On any given day, more than four million people around the world take to the air on one of 38,000 flights operated daily by the airlines. The reassuring news is that the fatal accident rate per million flights for large aircraft operations is now about half what is was 10 years ago. It is therefore 20 times safer to get airborne In a commercial airliner than it is to drive to the airport in the first place. More people die annually from falling down the stairs than they do from fatal air crashes. None the less, aircraft accidents do occur, and in the sheer scale of the horror and devastation wrought, it is sometimes hard to bring these statistics into focus. Destination Disaster is Andrew Brookes' latest investigation into the causes and effects of aircraft disasters. It is a responsible and detailed analysis of some of the most noteworthy of recent aircraft accidents. The past few years have been overshadowed by a number of major disasters - some accidental, others deliberate - and the book examines in detail the factors behind these various events.Among significant disasters covered are the loss of the Air France Concorde In Paris in 2000, the crash of golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet In 1999 and the momentous events of 11 September 2001. Deliberately examined in a non-controversial and objective way, the accidents and disasters recorded in Destination Disaster paradoxically emphasise just how safe contemporary flight is. However, as in all things, there remains an element of risk, and the book is a fascinating examination of the issues of safety raised in contemporary aviation.