Rating: 
Summary: Not too great, but nice to read.
Review: Let's try something. Begin reading the book, and then try putting it down after reading half of it. Didn't work? Heh. Crichton does a great job of adding suspense to the end of each chapter. Yet, I feel that this book does not deserve any more stars than I gave it. Some chapters are painstakingly detailed. Some extremely minor sub-plots just sort of trail off. Lastly, I thought that the ending was just plain stupid. It did not really to the main character's work at all. This book is not one of Michael Crichton's best. I recommend this book if you are just looking for a suspenseful book without true meaning or and ending. Watch out for the, how should I put this...., large amounts of 'harsh' language.
Rating: 
Summary: Exciting, Educational, Entertaining, and Aerodynamic!
Review: Some reviewers fault this book for being formulaic, and lacking of philosophical and moral depth. To them I say, read War and Peace! If you like a story that pitches and yaws through more Machiavellian twists than a presidential primary, then read this book. In true Crichton fashion, the reader is sucked into a vortex of suspense and thrills, with just enough interesting facts about media bias, corporate double-dealings, and aircraft safety, to leave the reader entertained and informed. Read this book on your next trans-oceanic flight and you'll get twice the value.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Page Turner
Review: Try putting this one down!! With all the goings-on in today's airplane industry, this timely and timeless book captures the essence of big business and the desire for coverup. But is that it? Another airplane disaster under mysterious circumstances - but this one just doesn't smell right. Reporters, management, blue and white collar workers.... our heroine must get to bottom of this - for everyone involved, including her own safety. Who is right about this one? Outstanding writing!
Rating:
Summary: Snatched from the headlines...
Review: Michael Crichton's work always crackles with tension and realism...Airframe may just be his best work yet... The story is classic Crichton--tight, edgy, with solid details and flow, as well as believable characters to sympathize with (or pull against)...After reading this book, I felt like I could step into the role of an NTSB investigator. I also felt like I was on board the doomed aircraft during those fateful moments of turbulence...What's so scary is that this kind of thing can happen at any time... Airframe does not disappoint...Put this one on your shelf now!!
Rating:
Summary: BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ
Review: This book is definitely the best I have ever read. If you liked this you have to read the "Andromeda Strain". That was one of the best too. The way he writes his books iof phenominal. I really wonder how he does it. Absolutely amazing. Only Took me two days to read because i couldnt read it. I know someone that read the whole thing on a 6 hour plane ride. I obviously reccomend this book and all his others. I give it a 10 STAR report! Best book in the world. Do yourself a favor and read it. :-) Please
Rating:
Summary: "A little bit of media-bashing..."
Review: Flight TPA 545 is travelling from Hong Kong to Denver with an entirely Chinese crew aboard. Somewhere along the way, something goes wrong, and the pilot asks for clearance for an emergency landing at Los Angeles. Over the radio he reports, "We have a passenger emergency. We need ambulances on the ground. I would say thirty or forty ambulances, maybe more." But nothing prepares rescue workers for the carnage they witness when they enter the plane. Ninety-four passengers are injured. Three dead. The interior cabin virtually destroyed. What happened on board? The pilot says it was turbulence, but other than that the entire crew remains mysteriously tight-lipped. Enter Casey Singleton of the Incident Review Team of Norton Aircraft, the company that built the plane. It's up to her and the rest of the team to find out what happened, and they have to do it fast. Norton Aircraft has an as-yet unsigned huge deal with China on the cards, and everything depends on clearing up this incident, so the pressure's high. To make matters worse, along comes a bunch of journalists who care more about visuals and "how it looks and sounds to the public" rather than actual facts. This is one great thriller from Michael Crichton, and it's one of my personal favorites. The story is paced well, and as usual Crichton "got the science right". There's a lot of details on the sturcture of an aircraft and some of it's crucial parts. But all that technical gibberish won't make you feel out of place, because it's written so that even a layman would understand. After all, they don't call Crichton "a master storyteller" for nothing. Another notable point of the novel is how Crichton points out the mishandling of information by the American media. This one really makes the media look evil. But I guess it's somewhat true. All in all, this is one of Crichton's best. You can't afford to miss it for anything. Go read it!
