To keep this post from being a full, one-hundred percent self-serving, I'll start by recommending somebody else's new book before moving on to my own....

In 1972, Western Airlines flight 701 was commandeered by a pair of young lovers as it prepared to land in Seattle. The skyjackers were Willie Roger Holder, a decorated Vietnam veteran turned amateur astrologer whose life had fallen down the tubes, and Catherine Kerkow, a former high-school athlete turned small-time drug dealer and erotic masseuse. Holder and Kerkow abscond to Algeria with a half-million dollar ransom -- and that's just the beginning.

Their story, a thrill-ride from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the streets of Europe and North Africa, is the subject of Brendan Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (Crown).

But really, Brendan Koerner tells us two important stories -- not merely the extraordinary odyssey of a pair of hijackers, but the equally remarkable story of one of the most peculiar and intense periods of 20th-Century America.

In "The Golden Age of Hijacking," as the author dubs it, air piracy was rampant across America and the world. Between 1968 and 1972, U.S. commercial aircraft were commandeered at a rate of nearly one per week. Hijackings were so routine that over a four-month span in 1968 there were three instances of multiple aircraft being hijacked on the same day. (The Western Airlines 727 that Holder and Kerkow commandeered to San Francisco, before continuing on to Algeria, was one of two purloined jets to land at SFO that same evening.)

Koerner's chronicle of these events is exhaustively researched and staggering to behold. And in many ways it's this historical catalog that provides the book's most fascinating and colorful parts. For instance the story of Rafaelle Minichiello, the 20 year-old Italian-American who earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam and would later hijack a TWA 707 from Los Angeles to Rome, where he was lionized by the Italian media (and legions of teenage girls) and remains a folk hero to this day. And while everybody has heard of D.B. Cooper, it turns out he was among several hijackers of the era to parachute out the back of a Boeing 727 with a bag of ransom (one of them was a Mormon Sunday School teacher and former Green Beret). From hapless teenagers to misguided militants, the list goes on and on -- the list of hijackings is seemingly endless, the perpetrators endlessly eccentric.

Koerner also documents how, even in the throes of a hijacking epidemic, the airline industry staunchly resisted the sorts of intrusive security measures now taken for granted. While nobody is advocating that we return to an era in which passengers could freely stroll aboard with loaded handguns, we could probably use a bit of that spirit nowadays, caught as we are in a self-defeating mindset that seems willing to justify almost anything in the name of safety, no matter how irrational or intrusive.

If you're familiar with my work, and my semi-regular rants about airport security, it should come as no surprise that the security backstory is, for me, one of the most poignant aspects of Koerner's book. What I like best about is the sense of perspective it imparts, reminding us that the crimes against civil aviation was a target for criminals and saboteurs long before September 11th, 2001.

Which isn't to take away from Koerner's central narrative. His prose isn't always the most artful, but it hardly needs to be, because the saga of Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow is so over-the-top that you can hardly put the book down. Their hijack plot was as audacious as it was ridiculous, and the ensuing drama was so -- to borrow a word of the period -- far out, that it can hardly be believed. Why a movie is yet to be made of their absurd adventure is hard to figure; on the other hand, most viewers would refuse to accept that it actually happened the way it did.

In "The Skies Belong to Us," Brendan Koerner rediscovers an unforgettable true-crime drama that resonates profoundly even today.

Koerner's sub-title,"The Golden Age of Hijacking," made me smile when I first saw it. I've been using the phrase, "The Golden Age of Air Crimes," in a similar context, in my articles and columns since at least 2003. In fact, it appears as the sub-title to a section in chapter six of my own new book, introducing a list of hijackings and bombings in the years prior to September 11th.

That book would be Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel. Questions, Answers, and Reflections, published last month by Sourcebooks.

Pitching one's own book is a little awkward, but I like to think of Cockpit Confidential as a wry, thoughtful, at times provocative look into the confounding world of commercial air travel: the ideal take-along for frequent flyers, nervous passengers, world travelers, and anybody yearning for a behind-the-scenes look at the strange and misunderstood business of commercial aviation.

More than just a book about flying, its subject is everything and everything about the grand theater of air travel (as I like to call it), from airport architecture to terrorism to the colors and cultures of the world's airlines. The seven chapter format blends questions and answers with informational essays and memoir. A partial rundown of topics includes:

-- How planes fly, and a revealing look at the men and women who fly them
-- Straight talk on turbulence, pilot training, and safety
-- The real story on congestion, delays, and the dysfunction of the modern airport
-- Terrorism in perspective and a candid look at security
--  Airfares, seating woes, and the pitfalls of airline customer service
-- The colors and cultures of the airlines we love to hate
-- The yin and yang of global travel
-- Gratuitous references to 80s-era indie rock bands

Cockpit Confidential is everything my first book, Ask the Pilot (2004), should have been, but was not. It retains the same outline and chapter sequence, but virtually all of the content has been updated and revised in some way. Close to 70 percent of the material is all-new, including new essays, sidebars, a glossary, and substantially expanded questions-and-answers sections. 


