Showing results by author "John J. Nance" in All Categories

On takeoff from Denver during a winter blizzard, an airliner piloted by veteran Captain Marty Mitchell overruns a commuter plane from behind. Bizarrely, the fuselage of the smaller aircraft is tenuously wedged onto the wing of his Boeing 757, leading Mitchell to an impossible life-or-death choice. Mitchell’s decision will land the former military pilot in the crosshairs of a viciously ambitious district attorney determined to send him to prison for doing his job.

Over the Atlantic in the dark of night, the electronic brain of Pangia Airlines Flight 10 quietly and without warning disconnects all the cockpit controls and reverses course on its own. The crew of the huge Airbus 330 at first senses nothing, the flight displays still showing them on course to New York. But with puzzled passengers reporting stars on the wrong side—not to mention armed fighters pulling alongside to force them to land—the confused pilots discover that Flight 10 is streaking back toward the hyper-volatile Middle East, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Minutes after a Boeing 747 rises majestically into a Hong Kong sunset, a flash splits the darkening sky. The pilot - suddenly blinded and doubled over in pain - fumbles in the dark in a frantic effort to gain control as the huge jet shudders through its descent. Kat Bronsky, FBI agent and terrorism specialist, is assigned the hunt for a Challenger-class business jet seen nearby just before the incident.

Captain James Holland is the pilot on a routine flight from Frankfurt to New York, packed with people eager to be home for Christmas. When a passenger collapses from what appears to be a heart attack, Holland is forced to request an emergency landing at London's Heathrow Airport. But to his great surprise, the air traffic controllers will not let him land in England - they tell Holland that his sick passenger has contracted a dangerous new form of influenza and that the plane must return to Germany.

For 30-year-old captain Scott McKay, the transport run from Miami to Denver will give him the money he desperately needs to keep his fledgling air cargo company flying. When a mysterious crate is discovered on his plane, however, McKay is ordered to abandon his present course and fly the crate and its owner, Vivian Henry, to Washington, D.C., before going to Denver. It is discovered that the crate contains a thermonuclear bomb, one capable of destroying every computer chip over an entire continent.

Born in the blazing crucible of war, but sworn to fight for peace, the mysterious obsidian aviator known only by the code name Captain Midnight flies again! An ace pilot, super secret agent, and astounding scientific genius, the heroic Captain Midnight ruled the radio airwaves and starred in comic books, film serials, and a classic television series. Now, when we need him most, he has returned, along with his legendary Secret Squadron, to battle spies, saboteurs, and the mercenary armies of the evil warmonger Ivan Shark and his delectably deadly daughter, Fury.

Veteran pilot Clark Maxwell thought his fire bombing days were well behind him. But when Jerry Stein, Maxwell's friend and air tanker fleet-owner, calls at the height of the fire season to beg him to reenter the war, he doesn't hesitate. As the wildfires spread, whipped by massive winds and the federal forces arrayed against the fires reach their limits, hysteria and potential evacuation threatens the local population.

The passengers of Meridian Flight Six - delayed for hours and mistreated by rude and inept airline personnel - have been pushed to the edge. When Captain Phil Knight makes a forced emergency landing in war-torn Nigeria, abandoning his co-pilot to certain death, violence erupts inside the airplane as the enraged passengers attempt the first-ever commercial airline mutiny. But what they don't know could kill them.

High above the Rocky Mountains, a routine airline flight becomes a midair standoff as 130 passengers listen to their captain relate the unprecedented demands of an unseen hijacker. Federal and state officials must hunt down, arrest, and indict the murderer of a young girl, and do it all in eight hours - or the airplane will be blown out of the sky.

In Athens, a Boeing 737 noses into the gate, and its crew is suddenly confronted by Greek officials waiting to arrest one of its passengers, a beloved ex-President of the United States, John Harris. Captain Craig Dayton, believing Harris' life is in danger, stages a daring escape by backing the jet away from the gate without clearance and taking off down a vacant runway.

Seismologist Dr. Doug Lam has spent years researching the Cascadia Subduction Zone. He published a theory that the unrelieved tectonic strain beneath the idyllic landscape of Cascadia Island could be triggered with modern construction processes - with catastrophic results. The paper was disregarded, even ridiculed, by his peers and by mega wealthy developer Mick Walker, who stands to earn millions from the construction of a luxury resort on Cascadia.

The "boomerang box," a high-tech computer program designed to save a plane experiencing flight trouble, is Dr. Ben Cole's baby. After a test run over the Gulf of Alaska goes awry, he suspects someone has sabotaged the plane's computer systems. And mysteriously, and almost simultaneously, April Rosen is horrified to learn that her father's plane has narrowly escaped a mid-air collision over the same patch of sea.

For Kip Dawson, winning a passenger seat on American Space Adventure's first commercial spaceflight is a dream come true. One grand shot of insanity and he can return to earth fulfilled. It's a bittersweet moment of triumph, however, muted by his wife's terror over his accepting the prize. The day of the launch, Kip tries to reconcile his wife's and daughters' fears and even tries calling his estranged son, to no avail. He sets off, vowing to make amends upon his return. But a successful launch quickly morphs.