Airframe
by Michael Crichton

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Book Reviews of Airframe

Book Review: over-dramatic and unconvincing
Summary: 2 Stars

"Airframe" centers on a fictitious airliner - the Norton N-22, a marvel of efficiency and safety. Popular opinion shifts when an N-22 encounters severe turbulence - killing three and injuring scores more. The media - as opposed to their practice in more recent disasters - blame Norton rather than the airlines (remember the hype over low-cost outfits like "ValueJet" and bloated dinosaurs like Pan-Am and TWA, and remember all of those "US-scare" jokes?), turning Norton into a target for ambitious reporters, "bottom-feeding" lawyers and other unethical, uninformed and non-credentialed "experts". "Airframe" could have been a great novel with which to explore issues like products liability, airlines and the media, but Crichton proves as prone as his media villains to unconvincingly sexing up the story. The N-22 becomes beset by every conceivable unethical character in America, sharing nothing more in common than greed and ignorance. Norton's Aero experts are his heroes, selflessly protecting aviation from the Knights of the Round Tort.

Using a fictitious story that makes no secret of its sympathies, Crichton rails against the media's uninformed depictions of the aviation industry, citing the history of the DC-10' - which was temporarily grounded following a string of accidents and bad press in the 1970's - as an example. Though DC-10s returned to fly, Crichton insists that McDonnell never sold another. I lived near an airport until '98 and routinely saw DC-10's in flight until they were phased out recently - nearly two decades after their "grounding" and about the same time as its competitor, the L-1011, a plane the DC-10 outsold. I even flew a DC-10 on a major airline in 1994 - I can't remember when I last flew an L-1011. (The DC-10 was more likely a victim - if at all - of airline deregulation, which created many airlines flying short routes with small planes like the 737, now one of commercial aviation's most popular jets; Strangely Crichton never explains how maligned MacDonnell managed to weather the DC-10 crisis enough to continue selling other planes and even try their hand at the MD-11, a next-generation jumbo jet.) Crichton sticks to his version of the DC-10 story so uncritically, it's almost impossible to take at face value. "Airframe" begins with a quote by a veteran journalist who warns against giving respectability to the uninformed, which does less to make Crichton's points than seize the moral high-ground of debate. Certainly "Airframe"'s details don't betray any more knowledge of aviation than any other layman who subscribes to "Aviation Week".

Like a poorly designed aircraft, "Airframe" never gets off the ground - Crichton quickly lets you know that he's less interested in aviation than the media's sway over America...on any subject. In fact, "Airframe" is so removed from actually flying planes, that it could have been written about anything - choose your widget, and you've got a book. "Airframe" might as well have originated as a novel about mopeds or cars until TWA 800 or ValueJet made it a more marketable to add chapters and use find/replace to swap small, wheeled vehicles for jets. The heroes of "Airframe" - experts involved in designing and building airplanes - are almost as removed from flying as the villains. Though he pays lip-service to the wisdom of pilots (check that other quote before the first page) Crichton either won't or can't make a pilot one of his main characters, and Crichton's aero-engineers - N-22 partisans who know airplanes - are kept around only to add the veneer of scientific correctness to his screed against the uninformed media. This is not Craig Thomas' "A Different War", where the hero redeems the suspected airliner by flying it. The flight in one simple chapter of that book is enough to banish any hint of mopeds. Crichton's holds airliners in a perspective no different from that of the dim laymen he populates his books with - as vehicles. Alas again that the plot heaps scorn on the media even though corporate espionage has more to do with Norton's problems. Despite often using "corporate" as synonymous with "sinister", "Airframe" is at best a flaccid indictment against corporations, let alone the media.

Knowing he lacks enough plot to remind readers (and perhaps himself) that "Airframe" is about something exotic and beyond his grasp, Crichton falls back on his usual suspects - corporate intrigue, as if he can keep things going with a dash of "Rising Sun" and "Disclosure". When the plucky heroine, a Norton exec, wants to clear the N-22, she's saddled with an unwanted intern (and likely a corporate spy) named Bob Richman. As far as Crichton is concerned, Richman is dead-meat the minute he appears: if his blue-chip upbringing, top-flight education, and high-priced (and foreign! ) car aren't enough warning, his youth makes Richman enemy number-one (not that he does anything apparently evil, but Crichton's villains are seldom as evil as ambitioned, arrogant or just unlikable). At first, I expected a surprise - make a hero out of the sleazy ivy-leaguer and confound readers primed for the Richman's fall. Instead, "Airframe" remains boldly unsurprising (the brat's name is the perfect example - I guess "Richboy" would have been too obvious), and there isn't a thrill to be had. Throw in a "twist" ending that's blatantly lifted from a true incident that the media responsibly reported, and you've got a book that deserves to be grounded - for good. If you've got to read Crichton, read the first Jurassic, the Andromeda Strain or Sphere. If you've got to read about flying, pick up Coonts or Craig Thomas.

