Air travel is one of the safest modes of travel when we take into account the distances and freedom that it allows us. And yet, we still remain obsessed with aviation disasters. What caused these accidents? Whose fault was it? In her series of books Why Planes Crash, Sylvia Wrigley investigates the worst aviation disasters of the 21st century.

Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation, but when an aircraft crashes, the consequence is devastating. Why did they happen? Were they caused by bad weather, mechanical failure, or human errors? In this book, the author introduces the 10 deadliest plane crashes in aviation history. He goes through the key events that brought down the doomed commercial jets, and he discusses how we used the painful lessons to improve aviation safety.

The volume features true stories of aircraft and its passengers or crew who disappeared into thin air. Occasionally tragic, frequently amusing, Without a Trace: 1881-1968 is unerringly accurate and informative. It takes a hard look at the human failings of great aviators, explorers, and celebrities who have pushed the limits of flight and ended up at the heart of a mystery. The stories encompass airships, military jets, and commercial airlines - all of which have vanished without a trace.

We explore modern aircraft mysteries, with each case laid out in rich detail and presented chronologically, with explanations of technology, aviation jargon, and cultural aspects involved in each mystery. Sylvia Wrigley introduces the crews, innocent bystanders, and rescuers in this collection of true stories....

In her series of books, Why Planes Crash, Sylvia Wrigley investigates the worst aviation disasters of the 21st century. Why Planes Crash Case Files: 2001 is the first of the series. Wrigley has put together 11 of the most interesting incidents that the world saw in the year 2001. These include detailed analysis of the disastrous runway incursion at Linate, the background story to the Avjet Aspen Crash, and why an Airbus A300 disintegrated over Queens.

Ken Holmes worked in the Marin County Coroner's Office for 36 years, starting as a death investigator and ending as the three-term, elected coroner. As he grew into the job - which is different from what is depicted on television - Holmes learned a variety of skills, from finding hidden clues at death scenes, interviewing witnesses effectively, managing bystanders and reporters, preparing testimony for court, to notifying families of a death with sensitivity and compassion.

A mass of European and American tourists descend on an idyllic tropical island for the holiday of a lifetime. Within hours, hundreds are dead. What happened? This is the true story of one of history's most tragic and shocking disasters, in which aviation, terrorism, a sudden change in weather, and plain old bad luck made for a ruinous mix.

On May 2, 1970, a DC-9 jet with 57 passengers and a crew of six departed from New York's JFK International Airport en route to the tropical island of St. Maarten, but four hours and 34 minutes later, the flight ended in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean. It was, and remains, the only open-water ditching of a commercial jet. The subsequent rescue of survivors took nearly three hours and involved the coast guard, navy, and marines.

Higher, farther, faster - what every real aviator aspires to. The SR-71 was the epitome of this dream for three decades. The only way to beat the SR-71 was to rocket into space, and every astronaut in the office with me in the 1960s would have loved to have flown the Blackbird. In many ways it placed greater demand on piloting proficiency than any spacecraft.

On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France.

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

Daniel Ford learned to fly at the age when most men are well into retirement. In this short book, he tells how it was to have a flight instructor one-third his age, to make a sentimental journey to the Pennsylvania airport where the Piper Cub first saw the light of day, to practice spins and aerobatic turns in a Great Lakes biplane, to make a leisurely tour around Lake Winnipesaukee and into his past, and to have a close encounter with the National Defense Emergency of September 11, 2001.

On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard. The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying 81 passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope.

The Vietnam War is one of the most misunderstood military conflicts in 20th-century America. Showcasing 72 true stories told by American servicemen who fought from the skies, this unique and historically significant collection is a stunning record of the air war in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s.

A comprehensive history of Britain's greatest bomber plane. The Spitfire and the Lancaster were the two RAF weapons of victory in the Second World War, but the glamour of the fighter has tended to overshadow the performance of the heavy bomber. Yet without the Lancaster, Britain would never have been able to take the fight to the German homeland. Highlights the scale of the bomber's achievements, including the famous Dambusters attacks. With its vast bomb bay, ease of handling and surprising speed, the mighty Lancaster transformed the effectiveness of the Bomber Command.

