A hero’s story inspires an investigative journalist to delve into the advances in—and mysteries of—aviation technology

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 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.