cover image The Glass Cockpit

The Glass Cockpit

Robert P. Davis. St. Martin's Press, $18.95 (290pp) ISBN 978-0-312-05438-0

An airliner and a private plane collide in midair, and the jumbo jet is badly damaged. Computers predict, to the minute, when fuel exhaustion will result in a flameout and a crash. But the jumbo jet is a British-designed Trent 270 with some unusual structural features. And the pilot is Lucky Doyle, a throwback to aviation's golden days, who trusts his experience and his instincts more than the electronic wonders of a microchipped ``glass cockpit.'' This unpretentious techno-thriller becomes a gripping page-turner as Doyle leads his flight crew and the Trent design staff in an increasingly desperate series of improvisations to bring the plane down with its passengers alive. Davis ( The Pilot ), a pilot, presents his fictional aircraft convincingly. His real success, however, is a stripped-down plot that affirms in every scene the essence of the techno-thriller genre: that we are ultimately responsible for the machines we create. (May)