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On January 16, 2002, both engines of Garuda Airlines flight GA-421 failed in mid-air. Instead of crashing, however, the Boeing 737 made a water landing on the Bengawan Solo River in Klaten, West Java. The event was considered by many to be a miracle.

Abdul Rozaq was captain on the flight and is listed with writer Ahmad Bahar as co-author of “Miracle of Flight,” which chronicles the event in great detail. The about the author page, however, only gives Ahmad’s biographical details, leading the reader to believe he is writing Abdul’s story, as the pilot recounts his career path and how he still perceives his safe landing as a gift from god.

The book begins, “On paper, with an incident like this, it is hard to expect that all the passengers and crew would have survived. But in reality, all the passengers were saved, and only one stewardess died.”

The book has many convincing descriptions that illustrate just how difficult a maneuver it must have been to land the plane safely.

Abdul was born on March 29, 1957 in the Kudus region of Central Java. His parents hoped he would become a religious teacher and chose his school with this in mind, but the young Abdul had other plans.

During junior high, Abdul worked as a paperboy, making enough money to transfer from the religious-teaching school he was at. “Abdul saw that, [the school’s graduates] could, at most, have a teaching career at a Muslim-elementary school,” the book states. His older brother worked as a kuli (construction worker) and enrolled Abdul in a senior technical high school where he studied ship machinery.

After he graduated in 1976, Abdul moved to Jakarta where he worked as an air-conditioning repairman, quickly rising to a supervisory position. He began to dream of a better life and enrolled at the Indonesian School of Flight — a free-of-charge flight school in Curug, West Java.

After graduating, Abdul’s career began in 1980 with Garuda as a co-pilot on a Fokker F-28 and rose until he became captain of a Boeing 737 in 1993 — a position he still holds.

While Abdul’s life story provides background for the book’s main story, it feels rather like filler, and thankfully, the writer seems to know this. From page 33 and continuing for the next 66 pages, the book details the events of Jan. 16, 2002.

“There was something unnatural during the take off,” it reads. “A few of the passengers felt a hard jerk, which resulted in turbulence. It was then that the flight began to move very slowly.”

It then explains that just 15 minutes before its destination, GA-421 began to experience serious trouble.

“At 10,000 meters above sea level, problems arose,” it reads, and as the pilot tried to descend “the plane’s turbulence became more and more erratic.” It was then both engines died and the aircraft experienced complete electrical failure.

The description of the event is sometimes long-winded and littered with unimportant reiterations. There are also numerous overtly general descriptions that seem unnecessary. Thankfully, the event provides such an adrenaline rush that the book’s awkward pacing does not detract much from the narrative and details are incorporated without being too technical. The focus on Abdul, his crew and the passengers’ reactions is the book’s strong point, evoking empathy with their feelings of panic and dread.

The book would have worked better had it been written from a first-person perspective, rather than with the paraphrasing technique “Miracle of Flight” uses throughout. But as a thrilling and somewhat sympathetic read, the book provides a true-life account with a happy ending.

Miracle of Flight
Abdul Rozaq and Ahmad Bahar
Pena Multi Media,
223 pages
Indonesian