This is a fictional story - fast paced, exciting, richly textured with memorable characters. Yet we think you will find it more than a story. It is about your airport too. Yet those with inside knowledge - like Mel Bakersfield, the airports career-jinxed general manager - are aware of grave deficiencies. Operational areas are out molded to the point of danger, air traffic control is overtaxed, the supposedly modern glass chrome main terminal has become a whited sepulcher.
Against this background is set a dramatic, behind the scenes story of seven eventful airport hours during a mid-winter snowstorm - with pressures passions and problems of their own - who share them.
You will meet Joe Patroni, cocky and genial airline maintenance chief, striving to clear a disabled aircraft from an urgently needed runway, Air Traffic Controller Keith Bakersfeld suffering stress and conscience stricken by the memory of an air disaster for which he was responsible, Tanya Livingston passenger relations agent (an attractive divorcee) whose suspicions triggered by a sharp-eyed customs inspector, reveal an unsuspected crisis, Captain (and check pilot) Vernon Demerest, arrogant admired by women and despising "ground bound pigeons, " especially Airport Commissioners, Elliot Freemantle, crusading lawyer, leading a group of home-owners incensed by airport noise, Gwen Meighen, a hot-tempered English brunette from "Stewardess Row", Ada Quonsett, an old lady who explains her techniques as an aerial stowaway, D. O. Guerrero, a psychotic with a homemade bomb.
Arthur Hailey has employed the same multi-plot technique which he used successfully in Hotel and The Final Diagnosis. As usual, he has written an engrossing enjoyable tale, packed with little known and fascinating information: How, for example, smugglers trip themselves up with customs, how to get free drinks on economy flights, the way in which stewardess pregnancy programs work, what is an airport "Conga Line", how much an airline will pay on the spot for a damaged luggage claim, and why airport insurance booths are hated by airline pilots . But the true hero of this novel is the airport itself viewed through the eyes of a master story teller.