If you are like me, and love a thrilling story of a commercial airliner packed with poisoned passengers, trapped on a doomed flight destined to crash, well then, you might need professional help.
I have loved disaster stories of burning buildings, sunken ships, and panic in the skies since I was a kid. Yes, I often watch my DVD of Airport 77' as it traps the passengers under the Bermuda Triangle.
So reading Runway Zero-Eight was a thrilling treat. It's the classic that inspired them all.
You know the story...
At the last minute George Spencer manages to catch an overnight flight from Winnipeg to Vancouver. He's a car salesman who remembers his days as a fighter pilot in the war. Next to him is Dr. Baird, who along with most of the semi-rowdy passengers is off to a BC Lions playoff game the next day. Due to a delay leaving, a different company supplied the meals, so when the pretty stewardess Janet Benson asks if you want fish or lamb, you'd better take the lamb. Everyone who had the fish is quickly infected by page 31 with deadly food poisoning, including the pilot and co-pilot! forcing Dr. Baird to give Janet the long odds: "It means this. Out of a total field of fifty-six our one chance of survival depends on there being a person aboard this airplane who is not only qualified to land it, but who also didn't have fish for dinner tonight."
Paging George Spencer in 12C!
Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge are all socked in with fog, so they press on to Vancouver on auto-pilot. On the ground, the air traffic controllers, the police and fire departments prepare for arrival, including hot shot Captain Treleaven who will talk them down via radio.
Told in just 168 pages, it's tense and exciting right from the beginning - I finished it in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. Yes, i've seen it before, but reading the acknowledged original was engrossing and fun. Actually thrilling.
Arthur Hailey (author of Hotel, Wheels, and Airport) wrote this (along with John Castle) while he was living in Canada in the 1950's as a play starring James Doohan called Flight Into Danger for Canadian television. It was then expanded into a book, and since then has been broadcast several times on TV and been the basis for several movies. The most notable is Zero Hour from 1957 starring Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. In 1980, the parody comedy Airplane! got so close to copying Zero Hour that they bought the rights to the film and included many shot for shot scenes.
Classic.
1959 / Paperback / 168 pages
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