Aviation

 How Safe is Air Travel?

Author Philip S. Donlay’s latest thriller Code Black presents a nightmarish air travel scenario. He puts the reader squarely in the middle of an all-too-plausible mid-air accident that leaves a crippled commercial jet struggling to stay airborne over Chicago with nowhere to go – except perhaps the icy waters of Lake Michigan.

Unfortunately for air travelers this scenario is not far-fetched in the least. In October of this year two private planes came close to colliding in mid-air near Las Vegas due to an error made by an air traffic controller. Donlay, also a professional pilot with 30 years experience, knows all-too-well the very real danger of mid-air collisions. He vividly remembers the day when an air-controller resulted in his plane and a 727 crossing paths at 37,000 feet over Indianapolis. “We saw him just in time,” says Donlay. “We took evasive action and crossed over the top of him by 200 feet. It was a close call that I’ll never forget.”

While researching his book, Donlay uncovered more than a dozen documented midair accidents. His fictional, but entirely possible, scenario envisions what could happen if a small series of events at an air-traffic-control site snowballed a major midair collision. Midair collisions are a part of our history, with nearly 1,600 people dead since the beginning of commercial air travel. But could Donlay’s ficitional account become a grim reality?

“Certainly, there are safeguards in place to prevent something like what I write about in Code Black from happening,” says Donlay. “But even with all the high-tech processes and systems at the air-traffic-controllers’ fingertips, human error is still a very real danger.”

In June, Aviation Today reported seven recent near mid-air collisions in the vicinity of the New York area. The local air-traffic controllers union says Kennedy, Newark and La Guardia airports are short-staffed, a problem cited by air-traffic-controllers in locations across the country.

While air-traffic-controllers bemoan not having enough people in the control tower, the number of people in the skies is ever-increasing. FAA officials Very Light Jets, or VLJs, a new generation of aircraft that are inexpensive and can land almost anywhere will cause a large surge in air traffic.

If you have ever sat in the back of an airliner and wondered, “what if?”, then you are not alone. Code Black, although a work of fiction, plays out the thrilling and terrifying possibility of a mid-air collision, a terrible scenario…but one based in fact.


Philip Donlay earned his private pilot’s license while he was still in high school. At the age of nineteen, he became a flight instructor in Wichita, Kansas. Soon he offered an opportunity to stretch his wings—all the way to Saudi Arabia. After months of flying private jets over wind-swept deserts, he returned to the United States.