Captain Wayne A. Mann took his knowledge and experience as a pilot and wrote a realistically detailed aviation-mystery novel.
Currently a pilot for a major commercial airline in the Washington D.C. area, Mann splits time between Culpeper and Chicago, Ill. He has been in the airline industry for 33 years and has been flying for 43 years. His self-published novel, “Flight 43 is Down,” is his first book.
The fictional novel tells of a talented journalist who witnesses a plane crash while attempting to land and subsequently begins digging for information to find the cause. While searching, he finds employees within the airline that anticipated a crash due to lax pilot training. His research reveals that a group of men, known as “The Investors,” control the airline and may be linked to the cause.
“If you’re interested in aviation-related topics and you enjoy mystery crime novels, this combines current aspects of issues affecting airline flight safety today, with elements of mystery and crime,” said Mann.
Through his experience in the airline industry, Mann said that in the past 20 years, there has been an increased emphasis on human factor training for pilots.
“I’ve seen an evolution in the way airlines train pilots together as a crew,” said Mann. His novel explores a case where this training was not prioritized and the bottom line is most important.
What unfolds is a clash between the ruthless airline owners that want to blame the crash on the pilot and cover up the reporter’s findings and the reporter that assembles a team of attorneys and employees to expose the airline’s lax approach to training methods.
Throughout the book, his in-depth knowledge of the airline industry is evident by detailed descriptions of training, flying and air traffic controlling procedures. These aspects alone provide interesting insight into the industry. One passage —where air traffic controller Gary Lee, explains a glide scope — is particulary insightful.
“It’s an electronic vertical descent path that is trasmitted from one end of the runway to a flight instrument in the cockpit. It helps the pilots maintain their situational awareness to their landing profile by providing a safe descent angle for them to approach the runway.”
With this type of detailed information, it gives the reader a clear understanding of why not using the glide scope might have contributed to the crash of the plane in the story. Mann provides these details in multiple places throughout the novel, which directly appeals to pilots but is also interesting to anyone with a casual interest in flying.
The novel moves at a surprisingly steady pace for a novice author’s first attempt. There are some twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing and plenty of interesting dialogue. Mann’s use of humor is occasionally brash, but on the whole, it helps to create memorable characters and is usually funny.
At times, the pacing of the story seems a bit off with some abrupt chapter changes and several characters to keep track of.
However, overall Mann does a solid job of pulling together a cohesive and complex plotline into a compelling and refreshingly informative story.
Mann’s novel is currently available electronically at Amazon.com.
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