Flight KA1530: The Complete Trilogy

by Emily Leung

Rating: ****

When Krone Airways Flight KA1530 from Copenhagen lands at Heathrow with all passengers and cabin crew dead, the finger of suspicion begins to point at flight attendant, Beatriz Sarmento. But why would such a dedicated member of the cabin crew commit such an atrocity, and what does the sigil written on the cockpit door mean?...

Rewind six months. Beatriz can’t wait to take to the skies again and make her mother in Faro proud after being made redundant during Covid, and this time she is determined to make Senior crew.  But things are different at Krone Airways since the pandemic, and so is Beatriz…

I will never view airline cabin crew the same again after reading Flight KA1530. Not simply because of the supernatural aspect of the novel, but mainly due to the intense, visceral, and graphic nature of Beatriz’s disturbing trajectory, which is partly fueled by a viciously toxic working environment and culture.

Flight KA1530 is not a throwaway schlock-horror tapping into every aerophobic trope, but a dark and complex psychological thriller liberally dosed with the paranormal. Split into three parts, Leung successfully employs differing techniques and forms across the novel to unfold her compelling, multi-layered narrative. She takes the reader back and forth in time, sharing partial knowledge and half-reveals of impulses and motivations.    

The story opens with an article from a monthly aviation newsletter, which discusses the Flight KA1530 tragedy. Leung intersperses media reports and investigator interviews with the story. At first, these offer general plot hints with a touch of foreshadowing.

But gradually they narrow focus, providing unsettling clues and allowing the reader to view characters and events from different, often dispassionate angles that contrast sharply against the tangled, nightmarish atmosphere of the main narrative, which unfolds from Beatriz’s perspective.

Beatriz shares her innermost thoughts and feelings with riveting intimacy and a raw immediacy. The reader is absorbed by her, not yet questioning her veracity, but beginning to experience a lurking sense of unease, heightened by a series of surreal, sinister happenings that whisper of the preternatural and swirl ominously around her.  

From the beginning, there is a dark, troubling intensity to the twenty-seven-year-old from Portugal, which flickers through her internal monologues and external observations. She oscillates from poised control to paranoid insecurity. However, Leung ensures that Beatriz’s odd, and often extreme, behavior is gently nuanced in the early stages.

Several plot angles drive toward the fatal flight. Primary among these are the working conditions for ApexCrew and the dynamic between Beatriz and the three other female flight attendants with whom she house-shares.

It's suffocating, spiteful stuff with some horrendously tense, nerve-shredding scenes set within the tight claustrophobia of airplanes or hotel rooms. Leung takes the reader deep into the manipulations, treachery, and back-stabbing, heavily freighted with jealousy and the trading of sexual currency.    

Beatriz affords the reader glimpses into her life back home in Portugal, especially the reputation of her grandfather, Miguel. Through Beatriz’s memories of Miguel, Leung begins to build up the occult element of the story, with its foundations in arcane, ritualistic magic and a twisted Faustian pact that connects Krone Airways CEO George Hjortsberg to Beatriz.

As events accelerate toward Flight KA1530, Leung tilts the reader into a distorted reality, where character reliability becomes compromised, and the plot piles on twist after unexpected twist, reveling in emotional violence and grotesque incidents. The reader is still unaware of what exactly happens on the fateful flight, and Leung ratchets up the suspense to a screaming pitch as her prose takes on a hallucinatory, frantic tone with an intense appeal to visualization.

The book would have benefited from a more thorough edit, and some of the Portuguese elements feel a touch underdeveloped. Still, nonetheless, Flight KA1530 is an intelligent, unusual, and chillingly brilliant psychological horror. Highly recommended.

Buy from:

Amazon UK | Amazon US