Arthur Hailey turned meticulous industrial research into a global literary empire of best sellers
In short: Before he became a titan of commercial fiction, Arthur Hailey was a pilot and trade magazine editor. He pioneered a formula of placing ordinary people into extraordinary industrial crises, conducting years of painstaking research for each book. His blockbusters sold 170 million copies, yet critics often dismissed his work.
Arthur Hailey’s career began in 1955 with a television script, Flight into Danger, which depicted a plane crew incapacitated mid-flight. The success of this teleplay launched his transition into novels. He developed a rigorous three-year production cycle for his books: one year of research, six months of note-taking, and 18 months of writing. This methodology allowed him to embed his narratives within the technical realities of specific industries, from the inner workings of hotels and hospitals to the complexities of the automobile and banking sectors.
His commercial impact was immense. Novels like Hotel, Airport, and Wheels consistently dominated the New York Times Best Seller list, often securing the top spot for months at a time. His 1968 novel Airport was so successful that its film adaptation helped trigger the 1970s craze for disaster movies. Despite selling 170 million copies across 38 languages, Hailey faced harsh critical reception. Reviewers frequently labeled his prose as uninspired or compared his output to industrial waste, yet he remained indifferent to these critiques, famously declaring himself a storyteller rather than a literary figure.
Hailey’s personal life was as mobile as his career. Born in England in 1920, he served as a Royal Air Force pilot during World War II before emigrating to Canada in 1947. Following his massive financial success, he moved to the Bahamas in the 1970s as a tax exile, where he remained until his death in 2004. Even in his later years, he maintained his commitment to research, famously spending time with guerilla fighters in Peru at age 67 to prepare for his novel The Evening News.
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