Here are 58 books that Ferry Pilot fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is one of the most well-known aviators in recent history. He was made famous by an extremely dangerous situation that he handled exceptionally well. This book is not just about the “Miracle on Hudson” incident; this is a biography about Captain Sully, how he became a pilot, and how decades of flying prepared him for this one single moment. It’s an inspirational book for anyone to read.
On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable emergency landings in aviation history when Captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger skillfully glided US Airways Flight 1549 onto the surface of the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. His cool actions not only averted tragedy but made him a hero and an inspiration worldwide. To Sullenberger, a calm, steady pilot with forty years of flying experience who is also a safety consulting expert, the landing was not a miracle but rather the result of years of practice and training-wisdom he gained in the cockpit of U.S.…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
CFI is short for a Certified Flight Instructor. As a former flight instructor and a chief flight instructor of a major flight school, I found this book very comical to read; just be aware, it’s a comedy and not to be taken seriously! This book is written by a former flight instructor who shares his stories that many flight instructors can relate to; being underpaid, flying with challenging students, and dealing with bad weather. While it is loosely based on actual events, read it for entertainment, not for factual information about flight training!
An underpaid, overworked Certified Flight Instructor cheats death while attempting to teach a cast of incompetent student pilots to fly at a skeezy South Florida flight school; all in the quest to build flight time so he can get a “real job” at an airline. The planes break, the regs break, metal gets bent, students are lost at sea, and a Top Gun wannabe student, who has four hundred hours of flight instruction, still hasn’t made his first solo flight. “CFI! The Book” is an over-the-top satirical aviation comedy that’s loosely based on real world experiences of flight instruction, but…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
The Learjet Diaries is a book that I can relate to very well, and I could see myself writing a similar book. While I have never flown Learjets, I fly corporate airplanes built by the same manufacturer, and I have had similar experiences flying jets around the world. The author describes the transition from flying small piston planes to flying fast jet aircraft very nicely. Anyone interested in flying and private jets is sure to enjoy this exciting story of a coming of age.
The Learjet Diaries is a fictional pilot memoir of young ambitious pilot who starts his career as a Learjet charter pilot flying around the Caribbean and South America in the early 1980s. It is a well-written and compelling aviation adventure with each paragraph sizzling with tension and authenticity. The author places you right in the cockpit as he learns the strengths and sensitivities of one of the world’s most demanding business jets. As a reader you feel the control stick in your hand of one of the world’s fastest business jets as you experience the chilling adventures of a Learjet…
I have been involved in aviation all my adult life as a pilot and a flight instructor. I am also an avid reader, and I like to read books written by my fellow aviators. I find books written by pilots exciting because of the similar experiences we all share in the industry. All the books that I recommend are very accessible for any reader without previous aviation knowledge; in fact, I think you will find these books even more fascinating as they will open your eyes to the wonderful world of aviation!
I have been to Alaska many times as Anchorage is one of the main fuel stops flying from Asia to the United States. It’s always fascinating to see so many small airplanes filling the skies there. It’s also fascinating to see so many planes on floats; those are the planes that can land in the lakes and rivers in remote areas. So I found this collection of stories an exciting introduction to bush flying in the Alaskan wilderness.
Flying in the Alaskan wilderness is an entirely different skill set than the way most pilots are trained; flying to and from remote gravel bars on wheels, streams and lakes on floats, and ski operations in deep snow and horrific weather. Many times I thought I would not make it, flying overloaded airplanes with the doors removed, external loads strapped to the floats, no navigational aids and totally alone in a vast wilderness with only my skills and determination to get me home.
After logging 4,000 flight hours, and flying sometimes 16 hours a day, I actually became as one…
My passion for tales of seafarers and Atlantic history, more generally, emerged from my own wanderlust and love of travel. I’m constantly amazed at how early modern sailors crossed the globe amidst the most pressing challenges imaginable. By reading these sailing histories, with accounts of everything from monsoons to cannibalism, we might not feel quite so inconvenienced by a short flight or train delay! During my academic career, I have had the opportunity to complete research in different parts of Britain. This experience of living transatlantically has transferred to my scholarship and outlook. I hope you find the books on my list as fun and fascinating as I have!
