Kevin Sullivan (11)

A routine flight from Singapore to Perth in October 2008 turns into a near catastrophe. All of the automation on the Airbus A330 fails, turning the computer against the pilots and requiring Captain Kevin Sullivan to draw on his skills learned as a Top Gun pilot to bring the plane safely to the ground. This book, by Sullivan himself, traces his military and commercial aviation career up to the time of the QF72 flight and describes how he put his skills into practice. It delves into the major show more trauma that Sullivan experienced that day, portraying with honesty his coming to terms with post-traumatic stress disorder and what that meant for his career. The book concludes with applying the lessons learned from the investigation to similar automation failures in other aircraft, and moves to the roads to discuss how automation gone wrong could cause a disaster in an autonomous road vehicle.

I really loved the technical details and the structure of the book. The author, being the captain of the occurrence aircraft, obviously remembers the event well and explains clearly how the event occurred. I appreciated his honesty about his PTSD and how much strength of character it showed to hang up his wings even though *technically* he was flying OK again.

I also found it really interesting when he made the analogy between this incident and similar incidents in autonomous road vehicles. In Sullivan’s occurrence, he was able to land the plane BECAUSE he was so highly trained in specialized flying manoeuvres and as a commercial pilot had the stuffing trained out of him every six months to stay current. Automobile drivers stop being tested when they’re 18 and don’t get tested again until they’re 80—what hope in hell do they have when all of their systems fail and actively turn against them?

This is highly interesting for people who like to watch Mayday or read about aviation, especially in Australia. show less

A very engaging description of a near disaster and a sobering warning against blind faith in technology.

Easy and engaging read; a cautionary tale about over reliance on automation even more relevant now after the recent Boeing 737 Max crashes.