‘I am thirty miles south of London’s Gatwick Airport, the world’s busiest single-runway airport, when one of the seven Flight Control computers in my Airbus A320 aircraft fails . . . ’

So begins this pioneering book by Niall Downey – a cardio-thoracic surgeon who retrained to become a commercial airline pilot – where he uses his expertise in medicine and aviation to explore the critical issue of managing human error. With further examples from business, politics, sport, technology, education and other fields, Downey makes a powerful case that by following some clear guidelines any organisation can greatly reduce the incidence and impact of making serious mistakes.

‘Niall Downey is perhaps the only person in the world who could write this important new book . . . an owner's manual on how to work, live and play safer by knowing how and why errors happen.’ Dr Brian Goldman, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, and author of The Secret Language of Doctors

Capt. Niall Downey FRCSI attended St. Columb’s College in Derry and qualified as a doctor from Trinity College, Dublin. After twelve years of medical training, Niall decided to change course and retrained as an airline pilot with Aer Lingus, initially combining aviation with medicine by working as an Accident & Emergency doctor before focusing full-time on aviation. He currently operates on Aer Lingus’ Airbus A330 fleet flying on their transatlantic network. Niall provides courses and speaks at major conferences on the topic of error management, in particular how it relates to the healthcare industry. He lives with his family in Newry in Northern Ireland.