plane crashes.

Examines and re-creates the fateful events of an expert pilot's crash off Cape Cod

Boeing's 737 is indisputably the most popular and arguably the safest commercial airliner in the world. But the plane had a lethal flaw, and only after several disastrous crashes and years of painstaking investigation was the mystery of its rudder failure solved. This book tells the story of how engineers and scientists finally uncovered the defect that had been engineered into the plane. One of its novel features is that it portrays the complex interaction of different experts and opposing interests in investigating and solving the mystery of this single crash.

Gives an inside look at various kinds of disasters.

On May 25, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-10 aircraft, on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles, crashed just after take-off near Chicago-O'Hare International Airport, Illinois. During the take off the left engine and pylon assembly and about 3 ft of the leading edge of the left wing separated from the aircraft and fell to the runway. Flight 191 crashed killing two hundred and seventy one persons on board and two persons on the ground. The accident remains the deadliest airliner accident to occur on United States soil.

This book discusses the science behind plane crashes. The chapters examine the worst plane crashes in history, explain how aircraft fail, and show how scientists and engineers are designing safer aircraft. Diagrams, charts, and photos provide opportunities to evaluate and understand the scientific concepts involved.

The black box is orange—and there are actually two of them. They house the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, instruments vital to airplane crash analyses. But accident investigators cannot rely on the black boxes alone. Beginning with the 1931 Fokker F-10A crash that killed legendary football coach Knute Rockne, this fascinating book provides a behind-the-scenes look at plane wreck investigations. Professor George Bibel shows how forensic experts, scientists, and engineers analyze factors like impact, debris, loading, fire patterns, metallurgy, fracture, crash testing, and human tolerances to determine why planes fall from the sky—and how the information gleaned from accident reconstruction is incorporated into aircraft design and operation to keep commercial aviation as safe as possible.