Southern Storm, Samme Chittum
Southern Storm, Samme Chittum
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Southern Storm
The Tragedy of Flight 242

Author: Samme Chittum

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Unabridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2018


Synopsis

On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard. The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying eighty-one passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope, breaking apart and killing bystanders on the ground before coming to rest in Hurst's front yard. Ultimately, only twenty-two people survived, and urgent questions immediately arose: What caused the pilots to fly into the storm instead of away from it? Could the crash have been prevented? Southern Storm addresses these issues and more, offering an insider's look at this disaster and the systemic overha uls that followed it.

About Samme Chittum

Samme Chittum is a narrative journalist and Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship recipient who explores the intersection of current events and history. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and the Village Voice. She is also the author of the first two books in the Smithsonian Air Disasters series, The Flight 981 Disaster, and Southern Storm.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jill on October 12, 2019

This is an episode of “Air Disasters,” only with a little more meat on its bones. A quick look at the devastating crash of Southern Airways Flight 242 in April of 1977, following a battering from a hailstorm and horrible intel from the control tower. A basic just-the-facts account, but with some ins......more

Goodreads review by Stefanie on April 13, 2023

Southern Airways Flight 242 was a flight from Muscle Shoals, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia. There was a brief stopover in Huntsville, Alabama in the middle. The flight crew had flown the same route earlier in the day, and experienced only mild turbulence and rain. The flight crew were told that the we......more