Print and e-book versions are available at booksellers everywhere, including Amazon.com, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO, MEDIA REVIEWS, AND TO PLACE AN ORDER.

Autographed copies can be purchased through the merchandise page of my website.

[Above photo taken at Porter Square Books, Cambridge]

Now, as for the title.... I know, it's cheap and derivative -- a blatant poach of Anthony Bourdain's famous Kitchen Confidential. But it wasn't my idea.

Okay, fine, it was my idea. Or, more specifically, it was a collaborative decision between me, my agent and the publisher. It's a touch misleading, as the book isn't the least bit scandalous or sensational, but I like the sound of it -- the alliterative quality. As one person put it: "There isn't a better or a worse title for your book."

I can feel better knowing that I have Bourdain's blessings, sort of. He was a passenger on one of my flights a year or so ago, flying from Dublin to New York. I introduced myself and told him about the title. He laughed.

The big challenge in the meantime is getting the title some exposure at airports. As was the case with Ask the Pilot nine years ago, getting airport retailers to stock the book has been difficult. I long ago lost count of the number of people who, when I was working on the manuscript, said to me, “What a great idea; this will be for sale at every airport in the country.” As it happens, the book can be found only in only limited number of terminals. My gratitude to Hudson News and BookLink for carrying it, but other companies have been uncooperative. HMS Host, for example, which operates in over a hundred terminals worldwide under a variety of names ("Simply Books" is one of them), has shown no interest whatsoever.

If that strikes you as a poor business decision, I couldn't agree more, as would most reasonable people. This was a book written primarily for frequent flyers, and if there’s a more opportune selling point than the airport, for heck’s sake, I’d like to hear it. Talk about a captive audience. Is it just me, or could there not be a more ideal airport impulse buy?

I’ve gone into several outlets and spoke to the managers. In almost all of these stores, the on-site staff have virtually no control over which titles are stocked. It all comes from the corporate level, and getting your book onto their shortlist of approved titles is very difficult (unless your publisher is willing to spend lavishly on a promotion). That your book is for and about the airport makes no difference to them.

Meanwhile, you get your pick of the latest sports biographies, Suze Orman, and the usual assortment of thrillers. The other day at the airport in Detroit, I stopped by a store that was hawking the autobiography of Mike Piazza and, get ready now, the new "Mother-Daughter Love Story" by Carol Burnett.

I can't get Cockpit Confidential in the store, but there are plenty of big heavy hardcovers from a retired ballplayer and an 80 year-old comedian.

Airport retailing is weird across a number of fronts, not just books. To cut-and-paste from chapter three:

It appears the evolution of airport design will not be complete until the terminal and shopping mall become indistinguishable. I can understand the proliferation of Starbucks and souvenir kiosks, but it’s the saturation of high-end boutiques that confounds me. Apparently there isn’t a traveler alive who isn’t in dying need of a hundred-dollar Mont Blanc pen, a remote-control helicopter or a thousand-dollar massage chair.

And what’s with all the luggage stores? Who the hell buys a suitcase afterhe or she gets to the airport? I can't think of a more useless item to sell there, yet there isn't a terminal in the world without a Tumi outlet or a store selling roll-aboard bags.

A silly story in the Times magazine got some well-deserved flak. Finally the author and the paper have fessed up and apologized.

UPDATE: June 18, 2013

On June 18th, Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' Public Editor, published a candid, if tardy mea culpa, owning up to the paper's poor response to the controversy surrounding Noah Gallagher Shannon's over-the-top account of a supposed emergency landing in Philadelphia two years ago. Separately, in an interview with James Fallows published on the 14th, Shannon himself came clean.

The story in question, written by a young, Brooklyn-based writer named Noah Gallagher Shannon, was this one.

Conde Nast's Clive Irving was among those who joined The Atlantic's James Fallows in ringing the baloney bell on Mr. Shannon's scary account.

Shoddy media coverage and overheated analysis of aviation incidents is nothing new. This particular essay, though, belonged in a category of its own. Shannon didn't give us a story about an emergency landing. He gave us an embellished tale about his own hysterical reaction to a manageable and ultimately harmless problem.

