Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche

Author:William Langewiesche
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846143083
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

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Ziegler has written a book titled Les Cow-boys d’Airbus, about himself and his friends. Recently I went to see him in Toulouse. He is deep into his seventies now, but still trim and athletic, and married to his original wife, a long-haired beauty in the 1970s who, he assured me, is every bit as beautiful today. Life is good. His English is thick. His French is formal without being arch. He picked me up at the airport in a hybrid electric car, which seemed appropriate to me. He had dirty burlap sacks in the back because, he said, he was about to leave for his second house, in Corsica. We drove to a country restaurant on the banks of the Garonne, where we talked about the past. He is a Gaullist of the last generation for which Gaullism makes sense, but more of a free-thinker than a conservative, as the A320 amply demonstrates. He was born into the ruling caste of French technocrats, the product of Napoleonic traditions, and engineers par excellence. His father was Henri Ziegler, a pilot and engineer educated at the elite École Polytechnique, who joined de Gaulle in London during World War II, became the commander of the Free French air force, and had many adventures during the war, including parachuting into France to coordinate with the Resistance. After the war he rebuilt Air France, went on to manage the national aerospace company, now called Aérospatiale, and in 1968 cofounded Airbus, which he served as president until his retirement in 1975. He died in 1993. He never made much money. He was a public servant. He was passionate about airplanes all his life.

Bernard was seven years old when France was occupied by German forces. With his mother and two brothers he fled Paris for a village in the Vercors, a redoubt of the Resistance in the mountains near Grenoble. As the war proceeded, the village was spared by the Germans, though others nearby were destroyed. The men had fled into the forest to join the fight. Bernard’s mother was active in their support and often sent her boys into the forest carrying supplies. These memories are still alive for Ziegler. His mother was a hero, and so, at a young age, was he. He did not know that he was a hero. He thought he was just taking food into the forest. But his status became official when later his mother was awarded a Croix de Guerre, “For Resistance with Her Children.” Toward the end of the war an officer in an American uniform drove up in a jeep, sought her out, and began to kiss her. I mean, really kiss her. Ziegler was shocked until he realized that the officer was not American but French, and indeed was his father. He had not seen him for two years.

After the war the family returned to Paris. A daughter was born, Ziegler’s sister, whom he describes as “a fruit of the Liberation.” As a teenager, Ziegler learned to fly small airplanes in the Air France aeroclub.

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