Fly by Wire

by Ann McKenna Fromm, Captain Richard P Payne

Driverless cars are here to stay, and so are pilotless planes. What happens to the pilots who used to fly those planes? What happens when a pilotless flight is hacked? Tom Jordan, formerly an airline Captain, finds himself downgraded to “Safety Officer” on today’s flight, one of the first fully automated flights to Shanghai. It’s a route he knows well. Yet he resents his reduced role and its accompanying loss of status. When the plane unexpectedly banks, Tom’s hackles rise. He is able to re-establish the correct course. But after a series of baffling events, clearly caused by electronic commands beyond his training, he knows he needs help. He asks two deadheading pilots on board, who either can’t or won’t help him. To the terror of passengers, the plane continues to fly from mysterious and erratic commands. Most alarming of all, when Tom reports the incidents, the dispatcher replies that on-ground computers show no such aberrations. Instead, dispatchers now suspect him of going rogue. In desperation, Tom turns to a passenger, an executive with an artificial intelligence company. They realize that the hacker is in fact onboard. Will Tom be able to ferret out the criminal? Above all, can he land the airplane after the hacker’s last fiendish act is to destroy all the electronics in a fire beneath the cockpit?

156 pages, Paperback

Published March 7, 2017