William Langewiesche Dies At 70

William Langewiesche, a celebrated journalist (and former FLYING Magazine writer) who bridged the gap between aviation and mainstream media, died on Sunday at his home in Connecticut after fighting prostate cancer. He was 70. Langewiesche’s pieces in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair earned critical acclaim and numerous awards. He specialized in long-form stories that often took months and even years of research and was known for his aggressive and fearless reporting and writing styles. But it was his articles on aviation topics, including some of the worst accidents in history, that earned him the most accolades.

He drew the ire of Miracle on the Hudson pilot Capt. Chesley Sullenberger when he said in his book Fly By Wire that the successful ditching on the Hudson River was more the result of the design and construction of the Airbus A320 than the actions of the pilots. His detailed chronicling of the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 with 277 passengers aboard drew immense readership and his determination that suicide by the first officer brought down an EgyptAir Boeing 767 off Nantucket in 1999 drew official condemnation from the Egyptian government.

Langewiesche grew up in a flying and writing family. His mother was a computer analyst and his father Wolfgang, a test pilot on the Vought Corsair, was the author of Stick and Rudder, the seminal tome on essential pilot skills. He taught his son to fly as a boy and those skills were put to good use through his whole career. He made ends meet as a charter pilot as he waited for success in the literary world and drew on his flying experiences in many of his stories and books. His first writing job was with FLYING, which he left to pursue the “literary nonfiction” style of journalism that led to worldwide acclaim. He is survived by his wife and two teenaged children and his ex-wife and their two children.