Straight From the Mouth of 'Scapegoat' Emilio Corsetti III

Emilio Corsetti III is a professional pilot and author. Emilio has written for both regional and national publications including the Chicago Tribune, Multimedia Producer, and Professional Pilot magazine. Emilio is the author of the book 35 Miles From Shore: The Ditching and Rescue of ALM Flight 980. The upcoming book Scapegoat: A Flight Crew's Journey from Heroes to Villains to Redemption tells the true story of an airline crew wrongly blamed for causing a near-fatal accident and the captain's decades-long battle to clear his name. Emilio is a graduate of St. Louis University. He and his wife Lynn reside in Dallas, TX.

For More Information

• Visit Emilio Corsetti III’s website.
• Connect with Emilio on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Book:

"This is the kind of case the Board has never had to deal with-a head-on collision between the credibility of a flight crew versus the airworthiness of the aircraft." NTSB Investigator-in-Charge Leslie Dean Kampschror

On April 4, 1979, a Boeing 727 with 82 passengers and a crew of 7 rolled over and plummeted from an altitude of 39,000 feet to within seconds of crashing were it not for the crew's actions to save the

While the crew's efforts to save TWA 841 were initially hailed as heroic, that all changed when safety inspectors found twenty-one minutes of the thirty-minute cockpit voice recorder tape blank. The captain of the flight, Harvey "Hoot" Gibson, subsequently came under suspicion for deliberately erasing the tape in an effort to hide incriminating evidence. The voice recorder was never evaluated for any deficiencies.

From that moment on, the investigation was focused on the crew to the exclusion of all other evidence. It was an investigation based on rumors, innuendos, and speculation. Eventually the NTSB, despite sworn testimony to the contrary, blamed the crew for the incident by having improperly manipulated the controls, leading to the dive.

This is the story of an NTSB investigation gone awry and one pilot's decades-long battle to clear his name.

plane. The cause of the unexplained dive was the subject of one of the longest NTSB investigations at that time.

Scapegoat: A Flight Crew’s Journey from Heroes to Villains to Redemption is available at Amazon and B&N.

Thanks for letting us interrogate you!  Can you give us a go-for-the-gut answer as to why you wanted to be an author?

There is nothing more gratifying than to tell a story that has never been told before.

Tell us (we won’t tell promise!) is it all it’s cracked up to be?  I mean what are the perks and what are the demands?

Writing a book is hard work. But the reward of seeing your hard work realized is worth the effort.

Which route did you take – traditional or self-published – and can you give us the nitty gritty low down on what’s that like?

I’d like to take a minute to try and change this whole concept of self-publishing. Self-publishing is when you print your book at Kinkos and put it in a three ring binder. My book was independently published. It is being distributed by a national distributor. When a filmmaker makes an independent film, you don’t call it a home movie, do you?

What’s the snarkiest thing you can say about the publishing industry?

Book publishing has gone the way of the major film studios. They aren’t willing to hear new voices for fear of having it blow up in their faces.

Tell us for real what your family feels about you spending so much time getting your book written, polished, edited, formatted, published, what have you?

They’re like anyone else. If it sucks, they’ll let me know. If it’s good, they’ll tell me. If it needs work, they’ll tell me that as well.

What was the craziest or insane thing that happened to you in the book publishing process?

Selling over 10,000 copies of my first book through a myriad of marketing initiatives.

How about the social networks?  Which ones do you believe help and which ones do you wish you could avoid?

I use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn. They all have their pluses and minuses.

Book sales.  Don’t you just love them (or lack of?)?  How are you making the sales happen for you?

I do a marketing related task every day. It’s all about exposure. No one can buy a book they’ve never heard of. So I do everything I can do to help people discover my book. One way to accomplish this has been through giveaways at Goodreads.

What is one thing you’d like to jump on the rooftop and scream about?

I am not a self-published author. I am an independent publisher and author.

Okay, too much sugar for you today!  Here’s a nice cup of Chamomile tea and come on over and sit under the cabana and watch the waves roll in.  Now…can you tell us what you love about being a published author and how all those things above doesn’t matter because it’s all part of the whole scheme of things and you wouldn’t have it any other way?

I never talk about my writing in my work environment. I’ve had a couple of experiences in airports or on the plane where a person would hear my name and then ask me if I was the same person who wrote such and such book. The looks I get from my co-workers after acknowledging that I am the same person is very gratifying. It’s sort of like someone learning that you make records or films in your spare time.