Updated With New Material.
In the words of one US Aviation Official "We regulate by counting tombstones". The "tombstone imperative" means this: safety changes don't get made until enough people have been killed to warrant them.
The industry is reluctant to improve safety, often ignoring the recommendations of government air crash investigators. Airlines are also acutely cost-conscious and all too aware that better safety does not increase profits. The bodies governing aviation regulation have no passenger representatives on their boards and are too easily influenced by aircraft manufacturers and the airlines.
This book is Andrew Weir's groundbreaking and compelling examination of airline safety, which exposes, through comprehensive analysis and terrifying tales, the reality of air travel today. It combines chilling survivors' accounts with detailed descriptions of aircraft crashes, including the horrifying Concorde disaster in France, and reveals just how easily many of them could have been prevented. Flying is not as safe as it could be, nor as safe as we deserve.
