reader gets to know the people and find the threads connecting these people to each other. The trauma of the event is still evident after all these years. The people who survived are heros. The pilots are heros. The people who investigated the crash and figured out where and when the parts of this airplane were made and found out what caused the crash are heros. This book however frightful and disturbing is a story of courage and survival. A truly painful and gainful read. Or listen. Narration was perfect.

What You Don't Know About Your Flight

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Because this occurred 90 miles from my home, I was extremely interested to hear the facts and the actual words of the survivors and recovery crew regarding how they felt and what they remembered. The only thing that made this book a little sluggish, was all the technical terms and descriptions about the mechanics of the plane. With that being said, the book would also not have been near as interesting, or informational, which is what the reader (listener) valued so much.

Technical info a little long.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews