Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival

July 19, 1989. While the crippled airliner--United Airlines flight 232--wallowed drunkenly over the bluffs northwest of the airport at Sioux City, Iowa, hundreds of fire and rescue workers were waiting. The plane slammed onto the runway, broke into pieces, and burst into a vast fireball. The rescue workers did not move; they stared: nobody could possibly survive that crash. And then people began walking out of the cornfield lining the runway. Miraculously, 184 of 296 passengers lived, and 138 of those came away without a scratch. Laurence Gonzales, a pilot himself, has interviewed dozens of the survivors of Flight 232. He takes us through the gripping detective work that found the fatal flaw in an exploded titanium fan disk. More powerful still is the heroism of this unforgettable narrative: pilots flying a plane with no controls; flight attendants keeping their calm in the face of certain death; passengers sacrificing themselves to save others.