Ebook: No man's land: the untold story of automation on QF72

A former US Top Gun and Qantas captain's gripping account of how one of the world's worst air disasters, caused by a rogue computer, was narrowly averted. Former US Navy Top Gun Kevin Sullivan, captain of the ill-fated Perth-bound Qantas Flight 72, breaks his silence to give a gripping account of how a rogue computer went 'psycho' and sent the Airbus A330 into two terrifying nosedives towards the Indian Ocean. Unlike other well-publicised near air disasters such as those described in Sully and QF32, Sullivan's plane carrying 303 passengers was out of control, with a G force of -8 driving anyone and anything untethered through the cabin roof. It took the skill and presence of mind of a veteran Top Gun to wrestle the plane back under control and perform an emergency landing at a RAAF base in the middle of WA. More than 100 injured people, many seriously, were airlifted to hospital in Perth. As automation becomes the way of the future, the story of QF72 raises important questions about how much control we relinquish to computers and whether more checks and balances are needed.