Book Review: Don't Read This On An Airplane
Summary: 2 Stars

"Airframe" is a good example of this. As a result of reading this novel, I know more than I ever would about the building of airplanes, the operation of airlines, and how well (or badly) commercial airliners are maintained. Crichton also gives us a glimpse of how the FAA and its European equivalent, the JAA, operate, especially in the post regulation climate that we live in. If you read this book before taking your next flight, you may end up wanting to drive or ask if you can store a parachute in the overhead compartment.

Casey Singleton is the Vice President of Quality Assurance for Norton Airplanes, a builder of commercial jets. One of the Norton planes encounters a serious problem in flight resulting in several deaths and a number of injuries. Casey is named to the team investigating this occurrence. In addition to her seeming role as a one woman investigator of the incident, or at least the only one with a clue of what to do, she is appointed to be the person talking to the media, even though the company has people whose job this is.

What Casey doesn't know is there are sharks in the water. She is surrounded by evil executives, evil co-workers, evil union types, and that old stand by, the evil media, this time in the person of a story producer for a national, "60 Minutes" type, TV news magazine. People are out to destroy her professionally and personally or otherwise advance their interests or their careers. With all of this going on around her, there's only one thing she can do.

Run, Casey Run!

And she does. She runs here, and she runs there. She runs all over the Norton plant. She dodges one group of stalkers by climbing down a cable. Another group throws her off the ill fated airliner, now in a Norton hanger for testing, but fortunately she lands in some netting. (Whew! That was close.) Clues indicating that nothing is what it appears to be just drop into her lap, but it takes her awhile to put them together. (Well, long enough for Crichton to have typed a sufficient number of words to put "Airframe" out as a novel.)

Then there are the coincidences. One character's has an evil plan to get control of and then wreck the company. Fortunately for this person, the airliner event happens through a series of freak occurrences, too silly to have been planned, right when he's about to make his move. Then a second, non-fatal incident involving the same airplane model happens THE VERY NEXT DAY. (How's that for timing?) Then, Al Pacino (no, really) walks out on an interview for the TV news magazine, and, in desperate need of a new story, the producer gets wind of the problems at Norton. If that's not enough, the producer, only caring about making a big ratings splash, chooses to completely ignore the fact that most of her sources are clearly lying to her, not credible, or pushing their own agendas, while she dismisses factual information that contradicts the story she wants to tell. Wow, the main villain couldn't have planned it better. (And trust me, little that happens here is planned by anyone. Everything just seems to happen on its own.)

I did like the Casey Singleton character. She is bright, imaginative, and courageous. She has to be. She has been set up to "take the fall". In the end she outsmarts everyone, saving her job and the company. She almost saves this mess as well, but that would have been too much to ask of anyone.

I realize that Crichton is a very popular and successful writer. However, "Airframe" is not a very well thought out novel. I knew what was going to happen long before it did and the cause of the original incident was so obvious by the middle of the book that I almost didn't feel the need to finish it.

Finally, the use of a series of coincidences as a means to advance the plot is a symptom of lazy writing. It strikes me as odd that Crichton clearly put so much time and effort into researching the airplane industry and so little into creating a story that follows a logical series of events.

Book Review: Review of Michael Crichton's Airframe
Summary: 3 Stars

Actually Airframe resembles Disclosure in many ways (except the whole sexual harassment thing), which is not necessarily a bad thing, though is somewhat predictable  youll find that in portions of the novel apparently nothing ever really happens, and the investigation really goes nowhere (to the exasperation of one of the characters).

