The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents [Paperback]

Malcolm Macpherson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 1998

Readers join desperate pilots in the cockpit as they fight gravity and time in a plane that's falling out of the sky.

Anyone who watches the news knows about the "black box." Officially called the cockpit voice recorder, the black box (which is actually Day-glo orange) records the final moments of any in-flight accident. Often it provides the only explanation of a crash -- inevitably, it provides a heart-breaking, second-by-second account of intense fear tempered by unyielding professionalism.

This 1984 Quill title has been completely updated to include twenty-eight new incidents occurring between 1978 and 1996. Some are famous, like the 1996 Valujet crash in the Everglades and the ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger; other disasters range from commuter prop aircraft to jumbo airliners and a pair of Air Force planes. Few have ever been revealed in their entirety, each, without exception, is absolutely gripping.

In this new edition, editor Malcolm MacPherson has, wherever possible, added weather notes and descriptions of events in the cockpit and cabin, heightening our vivid sense of being there during the final moments. Provided by the National Transportation Safety Board and vetted by an experienced airline captain, these are unforgettable case studies in ultimate emergency -- authentic, immediate, filled with drama, terror, human frailty and error, and unquenchable courage.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Undeniably compelling... it is hard to throw off its spell." -- -- The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Malcolm MacPherson is a seasoned novelist and journalist who lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Rev Sub edition (July 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688158927
• ISBN-13: 978-0688158927
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,337 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MALCOLM MACPHERSON is a journalist and author of 12 fiction and non-fiction books, including, most recently, his bestseller about the Afghan war, Robert's Ridge. He served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and worked as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek for 12 years, covering the Yom Kippur war and other notable events. Most recently, he reported from Iraq for Time Magazine while living in the presidential palace in the newly formed "Green Zone." He lives in Virginia with his wife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as the idea behind the book, November 15, 1999

By 

Dr. Alexander Zschocke (Hamburg, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents (Paperback)

Frankly, I was disappointed. The idea behind the book - to publish the content of the CVR tapes of major aircraft accidents - is a good one. However, this is a specialized topic, and MacPherson simply does not have the specialist knowledge to properly edit the recordings. As a result, there are errors. Some are minor - e.g., the fuel quantity for ValuJet 592 is given as 2.300 pounds for the 1000 kilometer flight from Miami to Atlanta. Others are not - e.g., the crash of Delta 1141, which is generally accepted to have been caused by the crew failing to set the flaps, is attributed to fuel imbalance. As a result, much of the crucial tape sequence of the crew making their final preparations for takeoff is edited out by MacPherson. On the plus side, editing is necessary to make the book accessible to the general reader, and it certainly does that. MacPherson thus succeeds in making the drama - and quite often the heroism - of flight crews suddenly caught in terrifying circumstances accessible for everyone. I rate the book as recommendable for the general reader, but unsatisfactory for aviators.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Complied for easy access, but flawed, May 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents (Paperback)

Some of these transcripts are truly gripping, but the book suffers from two fatal flaws:

First, the transcripts seem arbitrarily edited. Some transcripts have a long amount of dialogue included before things go wrong that have no relation to what follows. Others are incomplete and leave out a lot. For example, PSA Flight 182 is cut off right after the midair and leaves out the entire sequence of the crew heroically attempting to get their aircraft under control If you've heard the whole thing, you wonder if they had had more altitude or weren't in landing configuration, if they might not have been able to pull it off. The final "Goodbye, Mother" tears you apart. It seems these transcripts were just thrown together.

The other problem is that while the Editior may be a fine reporter, he doesn't know much about aviation, and some of his attempts to explain what is going on are misleading or inaccurate. For example, his explanation of what "Break" means in a radio transmission when he's attempting to interpret what's going on at that moment is wrong.

This is an interesting book, but it could have been a lot better with a little work.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Recordings Skip A Beat, January 3, 2005

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents (Paperback)

I have never thought of myself as a morbid kind of guy, but for some reason I really enjoy books on airline incidents. I think it is all the very real life or death drama that is part of each of the events. With that being said I have read any number of these type of books over the years and have come to expect a certain amount of detail with each one. I found that my expectations were not met with this book. The format of the book is primarily the actual cockpit voice recordings with a little bit of detail at the start and end of the sequence to set the stage. The author also inserts a few comments here and there to help the reader to determine what is going on.

What I came away with in the book was a feeling that it was just an average attempt. The author did present some interesting and not very well reported on incidents as well as some of the more famous. It was just that he did not put in a lot more effort past the editing. The comments he did make about the crashes or near crashes were somewhat shallow. The book did not promise a full blow investigation on each crash, but I would have liked a bit more then just a three sentence explanation and the death toll. And given that there were so many different aircraft involved I would have liked some consistent basic info on each of the aircraft involved in the reported events. And would I be considered greedy if I would ask for a few photos?

Overall I found the book to be average. The cockpit voice recordings are at times dramatic and the actual events are interesting to read about. It was just that so much more could have been done to make the book a more complete account of these accidents that I finished the book a bit disappointed. IF this is your first book on the topic then it is probably a nice starting point.