It was frequently impossible to be sure the DC-2 had actually touched the earth. Nor would there be any further commotion of thumps and blasting engines. He would allow the landing roll to continue without application of either power or brakes until the final, sensuous result was that the twelve-ton airplane eased to a halt exactly in line with the waiting ramp. Throughout the entire show — and it was nothing other than sheer display — a passenger could have held a brimming cup of coffee in his lap without spilling a drop. There was never an indication of effort or special concentration on Ross’s face. At these moments he was the true virtuoso, performing for his own joy, lost in it, and thus quite unaware of his audience.

Ernie is hired at an airline (never directly stated but it was American Airlines) to be a DC-2 co-pilot. He learns the line on AM-21, a mail route between Cleveland and Newark. He advances to captain, heads to South America, and is part of the Second World War Air Transport Command. This is the classic book of serious airline flying, up close, up front. Real life reading like a novel.

Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

Short. Sweet. And deceptively simple. The story of a seagull that wants to do more than fly straight and level on the way to and from feeding. What aerobatics are possible for a ‘gull? What perfection of flight, of life, is possible?

But if flying becomes one’s vehicle to seeking more in life, then the inner rewards are great enough to make me unwiling to give them to give them up after just a few steps toward the blue expanse disguising the vastness of the universe. I am compelled to return again and again, striving to get higher and stay longer — at least in mind — for though I feel dwarfed by it, I find a purity of thought not always possible to recapture on the ground. I become as one with my aircraft — I am she.

Autobiography of a gentle English lady who flew many record-breaking flights around the world and over the North Pole in the middle sixties and early seventies. Her airplanes are Myth (modified Tiger Moth), Myth Too (single-engine Piper Comanche) and Mythre (Piper Aztec). She overcomes prejudices and weather, disbelief and mechanical failures.

In exacting timing and technique, I wanted to avoid even the smallest mistake, the least bobble, the most imperceptible of errors. These were flying's challenges that pushed me to excel, that gave me pure delight…. A match of one-on-one, mastery of the flying and mastery of the mind require equal amounts of effort and time. Mastering flying means simply gaining an athletic skill, but mastering the mind is equivalent to trying to hold a dollop of quicksilver.

Another autobiography of a lady pilot. This time one whose alcoholic, dysfunctional parents send her to a string of girl schools around the world, but she finds flying in Alaska and then becomes the first female to win the U.S. Aerobatic Championship. Her plane is in the National Air and Space Museum; her story of struggle, passion, reward and flying is here.

For truly great pilots, the plane is simply an accouterment and the human body is an inconvenience. You fly your brain. Your brain flies the plane. This was the place I wanted to go, a field where the line between the physical and the mental was dissolved by pure speed and crushed by many times the force of gravity. A place of pure faith.

The sport is unlimited aerobatics, the pilot an editor at Time magazine. This is not a wanna-be or some outside academic, or the grunts of a pilot who can fly but not write. This is inside the cockpit, mind and soul of a pilot wrenching the maximum from himself and his plane. Loving, flying, dying.

A pilot lives in a world of perfection, or not at all.

The war is in Southeast Asia in the late 1960's. The airplane is the A-1 Skyraider, a slow propeller-driven job in a world of fast jet Phantoms. And the secret is that this is still one of the best books for taking you into a combat zone cockpit.

And through this tool we will find again the old nature, the nature of the gardener, the navigator, the poet.

Intensely autobiographical aeronautical adventures told by a pilot who is also philosopher and poet. Saint Ex was an airline pilot for the Société des lignes Latécoère in the 1920's flying between Toulouse, France, and Dakar, Africa. It becomes a route we should all take.

All four engines had failed within the space of two minutes. They were without power and headed down toward mountainous terrain. Their electrical power would revert to a limited-life battery, most of their instruments would fail and it would not be long before they lost cabin pressurisation. The situation was extremely grim, and, in their experience, totally without precedent.

Most every book of airline emergencies seems to end every chapter with the CVR transcript “Sound of impact. End of recording”. We can learn a lot from these sad accident reports, but rather than just studying mistakes, Sam wanted to learn positive lessons from master pilots. This excellent collection, from a former military pilot and Qantas B-747 captain, has only successful outcomes.

In a crisis, adrenaline brings clarity, but it can’t expand your knowledge. It won’t change your reasoning. Your existing reasoning simply works at hyper speed. In the moment, you won’t experience an epiphany beyond what is already within you, what you have already taken time to learn of know.

Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 was in cruise when the engine exploded. It did a lot of damage to the wing and fuselage, one passenger died after being sucked out a destroyed window. The captain was praised by the NTSB for going beyound checklists and SOP, using a partial flap setting and higher landing speed to maintain control. This is the story of that flight, and the whole amazing backstory of a women pilot surviving US Navy training in the 1980’s.