The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on March 8, 2014, will go down in history as one of aviation’s biggest mysteries. How, in this day and age, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers seemingly can vanish into thin air is a question that will continue to plague governments, airline officials, conspiracy theorists and relatives of the victims until the plane is found. At this time, all we have to go off of are the few confirmed pieces of debris that recently washed up on the shores of Mozambique and Réunion Island. And until the plane’s black boxes are discovered, nothing can be known for certain.

The story of MH370 captured the public imagination for weeks on end. People feel strongly about planes, being both terrified of and enthralled by flying. If you care to take things this far, you could track this sentiment throughout history, to when Daedalus and Icarus fled Crete using wings held together by wax. Most likely, our obsession with flight goes back even earlier. It seems to me that humans have always been mesmerized by heights, having a deep-rooted desire to ascend to the stars and an equally prevalent, primal fear of falling. Yet in musing over humanity’s relationship with flying, perhaps I am really airing out my own personal issues with big metal birds.

"Quest makes deft use of his knowledge as a specialized television reporter throughout this book. His job, as he articulates time and time again, is to take complicated technical documents and turn them into digestible bits of newsworthy entertainment for the everyman. He is good at his job."

I do not like flying. Although I know that air travel remains the safest form of transportation, every time I board an airplane, I am convinced that I will not make it down alive. I am prone to anxiety attacks on planes and incessantly ask questions such as “But are you sure we’re not going to die?” which can be a real source of annoyance for my traveling companions. Additionally, being a sucker for conspiracy theories, I am the perfect audience for any type of freak accident. Thanks to the internet, I have a never-ending source of material with which to feed my fears. Today, it feels as though the media sensationalizes disaster to the point where you could label their coverage pornographic. I am not innocent in this consumption.

For the reasons explained above, I was very excited to read THE VANISHING OF FLIGHT MH370. I hoped to learn details about the disappearance that had been left out of articles I’d read online and, more importantly, to read a fresh, highly original take on what exactly happened and the aftermath. Richard Quest, the book’s author, is a CNN aviation correspondent and business anchor for CNN International. He was profoundly entrenched in the story and stuck with it long after the plane had lost the public’s interest. Most intriguingly, he had actually flown with the plane’s first officer, Fariq Hamid, while filming a segment for CNN two weeks before MH370 vanished.

Quest makes deft use of his knowledge as a specialized television reporter throughout this book. His job, as he articulates time and time again, is to take complicated technical documents and turn them into digestible bits of newsworthy entertainment for the everyman. He is good at his job. The book is easy to read because he is able to effectively break down complex technological procedures and terminology. He also peppers the book with tons of other stories about horrific crashes, comparing them with MH370 in order to contradict popular theories, as well as develop his own, about what could have happened. This is THE VANISHING OF FLIGHT MH370 at its most interesting.

At its least interesting, it is repetitive and uncomfortable. Quest regurgitates the same ideas to the point where the book actually becomes frustrating to get through. These reiterations allow him to cover every possible angle of the mystery and counter the opacity of government and airline officials who bungled the case. However, his writing choice mimics CNN’s nonstop coverage of the disappearance, emulating how anchors spat out the same ideas in slightly different ways for hours on end, all for the sake of ratings. Quest does not condemn CNN’s coverage of MH370, as so many others have, and he can’t, really, if he wants to keep his job. But his brash defense of the network and its sidelining of other major stories for weeks in favor of turning a tragedy into clickbait makes for an uneasy read.

In short, I didn’t get anything out of THE VANISHING OF FLIGHT MH370 that I couldn’t have read online in a more condensed form. Upon finishing it, I felt like a rubbernecker gawking at an accident on the side of the highway, blocking the way of drivers trying to get to better places.