Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating For The Non-Pilot
Review: This book is useful for anybody -- expert or layman -- who's interested in why aircraft accidents happen. Lucid prose and excellent graphics capture the complex chains of events that explain why past accidents happened... and the lessons learned.
Rating: 
Summary: WONDERFUL MAPS AND PICTURES
Review: Volume 1 of this series looks at aviation crashes from the Comet disasters of the 50's to the 747 collision at Tenerife in 1977. The book explores the causes of these accidents and explains what was learned from them. The material is accurate and well researched. Anyone interested in the subject will find this book worth reading. The maps and pictures are excellent, and add significantly to the work. I have two criticisms however. First of all, I found Job's choice of crashes covered to be somewhat dissapointing. Many of them were small and would have affected very few. Two of them were not even regular flights at all, and had only two or three aboard. True, the author was looking for crashes that taught us new things about safety, but I still believe he could have picked more significant accidents. Secondly, Job does not bother to tell us much about the crashes themselves or their long term impacts, beyond the technical aspect. He is interested only in what caused these planes to be destroyed. For many this is desirable. They do not want or need to know any more. I do.
Rating:
Summary: WONDERFUL MAPS AND PICTURES
Review: Volume 1 of this series looks at aviation crashes from the Comet disasters of the 50's to the 747 collision at Tenerife in 1977. The book explores the causes of these accidents and explains what was learned from them. The material is accurate and well researched. Anyone interested in the subject will find this book worth reading. The maps and pictures are excellent, and add significantly to the work. I have two criticisms however. First of all, I found Job's choice of crashes covered to be somewhat dissapointing. Many of them were small and would have affected very few. Two of them were not even regular flights at all, and had only two or three aboard. True, the author was looking for crashes that taught us new things about safety, but I still believe he could have picked more significant accidents. Secondly, Job does not bother to tell us much about the crashes themselves or their long term impacts, beyond the technical aspect. He is interested only in what caused these planes to be destroyed. For many this is desirable. They do not want or need to know any more. I do.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting From Start To Finish! -- 10 Stars!! --
Review: What an excellent book this is. For that matter, all of the Air Disaster volumes by Macarthur Job are first-rate. It's hard to imagine cramming any more detail into each chapter than is provided here! And the illustrations are top drawer as well. Some of these drawings are actually quite eerie, giving the reader a look at what the accident must have actually looked like. These sketches, like the text, are very detailed as well. If you are fascinated with plane crashes and "what really happened", you must purchase this (and all subsequent) volumes.
Volume 1 of this series of books includes 18 riveting true-life tales of disaster aboard a wide variety of commercial aircraft -- from the series of BOAC "Comet" crashes in 1954, to a Swissair "Caravelle" in September 1963, to a Capitol Airways DC-8 in November 1970, to a BEA "Trident" in June 1972, to a Turkish McDonnell Douglas DC-10 in March 1974, and lots more.
My two favorite chapters from this volume are .............
>> Chapter #12 -- The crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401 in Miami, Florida, on the night of December 29, 1972. That's the famous accident which had a Lockheed L-1011 plunging into the Everglades because a cheap landing-gear light failed to illuminate, causing the crew of the TriStar much grief and, ultimately, caused the aircraft to crash into the pitch-black Everglades near Miami International Airport. This is also the fatal crash that spawned the book and movie, "The Ghost Of Flight 401".
>> Chapter #18 -- Chronicling in fascinatingly-microscopic detail the single worst disaster in commercial aviation history (to date), claiming 583 lives: the March 27, 1977, accident in Tenerife (Canary Islands), when two Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets collided on the ground in heavy fog. The many photos, graphs, and charts (along with the practically minute-by-minute text account) do a nice job of placing the reader RIGHT THERE in Tenerife before, during, and after the accident. A chapter worth multiple re-reads.
A "Did You Know?" aviation trivia fact ........................
Did You Know .... that the Pan Am Boeing 747 involved in the horrific crash at Tenerife in 1977 was the same identical airplane that had the distinction of being the very first Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet to operate a flight in commercial service? The aircraft, registered as "N736PA", was the 11th B747 ever built, first taking to the skies on its first test flight on Christmas Eve 1969. Less than one month later, the big jet was placed into revenue service with Pan American Airways, becoming the first 747 to transport paying passengers when it flew from New York to London on January 22, 1970. Seven years later it met its fate when a fellow 747 of KLM collided with her on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands.
The later "Air Disaster" editions, like this first one, are literally jam-packed with unbelievably-detailed info on many major airliner crashes. These "Air Disaster" volumes earn a "Highest Recommendation" moniker, in this writer's humble opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!!
Review: Wow, what a book! This is perhaps the best book available on some of the major air disasters and accidents of this century as the name reveals. Each air disaster has been carefully and precisely described in such great detail that you are amazed at how can that be ascertained. Its a masterpiece!! If you want to find out what really happened back there that resulted in crashes, you have to check this one out!
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