Review: "Flight #116 Is Down!" by Caroline B. Cooney

Flight #116 Is Down! by Caroline B. Cooney
Published 1997
★★★★

The first time I read this, I was about twelve, and I had packed the book for my first-ever flight (or at least, my first flight while old enough to remember it). If you think that is a dummy dumb move, you are right! Plane crash books are not good plane reading. This did not occur to twelve-year-old me, though—not when packing the book, not when reading the book (completely unbothered), and not for a good decade or so after. I'm not the best ever traveler, but flying? No problem. The moment I'm in that seat, the only things I need to do for the next hour or six hours or ten hours are 1) read and 2) sleep.

Not so for the poor folks on flight #116, which crashes in the woods. First on site is Heidi, who lives on the property where the plane crashes and is woefully unprepared for this sort of crisis; second is Patrick, who is a trained responder but has certainly never been at a mass casualty event before.

This one stands the test of time better than a lot of the old Cooney books that I've reread of late. I know this one well—I reread it repeatedly when I was younger, so although there are some details I'd forgotten or gotten mixed up (e.g., it turns out that the waitress at the diner gives Patrick a soda, not a hot chocolate, because she can tell that he can't stand the coffee he insists on ordering), I still know what happens to every major character. And yet: even having read this probably ten times when I was younger, and knowing all of the outcomes, there are still characters for whom I hold out hope for something different. That's a matter of nostalgia, of course, but it also says something of the book, that I still feel so strongly for some of the characters.

Would still recommend this one to kids...though not as a flight read.