Publication Date: May 13, 2025
Much as Eric Schollsberg’s Fast Food Nation made people think about the way we eat, this provocative memoir and exposé challenges readers to question why, given its long history of cover-ups and systemic safety gaps, we continue to trust the aviation industry.
On a stormy late May morning in 2008, TACA Airlines Flight 390 crashes at one of the most dangerous airports in the world, Honduras’s Toncontin International Airport. Five people die in the crash—among them Rossana D’Antonio’s brother, pilot Cesare D’Antonio. Suspecting Cesare will be made a scapegoat for the accident, as so often happens to pilots, Rossana decides to leverage her decades of experience as an engineer and set out in search of the truth.
Part memoir, part exposé, 26 Seconds interweaves Rossana’s research regarding other parallel accidents with her own story. Six months after the TACA crash, Captain Sully Sullenberger lands his plane on the Hudson River. Although authorities call his landing a miracle, they also blame him for its necessity. One year after the TACA 390 tragedy, Air France 447 falls from the sky. Again, pilot error.
As Rossana digs deeper, she exposes a culture that is too quick to conclude pilot error and an industry that experiences systemic weaknesses, chooses profits over safety, lies to its customers, and is willing to risk lives to get its planes back up in the sky. Ultimately, she uncovers the smoking gun she’s been looking for—revealing the truth about TACA 390, exposing aviation cover-ups, and challenging us all to question the very systems we’ve been told we can trust with our lives.
Grief leads a woman to create a memoir that celebrates her brother’s life while delving into the tragic chain of events leading up to his death.
Rossana D’Antonio uses 26 Seconds to focus on Cesare’s legacy as the pilot of TACA Flight 390 in Honduras.
Part tribute, part airline safety review, the author digs through all of the media reports and official airline investigation materials to understand precisely what happened to cause her brother to overshoot the runway, plow across a roadway, and crash into an embankment.
Using personal journals, she travels back to May 30, 2008 when the news breaks of a commercial airline crash with three dead, including the pilot. Her memories are full of pain as she struggles to make sense of the tragedy.
26 Seconds documents a woman’s efforts to seek answers after her brother’s death.
Rossana D’Antonio is a licensed engineer with expertise in infrastructure design and emergency management and a strong advocate for infrastructure investments, including the Federal Aviation Authority Reauthorization. Shaped by her Italian and Salvadoran parents, D’Antonio is deeply committed to family and understands the value of creating an environment in which everyone feels safe and protected. She finds peace in Malibu, California, where she resides with her husband, Freddie, and puppy, Luna.