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous Novel by One of America's Most Prized Author
Review: After oredering this book from Amazon.com it sat on my bookshelf for about 2 months without me starting it. I finally got to this enthralling book and read it in just three days. The novel stars Casey Singleton the QA director for Norton and an enthralling investigation over an N-22 jet that suffered damage for unknown reasons in the air killing three leaving 56 injured. Through twist and turns Michael Crichton takes you on a thrill ride through the life of a highpowered associate at a major company and phony TV reporters. After CNN shows a disturbing video of footage of what happened on the plane it gives Jennifer Malone, a 29 year old that works for Newsline the idea to make a story of a lifetime. Meanwhile Jennifer wants to interview the people at Norton and Casey has to really figure out what happened. Since the flight data recorder will take over a year to finish she goes on the plane and searches for a QAR and finds one. Throughn many contreversies and plots, Airframe is a book that and reader does not want to miss. Read this book as soon as you can. You'll thouroghly enjoy it! Good job Michael Crichton!
Rating:
Summary: Nice reading
Review: I've waited three years till I got the chance to read this book,and I have to say that in the end it was quite entertaining. I can't say there is much depth in the characters of this book,they are not well described -the "story" is the main object of this product. I call it product ,because over the years I've read most of Crichton's books,and the formula keep repeating itself,with small changes.Not to say the stories resemble one another,but many motives stay the same. The story itself is interesting: you get to take a peep behind the curtains of the aviation industry,and learn quite a bit about the politics,power relations and interests of the players in the field.It's not wide and through look ,but it is good enough to create curiosity and further interest with the subject. The bottom line,it's a good flight-book,very flowing read, that helps spending some spare time. Not to heavy,not to shallow- you will enjoy it if you're looking for a pure mind relief.
Rating: 
Summary: bleeds energy!
Review: With "air-rage" on the rise, novels about air catastropes will always be topical. Topical books are usually meant to sell themselves and "Airframe" - with its flat charachters, by-the-numbers plot and paper-thin moralizing - offers nothing but slim reading waiting for a headline for back-up. The titular fuselage belongs to the N-22, an airliner designed by Norton Aerospace, one of those bland and vague corporate entities typical to Michael Crichton novels. N-22 jets are known for their safety, especially in America - though this might have more to do with the fact that much of the N-22's competition is European. Aero-chauvinism vanishes when a US-bound N-22 encounters inexplicably severe turbulence, and a conspiracy of media, lawyers and assorted, uncredited "experts" descend on Norton like vultures. "Airframe" could have been a dramatic vehicle to explore such issues as corporate accountability, gov't regulation of industry, products liability, and the media, but Crichton never gets anywhere near that destination. The Norton Aero experts are his heroes, protecting the corporate world from the scum of special interests. Crichton saddles them without a shred of self-doubt in the quality of their product, thus removing what would have been a rich source of dramatic and moral tension. The enemy (bottom-feeding lawyers, self-proclaimed experts and the amoral media types that give the other two their voice) are not only undeniably amoral and dim, but ugly. We almost see the warts. Having created a force with no chance of reader sympathy, Crichton seems to rail against media manipulation of commerical flight, but it all sounds hollow. Much is made of the DC-10 which was grounded temporarily following a string of disasters in 1979. Though the DC-10 was eventually cleared to fly, Crichton insists that McDonnell never sold another. I'm suspicious because a) living near an airport, I used to see plenty of DC-10's until recently when they were phased out - nearly two decades after the grounding and about the same time as the DC-10's competitor, the L-1011; b) DC-10's market misfortunes (if they existed) would have occurred when airline deregulation created dozens of new airlines flying short routes with small planes. The small 737, once a niche aircraft, is now commercial aviation's most popular jet, typifying market erosion for all big planes. Figures show the DC-10, for its perceived