Overview

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York when a flock of Canada Geese collided with it, destroying both of its engines. Over the next three minutes, the plane's pilot, Chesley Sully Sullenberger, managed to glide it to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation--the Miracle on the Hudson--and Captain Sully was the hero. But how much of the success of this dramatic landing can actually be credited to the genius of the pilot? To what extent is the miracle on the Hudson the result of extraordinary--but not widely known, and in some cases quite controversial--advances in aviation and computer technology over the past twenty years? In Fly by Wire, journalist William Langewiesche takes us on a strange and unexpected journey into the fascinating world of advanced aviation. From the testing laboratories where engineers struggle to build a jet engine that can systematically resist bird attacks, through the creation of the A320 in France, to the political and social forces that have sought to minimize the impact of the revolutionary fly-by-wire technology, William Langewiesche assembles the untold stories necessary to truly understand the miracle on the Hudson, and makes us question our assumptions about human beings in modern aviation.

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"With inflection and timing, narrator David Drummond turns the playbacks of other less fortunate flights into thrilling nail-biters.-- ""AudioFile"""

Author Information

William Langewiesche, an American author and journalist, was a professional airplane pilot for many years. He is currently the international correspondent for Vanity Fair, but he made his name as a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. He has traveled widely throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, reporting on such topics as the implementation of the shari'a in Sudan under Hassan al-Tarabi, North Africa's Islamic culture, and the American occupation of Iraq. Other assignments have taken him to Egypt, the Balkans, India, and Central and South America. In 2004, he won a National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting. William is the author of Cutting for Sign, Sahara Unveiled, Inside the Sky, American Ground, The Outlaw Sea, and The Atomic Bazaar. David Drummond has made his living as an actor for over twenty-five years, appearing on stages large and small throughout the country and in Seattle, Washington, his hometown. He has narrated over thirty audiobooks, in genres ranging from current political commentary to historical nonfiction, fantasy, military, thrillers, and humor. He received an AudioFile Earphones Award for his first audiobook, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay. When not narrating, he keeps busy writing plays and stories for children.

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