26 SECONDS

A sister honors her brother by investigating the aviation disaster that killed him in this heartfelt exposé and memoir.

D’Antonio, a civil engineer living in Los Angeles, recaps the 2008 crash of TACA Airlines Flight 390, which landed on Runway 02 at Toncontin International Airport in Honduras in rain and fog during Tropical Storm Alma. The Airbus 320 failed to brake adequately, overshot the runway, crossed a road, and slammed into an embankment; five people died, including Flight 390’s pilot, the author’s brother Cesare. The ensuing investigation, she says, blamed the disaster on her sibling, concluding that he’d displayed “excess confidence” by landing in unsafe conditions, so she undertook her own study of the underlying causes. Toncontin, she argues, was one of the world’s most dangerous airports, surrounded by mountains that required pilots to make steep descents and sharp turns when landing, and it had been the site of previous deadly accidents. Runway 02, she says, was too short and improperly surfaced, so that rainwater collected on it and caused aircraft tires to hydroplane. TACA, she asserts, ignored recommendations that the Airbus 320 not use Runway 02 and failed to adopt standard protocols for assessing runways that would have directed Cesare to divert to another airport. The author also looks at other disasters, including Air France Flight 447’s plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 and the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019,making a case that claims of “pilot error” distracted from systemic problems of poor design, malfunctioning equipment, inadequate training, and lax industry oversight. D’Antonio’s lucid, accessible writing makes arcane technical issues understandable and depicts air disasters in chilling detail, as when she presents a moment-by-moment account of the injuries that caused her brother’s death. She also registers the human cost in plangent, evocative prose: “She was weeping like a child, without shame, without self-consciousness,” she writes at one point of her mother’s anguish over Cesare’s death. The result is a compelling workthat holds the aviation establishment uncompromisingly to account.

An engrossing re-creation of an aviation tragedy, blending meticulous analysis with a passionate plea for reform.