Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival

I had chills. They were multiplyin'. Gonzales grabs you by the throat and refuses to let you breathe for several hundred pages. This is a masterwork of construction, and for the reader, he or she will find several survivors or casualties with whom to identify. The stories are that rich, full, and personal. The story is so well put-together, that the author should be hired by the NTSB to compile the full facts any time there's an accident. Strangely satisfying are also the threads that could not be tied: the money on the plane, the identity of the inspector, etc. Also fascinating, and revealed very well are the dichotomy of human frailty and resilience. Some of us have one, some the other, some both. They're all here. We are all in this show more book. It is amazing. Remember to try to breathe every dozen or so pages. You'll need it to wrestle loose the lump in your throat. show less

This is a story of impossibility. A Douglas DC-10 should never be able to stay flying after losing all hydraulic systems, and yet the crew of Flight 232 were able to keep it in the air under exactly these circumstances. When Flight 232 hit the ground and a fireball erupted, first responders thought everyone would have been killed, and yet more than half the people aboard (about 60%) survived.

And like many stories of aircraft accidents, this is a story of multiple factors and circumstances combining at exactly the “right” time to create the conditions that led to the accident. It is a story, too, of safety improvements that have made commercial aviation the highly safe mode of transportation it is today.

That’s the story. As for show more this book, I’m not sure that this is the best way to tell that story. The author has chosen to weave all of the various threads together into a single running storyline; the narrative jumps from the passengers’ view to the cockpit, from air traffic control to the survivors 20 years on, then back to the cockpit, then to the passengers, then to the NTSB investigators… It’s dizzying and hard to keep everyone straight, not to mention disheartening when a passenger is first introduced and we learn immediately that they’re going to die, or be severely burned, or be otherwise injured.

I also found it deeply upsetting to see some of the photos in the middle of the book. It’s one thing to show pictures of the wreckage on the runway or the taxiway—in fact, seeing the wreckage is instructive, particularly of the tail and the cockpit, and particularly the cockpit, which looked so damaged that people didn’t realize for over half an hour that all of the pilots and other flight crew had survived and were trapped inside. What was upsetting was to see wreckage on the runway along with marks on the runway that were left behind by bodies—HUMAN REMAINS. I think the wreckage could (and should) have been shown in a way that cropped out the marks.

For these reasons (confusing storytelling and upsetting photos), I stopped reading the book, and will instead be reading the NTSB’s report on the incident. The NTSB report will focus on the technical details and the safety improvements that could be made, and not dwelling on the gruesome details of death and injury. show less

First of - DO NOT READ THIS BOOK ON A PLANE!
Other than that, it was a well researched book about the horrible plane crash in 1989. It was very educational, and helped me understand the workings of a plane and how a crash like that might be survivable!

Quite possibly the best book on airplane disasters I've ever read, both from a technical and human standpoint.

Great book. As suspenseful as a piece of fiction at least for me. I liked getting both the perspectives of the participants and the technical information on the crash. Exceedingly well-researched but still readable. I know the sister-in-law/aunt of two of the passengers on the plane so it was also more personal for me.

I think this book would have been better if the author had limited himself to half the length. As it is, in 400+ pages, he repeats himself endlessly. A few sentences were literally copy/pasted and showed up a couple times in the book.

There are so many names involved with an accident of this magnitude, and it was really difficult keeping people straight, especially with the author going off on tangents frequently. He'd start talking about somebody and then a couple sentences later be talking about somebody else. I wouldn't always realize it at first. I'd have to go back and re-read sections.

I think the narrative would have been better if it had been linear, instead of jumping back and forth. From an emotional standpoint, I was ready to show more be done reading about the survivor's stories of the moments of impact and afterward, but the author just keeps threading in more and more awful stores throughout the book. I mean, yes, I knew I was reading a book about an aviation accident, so obviously I knew there was going to be some rough stuff to get through, but this was more than what I was expecting.

I would have been interested in reading about if and how the DC10 was ever redesigned to prevent future total hydraulics failures, or if that led to the aircraft's retirement. A lot was discussed about titanium and GE, but really nothing about the aircraft manufacturer.

Generally, I give this book a solid "meh." Didn't hate it, didn't really like it either. show less

Really enjoyed. Nice background on the passengers on the plane, as well as the mechanical failures that caused all the issues. Never knew the tolerances needed to build and run something so complex makes flying an even crazier thing!