Final Approach

John J. Nance continues to delight aviation fans with novels set amidst the workings of the airline industry. He knows the territory – he’s a decorated Air Force pilot – one you may have seen as an analyst on the TV networks. In “Final Approach,” he first applied his working knowledge of the skies to the pages of a suspense novel.
On a stormy night at a major Midwestern airport, a jetliner comes in short and slices into another airliner waiting for takeoff – a disaster of major proportions.
Joe Wallingford is an investigator for the National Transportation and Safety Board, the group that determines the causes of accidents, and his group gets the call to find out if the crash was the result of the storm, human error, sabotage, or mechanical failure. It reads like CSI: Airport.
Nance provides plausible circumstances for each of the possibilities. A person aboard the flight had enemies, a top-secret government project was being moved at the airport, the airline appears to be covering for the pilot’s health, and the storm had already produced several near-crashes.
During his investigation, Wallingford and his NTSB crew face cover-ups by the government, the airline, and even his coworkers. To top it off, his boss is a political appointee whose meddling threatens the objectivity of the probe.
Unfortunately, few industries have undergone changes like the airlines, and some action in “Final Approach” reads like Stone Age fiction – nervous passengers sneak smokes and unticketed family members board the plane to tuck children into their seats. To his credit, Nance provides such compelling characters that it is easy to overlook the dated aspects.
His later works provide more action, and “Final Approach” reads like a police procedural compared to his just-released “Orbit.” Either way, it’s high-flying fun with John Nance at the controls.