Still, Mr. Crichton maintains more than what is needed to keep the reader to not stop turning the pages. The plot, which occurs early on a Monday morning, involves a passenger aircraft over the Pacific that has an incident, for lack of a better term. Several people end up dying, and many more are injured. Norton Aircraft manufactures the aircraft, where Casey Singleton is the Quality Assurance representative for the companys Incident Response Team - responsible for figuring out what happens on any kind of incidents regarding Norton planes. The incident needs to be resolved by the coming Friday, as there is talk of a company-making (or breaking) deal with China to be solidified since then. Any bad publicity could kill the deal.

The story quickly goes into the fast-paced investigative mode as Casey and the various members of the Incident Response Team first unravel, than uncover why the aircraft did what it did and the discrepancies in crew testimony. Along the way Mr. Crichton, through a convenient new assistant, lays out the concept of aircraft and safety, the FAA, deregulation, media ignorance, black boxes, accident investigation, and practically everything else you wanted to know.

By the middle of the week a television news magazine similar to 60 Minutes jumps on the story when a video taken by a passenger during the incident suddenly airs on CNN. The producer, who builds, researches, and pushes the stories in television news organizations, is a young up-and-coming woman who right off the bat comes off as one of Mr. Crichtons antagonist morons (Caseys assistant, anti-Norton watchdogs, various Norton executives, and all kinds of union workers are the others) that you wouldnt mind slapping after five minutes of conversation. Of course, the media practically gets everything wrong, through which Casey has to patiently explain everything (to the reader), as the investigation builds to  well, not a whole lot as it turns out  and then the mystery is uncovered through a semi-dramatic ending.

Its as if Mr. Crichton didnt really know how to end the book, and once you understand the cause behind the incident, youd think theres no way it could have been like that. Unfortunately, aircraft accidents have happened in much simpler ways, but you wish that Mr. Crichton could have been a little more inventive. There arent too many interesting characters, and the rest are unsympathetic at best. I find it hard to believe union workers would act like that, but again I suppose there is precedent.

Airframe is a good book that uses Mr. Crichtons patented dramatic pacing and technology (media) gone amok, but really concludes weakly, though it pretty much solves everything  just like Disclosure. Is that good or bad?

Book Review: Airframe
Summary: 4 Stars

Michael Crichton does an excellent job developing his characters in Airframe by stepping outside the typical novel frameworks and using a technique that is rarely seen in pop novels. Crichton, the founder of such notable screen works as Jurassic Park, and ER, uses a screenplay format in this novel. The characters are exposed in life like situations by an author who is basically a camera lens, unbiased and factual. While indulging in the pages of Airframe the reader's mind immediately wanders away and "watches" the action take place in one's head. Unlike other ensnaring books; however, Airframe's plot is arranged in sections and cut scenes as though it were ready for the big screen. In doing this, the characters are exposed as they would be on a film, without author narrative.

The major themes of this story are the man versus self struggle of protagonist Casey Singleton and her man versus man struggle against the biased and twisting news agency. The story is written in the "slice-of-life" format, focused around one event, and the characters are represented in a realistic way. All characters are flawed in their own way, but some, as in the case of Casey, are trying to be better people. Thus another aspect of the conflicts rears its head: good versus evil, or more specifically honesty. At the completion of the book, Crichton shows where the characters are a few years down the road, and subtly passes judgement on them in accordance with their stance on the good versus evil theme. Airframe is a book of morals tales.

The plot of Airframe, as Cricthon would write it, is easy to read and draws the reader in to the story. The story ends with the warm sense of completion, which inspires one to read other books that Crichton has written. Within the screenplay rubric, Crichton uses foreshadowing that is only seen after the event. I learned this from my father, who, because his line of work, reads large quantites of text in a short time. He has a habit of analyzing what he is reading while he reads, and immediately begins looking for evidence to support the conclusions he has drawn. It was he who pointed out some of the well hidden foreshadowing devices used in this book. The hints are in the fabric of the story, but one must focus to see them.

Several moods are inspired because of this book. The moods change quickly based on revelations in the story, once again very similar to the way moods change in a movie or television show. The moods in Airframe range from hopelessness to anger to contempt and finally to success.

Airframe is written in third person omniscient point of view with a non-intrusive and unbiased author.

I would recommend this book to anyone because it is entertaining and informative. Crichton is a very learned man and typically studies his subjects to the point of obsession in order to be factually accurate. Airframe is no exception.

Book Review: The Mystery of the Flight Incident
Summary: 5 Stars