Emilio Corsetti III

My original 35 Miles from Shore audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

As I flew into SFO from PHX, I had a new perspective on air travel. I immediately found the life rafts. There were multiple and above the center aisle behind what looked like plastic attic doors. I kneeled and looked under my seat for the life vest. I turned off my audiobook as I listened intently for the instructions on how to inflate the life vest and made sure to get an aisle seat near the front cabin door. I wondered if my head would hit the tray table if I braced for impact. I now knew to wait to inflate my life vest until after I left the plane. I looked intently out the window as we passed over the bay and onto dry land in San Francisco. I could breathe again. This book will change how you travel, make you aware of your surroundings, and bring you one step closer to understanding what really makes for a safe airline and what doesn’t.

Emilio Corsetti III, in 35 Miles from Shore: The Ditching and Rescue of ALM Flight 980, starts with a strong hook, an airplane in the middle of the ocean that no one has come to investigate or pull out of the water because it’s a mile down. How did it get there? Why has it been down there so long? What happened? There are many directions Mr. Corsetti could have gone: a focus on the passengers’ point-of-view, the captain and flight crew’s, or the before and after on shore. He managed to weave all of the pieces together from the history of the airline itself, to the pilot’s backstory, the dramatic event, and the aftermath. While the general recommendation is to start in medias res, in the middle of the action, to create a dramatic beginning, the snapshot of the plane in the ocean was enough to propel a reader into the story and once there, he or she would not be disappointed with the narrative.

The premise is straightforward: Why did this tragedy happen? Emilio Corsetti III elevates the non-fiction genre to detective non-fiction where we learn everything about everyone in such a well articulated and compelling narrative that it doesn’t feel like we are in the classroom. Rather, we feel as if we are hearing the stories from multiple people as if we were the investigators ourselves. Corsetti III breathes life into technical jargon, complex procedural pieces, and turns what the mechanic sees into a vivid graphic through artful word choice and plain language.

The tower dialogues gave the audiobook an authentic theatrical feel more script-like than book. The explanations were so clear such that any bit of minutia or jargon found an explanation. From explaining tunnel vision as cognitive narrowing to the rationales for certain pilot altitude and airspeed choices, throughout the book I felt as if I had a mentor, a coach, teaching me about being a pilot. This is truly a book for anyone, it respects the jargon and speaks to the aviation enthusiast, but it speaks to us on a human level. What is it like to go through such an ordeal? How does a communication breakdown lead to a life-altering mistake? How do different people respond?

Because we are so invested in each character, know they are real; the last half of the book creates a satisfying closure to every thread of the story. It’s a rare author who can teach from the narrative rostrum with such detail as to both educate the reader and leave him looking around and appreciating the humanity in the giant machine of an airplane we take for granted. The irony of hell in a Caribbean paradise will not be lost on any of the readers. Is it worth reading? It’s worth listening right now.

Narrator Review

Fred Filbrich, the narrator, does a wonderful job with both the narrative and the dialogue. The book was more than an easy listen; it was one that I tried to fit in the spaces of time at the grocery store and on the way to and from work. Filbrich continue to press page-turning narrative with subtle elevations of his voice, empathetic caresses towards a tragedy, and the straightforward talk as if I was the only person in the room. It is the work of a consummate professional.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.… (mere)

My original Scapegoat audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I just flew from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Dublin and hearing an airline story immediately piqued my interest. I think it’s important to NOT Google what happened to fully enjoy the book as the author is considerate enough to give detailed stories within the major body. Like a good action movie, something big happens by the 18-minute mark. At first, the writing is crisp and tight, the author writes enough so the reader can get invested, but not too much time to get lost in minutia. While the setting is an airplane, what the book really provides is a “you decide” book that is detailed enough for someone to take notes is if they so chose. You will hear the story of the incident in carefully outlined detail, then many different points of view, but ultimately that of the defense of the pilot Captain “Hoot” Gibson.

What makes the story compelling is that in 1979, there was no Google or the social media platforms and videos that might have added evidence one way or the other. The book mentions this connection, but think about research through real newspapers, microfilm, and finding people. As a member of Generation X living in the Washington DC suburbs, my first plane tragedy memory came from Air Florida Flight 90, a plane that hit the 14th Street Bridge in bad weather. This flight, however, was not an icy mess from takeoff, rather, an opportunity for a pilot to and crew to be at their finest. As we look to a future with self-driving cars, one wonders if a computer could have done what this pilot did.

Dialogue is an important part of most audiobooks. For this book to succeed, we need different voices. There are some tower-to-airport, airport-to-tower dialogues that give it a cinematic feel, but overall it is a straightforward narrative. How does the book treat its primary and secondary audience? The primary audience, the aviation industry might be very happy with the level of detail and that even those experts may learn something. The secondary audience, the general public will find that there’s explication to help them get through some parts, but like in a jury trial, detailed diagrams, images, and video would make the concepts more concrete. There is a universal component, however, that all readers can tie to, and that is the feeling of being in the minority and the microaggressions that can go along with that.

Where I feel the book succeeds is creating this feeling of emptiness for “Hoot,” the pilot. He feels he excelled under adversity and instead gets ostracized. In the classic “show, don’t tell” fashion we feel for him as stewardesses refuse to fly with him, a training evaluator makes his life more difficult, as do some of the investigators. He loses his circle of friends when things go sour. It’s a story of a hero who becomes an outcast. Much of the book is a defense of Hoot, the pilot, but it makes a tremendous social statement and provides a lesson in empathy. It pits large faceless entitles against a small group, even a single man.

The majority of the book contrasts the strong first few hours. Around two-and-a-half hours, the book goes back to Hoot’s childhood, how he got into flying, and so on. While most audiobook listeners shun an abridged volume, I believe a tighter version, that kept the tension going would have succeeded better than this eleven hour offering. It’s a good detailed and well researched book, but we go from sympathetic and engaged juror, to someone who is watching the clock with inordinate amounts of time used to prove and defend the pilot. For example, the author dedicates almost half-an-hour to the timing of picking up meal trays. While this time stamp is important for a jury trial and to set the record straight, the story loses its steam proving and beating a dead horse with detail than focusing on the central theme, an innocent crew ends up being the victim of groupthink and bias stemming from perceived guilt, largely a function of an erased flight tape.

Is it worth a read? Yes, I think so, but in the end I would retract my statement to not Google, rather, I would Google the images that could help me understand flaps, aircraft schematics and maneuvers.

Narrator Review

The narrator, Fred Filbrich, provides a well-read account. I didn’t notice the narrator as his voice was a warm background until the book switched from primary narrator to tower to flight and flight to tower dialogue. It’s an easy listen and I found myself moving through hours of the book without noticing time going by. Except for conversations between the cockpit and the tower, the book mostly lacks dialogue that would have made the narrator’s job a bit easier. Overall, however, the narrator made a highly technical volume pleasurable.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.… (mere)

This is a clear case of negligence. After 3 years of interviews and research, the author tells the true story of Flight TWA 841 which almost had a near fatal crash on April 4, 1979. After reading the pilots' details of the event, the interviews of the pilots by FAA agents and others, the false allegations picked up by the media, and the investigation into the near crash, the biased investigators and review board found fault with the pilots.

See my complete review at rel="nofollow" target="_top">The Eclectic Review … (mere)