Airport

Lincoln International Airport is in the third day of battling a major snowstorm. Flights are delayed, others are cancelled, the snow-removal crews are working overtime, and one of the runways is blocked by a stuck plane. Meanwhile, whiny NIMBYs who moved into homes built beside the airport are staging a demonstration about the noise, and then of course (of course!) there’s a bomb threat on one of the flagship planes. Alongside this aviation drama is the personal drama involving the airport manager, a prestigious pilot, a flight attendant, and an air traffic controller.

For most of this book I was practically bouncing up and down in my seat with glee. All of the nerdy details were FANTASTIC. I LOVED all of it—the snow removal, the show more aircraft maintenance, the control tower, the competing priorities, the churning foam of activity under the slick veneer of a then-modern airport waiting to join the jet age. I wished my pilot friends were around so I could read entire passages out to them and ask “Is this true? Do they really talk like this? This sounds really accurate.” Arthur Hailey obviously plotted the whole thing very carefully and did his research. It’s very well structured and holds up soundly. It is a LONG book, though, surprisingly for what I expected to be more like a cheap thriller, so you may require more patience than anticipated.

The only thing I wasn’t really crazy about was the storylines involving various sexual shenanigans. Pilot/flight attendant romance? Yawn. One female character being mostly remembered for having a bust visible from space? Come ON. What is this, Airplane!? Actually, the film of this movie and of a previous TV movie of Hailey’s, Flight into Danger, which was eventually adapted into Zero Hour!, were the inspiration for that much-beloved comedy masterpiece. So in a way it helped to roll my eyes at the naughty scenes and write it off as “well, that’s Airplane! for you.”

I’d recommend this if you like well-structured thrillers, or perhaps other air disaster novels with nerdy technical details, such as Michael Crichton’s Airframe. show less

Arthur Hailey writes classic densely plotted thrillers. This one is about a hectic evening in the life of a fictional Illinois Airport, Lincoln International, and it's manager Mel Bakersfeld. It's day three of a massive snowstorm, and airport operations are barely holding on. The biggest runway is blocked by a 707 that missed a turn and got bogged down in the mud. Mel is due at a charity event with his socially climbing wife, Cindy. Mel's brother Keith, an air traffic controller, is finishing his life shift before a planned suicide. Local residents and an ambulance chasing lawyer are planning an anti-noise protest. The Lincoln - Rome Flight 2 is due to depart, piloted by captain, difficult personality, and Mel's brother-in-law Vernon show more Demerest, who's gotten the senior flight attendant pregnant. And... a desperate man is planning to blow up Flight 2 in a suicide bombing for the insurance money.

There's a lot of drama, but few surprises for anyone who knows how a thriller works. All the pieces tightly mesh together. There's a fair amount of sex (Vernon isn't the only character who's sleeping around), and some technical action. Every character has a clear motivation which guides their action. The pacing is interrupted with lectures on airport operations, circa 1970, and the wonders of the jet age. The two biggest changes are the absolute laxity of airport security, as characters can just wander onto planes. And also repeated statements that airlines are elite organizations the best of everything, rather than being flying cattle cars trying to suck every last cent out of their customers.

This isn't great literature, but it's a fun little historical artifact for the beach, or an airport terminal. show less

Since I saw the movie Airport when it was released in theaters in 1970, I have wanted to read the book that spawned such a nail-biter. Would the book prove as heart pounding as the film? I finally got to it all the decades later. In no way did the book disappoint. I could hear the voices of the actors for each character in the book. The actors faithfully captured the characters from the book. The book was good enough that I may read it again, although I won't let as much time pass as I did before! Book and film highly recommended. Now, to go watch the film again for the .....th time.

I thought this book was hokey, over-done, and easily predictable, but I enjoyed reading it. It was definitely, well, an airport read. I have to say I appreciated how accurate the aviation information was, and enjoyed the Chicagoland references. And even though I predicted literally every major plot point in the book well in advance, I still enjoyed actually reading everything play out.

If you have seen the movie and I have many times, you know the story. Hailey specialized in knowing everything about a specific industry and then weaving a plot into it with many characters. The focus of this book is a snowstorm causing problems for an airline including a block runway needed for a damaged airline. The character development is more in-depth than the movie, but the last one hundred pages are very exciting.

Quite a page-turner in its day. I found the behind-the-scenes action interesting. Very disappointed in the movie - except for Helen Hayes, God love her.

I was surprised to learn that Haily has really spent a lot of his time on figuring out all these many details of the airport life. For me this is a unique example of such a realistic description in the genre of fiction. Other than that it is nothing special in this book unless you like thrilling melodramas.