I appreciate this book for bringing the local into the world of Atlantic seafarers. Daniel Vickers is one of the deans of early American social history (he is one of the historians mentioned in the Harvard bar scene in the film Good Will Hunting) and turns his talents here to explain how American seamen were different in the Age of Sail. The simple answer is that they were young. Unlike the long-distance professional seafarers of Europe, sailing in America, especially New England was more of a life stage on the way to other jobs and pursuits.
These sailors were not rootless wanderers forced to go to sea because they were poor; they were rooted in specific communities and filled a necessary role in local economies. As exciting as we find tales of mutiny, scurvy, and shipwrecks, most early American seafarers lived much more stable lives. I find this variation…
Two centuries of American maritime history, in which the Atlantic Ocean remained the great frontier.
Two centuries of American maritime history, in which the Atlantic Ocean remained the great frontier Westward expansion has been the great narrative of the first two centuries of American history, but as historian Daniel Vickers demonstrates here, the horizon extended in all directions. For those who lived along the Atlantic coast, it was the East-and the Atlantic Ocean-that beckoned. While historical and fictional accounts have tended to stress the exceptional circumstances or psychological compulsions that drove men to sea, this book shows how normal a…
Primarily I’m a wife and mother, who loves holidays and writing about our experiences: from the many family holidays in a static caravan 90 minutes’ drive from our hometown in Scotland to the wonderful opportunities we’ve had to travel the world since, including through my work as a lecturer (when the family came too for a holiday while I worked!) or with friends. I like reading other authors’ personal experiences especially when I’m drawn into feeling I’m with the author during the travels, experiencing what’s not always included in travel guidebooks: the not-so-good as well as the good, the challenging as well as the amazing.
This book is out of print but available in a second-hand market and worth finding. My copy once belonged to my Grandma.
I’ve learned preparation for a holiday or journey is key to success. This book tells the background which led to Ann and her husband acquiring Reliance, a 2-masted sailing ship. Making it sea-worthy was far from straightforward. Their journey to cross the Atlantic began in extremely difficult circumstances. The book recounts in agonising detail the journey’s progress and ending.
I felt as I read this book I was with Ann and Frank, through the many ups and downs they experienced. I’m full of admiration for their resilience and determination.
The author, Ann, later became the first woman to single-handedly sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 1952.
LAST VOYAGE is the enthralling true story of Frank and Ann Davison; of their search for a life of freedom and adventures that was to end so tragically.
Frank and Ann Davison were both joyride pilots when they met, fell in love and married. They pursued various ventures bebore buying an island in Loch Lomond, where they reared geese and goats. Their apparently idyllic lifestyle turned sour, so they bought an old and dilapidated fishing ketch, RELIANCE, in which they planned to voyage to the far corners of the world. But the Herculean task of conversion stretched their finances too…
I romantically believe that the sea runs in my blood. On the Norwegian side of my family, my grandfather was a boat builder, and my uncle a whaler. I’m a surfer, and I’ve worked in whale and dolphins conservation for many years. So I’m drawn to the ocean and – as work and family duties keep me inland more than I’d like – when unable to get in or on the water, I get my fix with salty tales; some of which I read and some of which I write. The books on this list are all classics, in my view; they all speak to the enigma of the ocean; an ever-changing scape, full of alien life. I hope you enjoy them, and also Girl. Boy. Sea.
This is a beautiful story, simple yet profound. It’s about young, innocent, and a wee bit naïve Jamie, led to adventure by troubled but brave Mara.
The adventure takes us to St. Kilda’s, the remotest inhabited Scottish island. The island, the sea, and the quest to explore are used as metaphors for mystery and the pull of the unknown.
A beautifully written tale of courage, friendship, and survival. Imagine a tiny island far out in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Scotland. On some days, you can hardly see where the sea ends and the land begins, everything merged in a blue-grey mist of sea spray and wind-blown sand. There is nothing between here and America. I say nothing, but what I mean, of course, is nothing but ocean. And about sixty-five kilometres out to sea, one last remote outcrop of islands and sea stacks, with the highest sea cliffs anywhere in the UK-St Kilda. Distant, desolate,…
I’ve always wanted to know why people acquire the things they choose, how they get them, and what they do with them. For years, too, I’ve been fascinated by the period when modernity was being born, a time full of worldwide exploration, the founding of new nations and societies, and the invention of new ways of making, transporting, and distributing all sorts of goods and services. I discovered that studying consumers, consumer goods, and trade from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century was the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity. The Material Atlantic is my report about what I’ve learned.
