I have always been intrigued by air travel since the first time I flew nearly 55 years ago from Liverpool to the Isle of Man on a Vickers Viscount operated by BEA. In recent years I have become interested in the investigation work that is carried out by the various accident investigation boards such as the United States NTSB, the UK's AAIB and the many others throughout the world. These people do some tremendous work to discover what has caused air accidents and many of them are explained in great detail in the 'Air Crash Investigation' programs that are aired on the National Geographic TV channel which is now into its 17th series. These programs not only highlight the work done by the investigators but also by some of the airline pilots that, against all odds, have somehow managed to fly and land some of the largest aircraft ever built that have been crippled by devastating incidents at 35,000 feet.
I bought one book about such incidents and investigations about 20 years ago and have now acquired a new (2014) publication which I have just started reading entitled
'The Mammoth Book of Air Disasters and Near Misses' - by Paul Simpson and starts off with what was probably the first air accident that involved an airplane in 1912. With everything else I do, I think this book is going to keep me occupied for some weeks to come as it has in excess of 500 pages of fairly small text and looks extremely interesting.
On that note, I'd better get back to my reading.