Southern Airways Flight 242 was a flight from Muscle Shoals, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia. There was a brief stopover in Huntsville, Alabama in the middle. The flight crew had flown the same route earlier in the day, and experienced only mild turbulence and rain. The flight crew were told that the weather had deteriorated, with the possibility of tornadoes, however they were not told that the storm had produced a squall line. Air traffic controlled cleared the flight for takeoff, despite the weather conditions. The plane essentially wound up going through a terrible thunderstorm cell, which pelted the plane with massive amounts of water and large hail. The hail actually broke the windshield of the plane. (Honestly, that would have caused me to have a heart attack and die immediately before I could have ever crashed.) The flight crew experienced both engines failing, a broken windshield, and loss of power and communications. (Not that the communications were doing them any good, because the air traffic controller they were cursed with was absolutely useless.) The pilots wound up gliding down to a forced landing, resulting in massive damage and deaths. This book does go into the NTSB investigation, which was disgusting, and I will have comments on that at the end of this below a SPOILER WARNING. If you do not wish to read my rant about that and get any spoilers, stop reading when you see the warning, which will be after the next paragraph I am about to write.

I bought this book during the most recent 2 for 1 credit sale on Audible. The book is about a five hour listen, so if you are wanting a short disaster book, this one is good. It was well written, and full of details as well as quotes from people who experienced the crash. This book is part of the Air Disasters series, of which there are more books. This series is also featured on the Smithsonian Channel, which I loved having back when I had cable. I cannot wait to check out the other books in this series.

*****Spoilers Below***** Spoilers Below*****Spoilers Below*****Spoilers Below*****

I really do hate to spoil books for those who haven't read them, but I cannot keep myself from expressing how much I think this air traffic controller should have been ran out of town on a rail. If you are still reading, don't be mad at me for anything I spoil. I warned you twice.

To begin with, the airline should bear a massive amount of responsibility for this incident. The technology they were using for their radar and weather reporting was inefficient at best, and out of date at worst. They were using a dial-up/fax type thing to receive their information, but it didn't work if the line was tied up. (In the case of this plane, the air traffic controller called to get the weather report, discovered the line was busy, and then never called back to follow up with the current weather report. During the hearing, he apparently did not find this to be poor job performance.) The airline also did not properly train pilots about the radar systems onboard the aircraft and how they could be misread or interrupted due to weather, which is another issue this crew faced.

The air traffic controller repeatedly ignored the pilot's questions about where they could land, as well as the statements they made about the windshield being cracked and having both engines down. (One of his ridiculous statements during the hearing was that he was unaware that their was an airfield close by because it was four miles outside of his normal operating area, which I think is bull snot because he had been a controller for 17 years.) He put the crew on hold and was ten steps behind them every step of the way. He did not pass this plane to a supervisor, and when asked why, he stated he didn't think it was practical or necessary. He took absolutely no accountability for his poor job performance, and I never could find out if he was punished for his role in this. He certainly should have been. I doubt he ever showed up at any of the memorials, but he had no right to be there and they should have beat him down the road with a stick.

The pilots do bear some responsibility for this as well. They made the best decisions they could in the moment of crisis, but not all of the decisions were the right ones. Of course the NTSB was happy to cite this whole thing as pilot error and weather related, but forget that. Other people bear responsibility as well. I highly doubt with over 20,000 flight hours combined they would have flown into that. The real mistake they made was relying on people to do their part of the job properly. It just enraged me, but it goes to show you how one person dropping the ball on an average day can snowball into a calamity.