Confessions of an Airline Pilot - Why Planes Crash: Including Tales from the Pilot's Seat

How do you know if the airline you are planning to fly with is safe? What should you be worried about? Is it, Turbulence, lightning or that the pilots might be asleep while the aircraft flies on, on autopilot?

Does a pilot's life conform to the clich? a life of foreign adventure with off duty hours spent by the pool in some tropical paradise surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex?

Or is it a life of commercial pressure to cut corners to keep the show on the road irrespective of the rules?

Surely it can't be true that the pilots have to jack up a 70 ton aircraft themselves and change a wheel when they get a puncture.

Find out what really happened with the expert investigation into the only crash that Concorde had. This and other detective stories that puzzled investigators are analysed by the author and presented in a highly readable form.

Your questions are answered by providing the reader with a fly in the cockpit view of a series of real flights. Some result in accidents and incidents that demonstrate what the priorities for good safety are. Others are experiences from the author's own flying career in both passenger airline flying to long haul cargo, with its hidden world of global commerce, military operations and more. Finally, the author offers a suggestion that would offer the passenger an easy way of choosing safe airlines; it could be the answer to equate choosing a flight with choosing other life altering purchases that are already in place.