On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus a320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport when a flock of Canada geese collided with it, destroying both engines. Over the next three minutes, the plane's pilot, Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, managed to glide to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation and Captain Sully was the hero. But how much of the success of this dramatic landing can be credited to the genius of the pilot? To what extent is the "Miracle on the Hudson" the result of extraordinary—but not widely known—advances in aviation and computer technology over the last twenty years?

In Fly by Wire, one of North America's bravest journalists, William Langewiesche, takes us on a strange and unexpected journey into the world of advanced aviation. From the testing laboratories where engineers develop a jet engine that can resist bird attacks, through the creation of the a320 in France, to the forces that have sought to minimize the impact of the revolutionary fly-by-wire technology, William Langewiesche assembles the untold stories necessary to truly understand the "Miracle on the Hudson" and makes us question our assumptions about human beings in modern aviation.

William Langewiesche is the author of six previous books: Cutting for Sign, Sahara Unveiled, Inside the Sky, American Ground (North Point Press, 2002), The Outlaw Sea (North Point Press, 2004), and, most recently, The Atomic Bazaar (FSG, 2007). He is the international editor for Vanity Fair.

William Langewiesche's profile page

A pilot who virtually grew up in airplane cockpits, writer William Langewiesche set out to analyze what happened in the five-minute flight of US Airways 1549, which lost power in both engines when it collided with a flock of Canada geese. His conclusion after writing a new book Fly by Wire—there was no miracle. —CNN

Fly by Wire is a page-turner that breaks down everything: a seemingly suicidal flock of geese; the grind of airline life; the mind-boggling technology of a controversial airplane, the Airbus A320, a plane that is designed to prevent panicking pilots from screwing up. —Publishers Weekly

He painstakingly reconstructs what happened that January day on Flight 15490 . . . The book is also filled with hair-raising stories of other flights in peril, the kind of thing Mr. Langewiesche writes about as well as anyone alive. —New York Times

Fly by Wire . . . is about the successful landing last January of a US Airways jetliner in the Hudson River within view of Manhattan. Both jet engines had inhaled Canada geese and were wrecked, turning the Airbus A320 into a glider. The incident had some drama, but the problem of making a book of it is that the drama was over so soon. The water rescue was routine—and yet Langewiesche has the skill to make this book well worth reading. —Seattle Times