faults, outsold its competition, the L-1011; and c) if the DC-10's misfortunes resulted from public mistrust in its construction or design, lack of confidence should have spread to all McDonnel planes. Instead, McDonnell continued selling planes and did well enough with smaller planes like the MD-80 to try their hand at a next-generation airliner, the MD-11. Crichton mentions the DC-10 like a mantra, so pat and without a sound of dissent, it's almost impossible to take at face value. Like a badly damaged jetfighter, "Airframe" bleeds energy quickly once its apparent that the author has less interest in aviation than the media's sway over America. In fact, the book is so divorced from its high-flying mascot, that it could have been written about any product - like toys or appliances. In that respect, "Airframe' recalls the little-seen "Missile Lords" (Sutton, 1963), a novel about the high-stakes world of ICBM's, and the companies that build them. So focused on the corporate and marketing minds behind the fictitious ICBM, that the missile itself and its explosive power are never fully realized and the company might as well have been trying to sell the air force some mopeds. "Aiframe" could also have been written about Mopeds until media attention over TWA 800 required adding some chapters and judiciously use find/replace to swap mopeds for airliners. Though Crichton seems to fight this with some thin prose praising the autonomy of the plane makers, it's thin. This is especially because "Airframe"'s heroes are almost as divorced from aviation as the N-22's enemies. Though extolling the pilots, none of the book's main charachters are airline pilots, and the band of N-22 partisans who know anything about airplanes exist only to cry fowl at the media and demonstrate the stupidity of those without the author's sense of flight. This is not Craig Thomas' "A Different War", where the hero redeems the suspected airliner by flying it. The flight in one simple chapter of that book is enough to banish the mopeds. Crichton's attentions on airliners, in contrast, is no different from that of the dim laymen he populates his books with - as vehicles. To remind readers - and perhaps himself - that his book is about something expensive and exotic, but beyond his grasp to put in its element, Crichton tosses in his usual suspects - corporate intrigue: darker forces are at work here, as evidenced here by Bob Richman, the plucky heroine's unwanted intern. Richman is dead-meat the minute (or page) he appears. His blue-chip upbringing, top-flight education, high-priced (and foreign! ) car and his youth are enough to raise warning flags. At times, I thought Crichton was on the verge of a surprise that would not only redeem the sleazy ivy-leaguer but confound his readers as well, primed for the brat's fall. Alas, "Airframe" remains blatantly obvious (the brat's name is the perfect example - I guess "Richboy" would have been too obvious), as averse to turbulence as a well designed airliner. Alas again that Crichton, while heaping scorn on the media fails to realize that his corporate cloak&dagger undermines his bloated polemic - the media's hatchet job would never have progressed without help from Norton's inside enemies. But that patent flaw in Crichton's argument probably made sense when the book was about mopeds. If you've got to read Crichton, read the first Jurassic, the Andromeda Strain or Sphere. If you've got to read about flying, pick up Coonts or Craig Thomas. Keep this airframe grounded.
Rating:
Summary: Very Technical, very good.
Review: The inner workings of this book are fantastic. Michael Crichton puts us into the Norton Aircraft facilities, with all the political goings on, the backstabbing, the wolves at the gate and now...an air disaster. As well as entertaining us, Crichton provides with an education in Public Relations and how the investigative journalism doesn't care about the truth, unless it suits their entertainment needs (one example is the DC-10 story he puts in). I liked the main character who is always on the edge of losing her job. She has a tightrope the size of Dental Floss to work on and timelines that are impossible to meet. That, and the fact that her superiors want her to fail. It was worth the price of the book just to see how she would escape the tomb that others had thrown her in. The book is chopped up into days (she has 7 days to figure out what caused a near-fatal problem that caused 3 deaths on a flight.) and that provides good suspense and closure as each section ends. I recommend this book to anyone. It is a good read and one of Crichton's best books.
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