Why Planes Crash offers an exciting and compelling look at the critical moments which define an aviation accident, explaining both the how and the why of catastrophic accidents in modern times. From disintegrating airliners to in-flight suicide to maintenance shortcuts, the author looks critically into each factor that might have lead to the crash. Her investigations and deep insight aim to make the listener into a witness to the investigation, and, yet, it is comprehensive enough for anyone with no aviation knowledge to understand.

On July 25, 2000, a Concorde, the world's fastest passenger plane, was taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris when it suddenly burst into flames. An airliner capable of flying at more than twice the speed of sound, the Concorde had completed 25 years of successful flights, whisking wealthy passengers - from diplomats to rock stars to corporate titans - between continents on brief and glamorous flights. Yet on this fateful day, the chartered Concorde jet, en route to America, crashed and killed all 109 passengers and crew onboard and four people on the ground.

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.

The Vulcan, the second of the three V bombers built to guard the UK during the Cold War, has become an aviation icon like the Spitfire, its delta shape instantly recognizable, as is the howling noise it makes when the engines are opened for takeoff. Vulcan Boys is the first Vulcan book recounted completely firsthand by the operators themselves.

Higher, farther, faster - what every real aviator aspires to. The SR-71 was the epitome of this dream for three decades. The only way to beat the SR-71 was to rocket into space, and every astronaut in the office with me in the 1960s would have loved to have flown the Blackbird. In many ways it placed greater demand on piloting proficiency than any spacecraft.

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York when a flock of Canada Geese collided with it, destroying both of its engines. The plane's pilot, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, managed to glide it to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation---the "Miracle on the Hudson"---and Captain Sully was the hero. But how much of the success of this dramatic landing can actually be credited to the genius of the pilot?

On May 2, 1970, a DC-9 jet with 57 passengers and a crew of six departed from New York's JFK International Airport en route to the tropical island of St. Maarten, but four hours and 34 minutes later, the flight ended in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean. It was, and remains, the only open-water ditching of a commercial jet. The subsequent rescue of survivors took nearly three hours and involved the coast guard, navy, and marines.

Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

The Lockheed SR-71, unofficially known as the Blackbird, was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed Skunk Works. The aircraft flew so fast and high that not one was ever shot down, even by a missile. SR-71 pilot and instructor Colonel Richard Graham offers a rare cockpit perspective on how regular Air Force pilots and navigators transformed themselves into SR-71 Blackbird crews, turning their unique aviation talents to account in an unprecedented way.

A pilot of calculated courage, "Trap" entered the Navy when test pilots were more like stuntmen than engineers. Airplanes had not yet come into their own as weapons of war, and they had an undeveloped role in the fleet. His vision and leadership shaped the evolution of naval aviation through its formative years and beyond. When the threat of war in 1940 raised an alarm over the Navy's deficiency in aircraft - especially fighters - Trap was appointed to lead the Flight Test Section to direct the development of all-new Navy airplanes.

The autobiography of one of the greatest pilots in history. In 1939 Eric Brown was on a University of Edinburgh exchange course in Germany, and the first he knew of the war was when the Gestapo came to arrest him. They released him, not realising he was a pilot in the RAF volunteer reserve - and the rest is history. Eric Brown joined the Fleet Air Arm and went on to be the greatest test pilot in history, flying more different aircraft types than anyone else.

Air Force navigators and bombardiers have long labored under the shadow of pilots - their contributions undervalued, misunderstood, or unknown to the general public. This was especially the case with the non-pilot officer aircrew in the Vietnam and Cold War-era B-52 Stratofortress. Of the six people who operated the bomber, three wore navigator wings - two of those men were also bombardiers, the other an electronic warfare officer. Without the navigator-bombardiers in particular, executing the nuclear war strike plan or flying Southeast Asian bombing sorties would have been impossible.

On April 4, 1979, a Boeing 727 with 82 passengers and a crew of seven rolled over and plummeted from an altitude of 39,000 feet to within seconds of crashing, were it not for the crew's actions to save the plane. The cause of the unexplained dive was the subject of one of the longest NTSB investigations at that time. While the crew's efforts to save TWA 841 were initially hailed as heroic, that all changed when safety inspectors found 21 minutes of the 30-minute cockpit voice recorder tape blank.

On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France.

Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson led the design of such crucial aircraft as the P-38 and Constellation, but he will be more remembered for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. His extraordinary leadership of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" cemented his reputation as a legendary figure in American aerospace management.