FINAL APPROACH: The Crash of Eastern 212

Like the Elders' Crash (p. 195), Final Approach opts to be a people book about air disaster. Stockton avoids the big overview and gives sketches of the dead and their life-situations as Flight 212 drops to its doom in a forest and cornfield near Charlotte, N.C. The essential cause of the crash was a misreading of a faulty altimeter; the copilot, bringing the plane in, thought he was 1000 feet higher than he was. And suddenly trees rose through fog, and the plane was disintegrating. He survived, but has yet to fly again. Stockton had access to the cockpit tape and has interviewed the ten survivors as well as the victims' families. All of this material, much of it banal (including the ""low humor"" of the air traffic controllers), is supposedly given great interest because of Terrible Irony. Readers with a personal interest in this particular crash may find Stockton effective, as may those fresh to crash books. Others will note a Terrible Plod.