Fighting to Be Heard

Book excerpt: Fighting to Be Heard is a love letter to one of the most over-engineered jet aircraft ever built: the British Aerospace 146. This regional aircraft was truly the beginning of the "RJ" (aka Regional Jet), which has become commonplace in air travel today. Although the 146 was ahead of its time, the program, the company, and the aircraft was plagued with many challenges. As a result, the 146 became the last commercial aircraft to be built in the United Kingdom. The title signifies the uphill battle British Aerospace faced in trying to convince airlines to buy and operate the world's quietest jet. Fighting to Be Heard features stories never before printed, photographs from the archives of British Aerospace that have never been published, and interviews with a wide range of people from pilots to customer service reps, salespeople to airline executives. The author spent over four years researching and interviewing a wide range of people involved with the 146, including airlines and operators that flew this unique aircraft. He's summoned records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the tragic murder in the sky of PSA flight 1771, with never before seen images of evidence derived from over 300 pages of reports and interviews.