Across the globe, silks have been the most prized textiles for a very long time. They are also among the most expensive, owing to the difficulties and skills involved in cultivating silkworms, unreeling and spinning raw silk, and then weaving it into cloth.
Despite the complications involved, silk’s desirability led settlers throughout the colonial Americas to try time and again to establish silkworm-raising and silk-making enterprises. Their ambitions were just as repeatedly frustrated.
Ben Marsh’s beautifully written, deeply researched study tells why they kept trying and why they kept failing. When I first encountered this book, I wondered whether a study of flop after flop could possibly be interesting. I wonder no longer. Failure turns out to make for a fascinating story.
One of the greatest hopes and expectations that accompanied American colonialism - from its earliest incarnation - was that Atlantic settlers would be able to locate new sources of raw silk, with which to satiate the boundless desire for luxurious fabrics in European markets. However, in spite of the great upheavals and achievements of Atlantic plantation, this ambition would never be fulfilled. By taking the commercial failure of silk seriously and examining numerous experiments across New Spain, New France, British North America and the early United States, Ben Marsh reveals new insights into aspiration, labour, environment, and economy in these…
As a child growing up in a rural community in the isle of Lewis, there were very few books I read which had any real connection with my local environment. This changed in my late teenage years when I encountered some of the books I mentioned here, together with some works about rural communities and islands in Ireland. I loved the way these books – including poetry, drama, non-fiction, short stories, and novels – opened my eyes and enabled me to see familiar surroundings in new and enlightening ways. The legacy of this still persists within me today.
There are probably more fantasies and myths about the Hebridean island of St Kilda than any other location in existence – though there are a few other Scottish islands that compete in this field!
Roger’s book is excellent because it is grounded in fact and meticulous research, yet it is also a celebration of this unique landscape to be found at the far western edge of the Outer Hebrides.
St Kilda is the most romantic and most romanticised group of islands in Europe. Soaring out of the North Atlantic Ocean like Atlantis come back to life, the islands have captured the imagination of the outside world for hundreds of years. Their inhabitants, Scottish Gaels who lived off the land, the sea and by birdcatching on high and precipitous cliffs, were long considered to be the Noble Savages of the British Isles, living in a state of natural grace.
St Kilda: A People's History explores and portrays the life of the St Kildans from the Stone Age to 1930, when…
Three people changed my life: my grandfather, a self-taught naturalist, the cardiac surgeon I worked for to put myself through college, and a nuclear engineer I worked for at Los Alamos National Labs. Summering on an island in northern Ontario I was immersed in a world with minimal human impact. As an exploration geologist, I traveled the world and saw first-hand the impact humankind is having on our world. My books focus on man’s threats and dangers to our world—be they environmental, medical or the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Threats to our world are not limited to those created by despots, terrorists, and weapons of mass destruction.
Climate change and associated global warming may be the biggest threat as sea levels rise as polar ice melts, threatening coastal environments. Increases in sea temperature fuel ever larger and more powerful storms and weather systems. Donlay captures this threat in Category Five, Hurricane Helena is growing into the greatest storm ever recorded.
Eco-watch races to save the scientists who are studying the storm. This amazing thriller combines climate change with intrigue, suspense with death threats. Can they defuse a storm great than Category Five?
When the only option is to maneuver a crippled plane into the calm eye of a category five hurricane
In the Atlantic Ocean, Hurricane Helena is gathering strength, becoming the most powerful storm in recorded history. As Helena bears down on Bermuda, Donovan Nash, along with other members of the scientific research organization Eco-Watch, are called to fly in and extract key government people who have been studying Helena.
For Donovan, the routine mission turns deadly when an attempt is made on the life of the lead scientist. A woman from the past, Dr. Lauren McKenna,…
