The Flight of the Phoenix

The Flight of the Phoenix is a 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor. The plot involves the crash of a transport aircraft in the middle of a desert and the survivors' desperate attempt to save themselves. The book was the basis for the 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix starring James Stewart and the 2004 remake titled Flight of the Phoenix. The Flight of the Phoenix came at the midpoint of Trevor's career and led to a bidding war over its film rights. Plot summary Pilot Frank Towns and navigator Lew Moran are ferrying a mixed bag of passengers from the Jebel oil town in the Libyan desert, among them oil workers, two British soldiers, and a German who was visiting his brother. An unexpected sandstorm forces the aircraft down, damaging it, killing two of the men, and severely injuring the German. In the book, the action takes place in the Libyan part of the Sahara. The survivors wait for rescue but the storm has blown them far off course, far away from a search area. After several days, Captain Harris marches toward a distant oasis together with another passenger. His aide, Sergeant Watson feigned a sprained ankle to stay behind. A third man follows them. Days later, Harris barely manages to return to the crash site. The others are lost. As the water begins to run out, Stringer, a precise, arrogant English aeronautical engineer, proposes a radical solution: rebuild a new aircraft from the wreckage of the old twin-boom aircraft, using the undamaged boom and adding skids to take off. The men set to work.