His central premise is that Sullenberger's apparently flawless ditching was in large part aided by the fly by wire design of the Airbus A320. He provides a history of electronic flight control, how the chief test pilot at Airbus, Bernard Ziegler, convinced the CEO to bet the farm on fly by wire as the future, a quick brief on fly by wire "laws", and some of the controversy around fly by wire.
A whole chapter is devoted to birds (mostly talking about geese) strikes, certification, and mishaps involving.
A good portion of the book is devoted to a few excellent summaries of siginificant mishaps:
-Engine-out landings/ditchings:
- Gimli Glider - Air Canada 767 in 1983 (fuel starvation - glided to eng-out landing on 7k strip in Manitoba)
- BA 747 over Indonesia 1982 (4 flamed out in volcanic ash, 2 relit, landed)
- Air Transat A330 in 2001 (fuel starvation - glided 170 miles to land in Azores)
-Flight control mismanagement into terrain
- AA into Cali, Colombia 1995. 757, pilot loss of SA, then inefficient application of escape maneuver on terrain alert.
- Airbus demo flight (w/136 pax) 1988, 3rd A320 off the line. Test pilot mismanaged flight systems by putting aircraft in bottom corner of flight envelope in lo/slow pass at alfa floor at 50' dirty w/engines at idle. Go-around spoolup on engines (8 sec) was too long, and crashed into trees.
As a current 737 pilot (the Boeing equivalent - not fly by wire), the tidbits I gleaned from Fly by Wire were that Sullenberger's right engine still produced enough rotation in the gas generator (N2) to provide full electrical and hydraulic power. Without that, the A320's ram air turbine would have automatically deployed.
Also, Sullenberger's first reaction (after feeling the birds hit the airplane and seeing the engines spool down) was to start the APU (aux power unit - provides full electrical and hydraulic power). This was not in their procedures, and not in our procedures, but most pilots will fire it up if there is any question - better to have it on, and in this case it was critical when the right engine spooled down to 50% N2 two minutes into the problem (54% needed for generators). Without the APU, the RAT would have deployed, but it only provides a fraction of the power required for full electronic control, and the 'bus would have degraded to "Alternate Law" flight controls - midway between full "Normal Law" ('magic carpet'), and removed some of the flight protections. Sullenberger had full 'magic carpet' flight protections to him when he yanked the stick back.
Excellent book.