As I've written many times in my articles (there's a segment in the new book about it too), landing gear malfunctions are, from a pilot's point of view, pretty far down the list of potential nightmares, and seldom if ever do they result in injury or fatality. Mr. Shannon was either unaware of this reality, or chose to ignore it for the sake of giving his story a little more zing. I love this line especially: "A plane without landing gear is like a struck match." Total rubbish. See my articles HERE, and HERE for starters.

Then we have an obvious, perhaps intentional muddling of certain details. For instance:

"The captain came out of the cockpit and stood in the aisle. His cap dangled in one hand."

Why would the captain bring his cap?

“All electricity will remain off,” he said. Something about an open current and preventing a cabin fire. Confused noises spread through the cabin, but no one said a word."

I'd be confused as well. I cannot imagine a scenario in which the crew would would intentionally shut down a plane's electrical system because of a landing gear malfunction.

“Not going to sugarcoat it,” he said. “We’re just going to try to land it.”

If this one isn't made up, I'll eat my pilot hat. We're just going to try to land it?

The thrumming of the air-conditioning stopped.

A commercial plane's air conditioning system is not electrically powered and is unrelated in any way to the landing gear. As with the electrical system, I cannot conceive of a reason for turning it off under the circumstances described. For one thing, doing so would cause the jet to depressurize.

And so on, including the weird bits about the engines "powering down," and the plane "pitching and rolling." I have no idea what that's all about. Obviously the plane was going to pitch and roll, seeing that it was flying and would need to maneuver. And obviously the engines were going to power down if the plane was going to descend and land.

I received a letter from a person who was able to view the maintenance record of the aircraft involved. According to the information I was given, the pilots' post-flight logbook entry, which references a caution message displayed on a cockpit advisory screen of the Airbus A320, reads as follows:

"ECAM HYD Y RSVR LO LVL"

What this means, essentially, is that one of the plane's three main hydraulic systems was indicating a low level in its fluid reservoir. Airbus color-codes its hydraulic systems; this would have been the yellow (Y) system.

Per checklist instructions, the crew would turned off this system off. This is unusual, but the loss of a single hydraulic system on a modern airliner is far from a serious emergency. All critical components have at least one alternate source of hydraulic power.

Further, the corrective action note in the logbook implies the issue was merely an indication problem. Fluid quantity was found to have been at the normal level all along.

But most importantly, Shannon's essay revolves around a landing gear problem. As I've already explained, even the most serious landing gear malfunction sits pretty far down in the hierarchy of potential disasters. Even lower, however, is a landing gear problem that does not exist: the yellow hydraulic system does not power the landing gear.

An A320 captain I spoke to says that a shut-down of the yellow system would have meant, at worst, a slightly longer-than-normal landing roll (due to loss of the right engine thrust reverser and some of the wing spoiler panels), and, in newer A320s, loss of the nose-gear steering system, requiring a tow to the gate.

There were enough red flags to begin with, but this put it over the top, tilting the entire account from one of eye-rolling embellishment toward one of outright fabrication.

In a response to James Fallows' comments in the Atlantic, the editor of the Times magazine had this to say:

"Naturally, not every detail matches everybody else's experience. Surely even people on that plane would remember it differently. The story was about the personal experience of a fearful moment....He only reported what he heard and felt, which is consistent with the magazine's Lives page, where the account was published."

Ah, there you go. So we weren't supposed to take the details and their chronology seriously. As Fallows put it, "the writer was telling us 'what he heard and felt,' not necessarily what 'happened.'" I see. And no disclaimer on this account was necessary up front?

Writerly integrity aside, the real harm here, as Clive Irving notes in his Daily Beast article, is in the way accounts like Shannon's stoke people's fears. Shannon took what was surely a minor problem and fashioned it into a near-calamity. The next time there's a problem with a landing gear door or an anti-skid system, or heaven forbid a set of tires that fails to deploy, some already nervous flyer is going to remember this story and be scared out of his or her wits, all for no reason.

Hysterics like this are also offensive to the people who've lived through serious aviation accidents, and they disgrace the memories of those who weren't lucky enough to survive them. For example, compare Shannon's melodrama with the New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey's first-hand account of the midair collision he survived over the Amazon in 2006 -- an accident that killed 154 people. Sharkey's narrative, about living through hone of the deadliest accidents of the last 20 years, was levelheaded and calm. He didn't need to embellish it. Shannon whimpers like a schoolgirl over a malfunction so minor that the flight crew, if we could track them down, has probably forgotten about it.

I don't know if the author was trying to be sleazy, but he was doing what too many people do: taking extreme liberties with a subject that he obviously knows nothing about -- i.e. commercial flying -- under the assumption that nobody would notice or care, and spinning them into a bogus scare-story. Flying often gets a free pass when it comes to hype and fact-checking, but Shannon and his artisanal Brooklyn fiction had no place in a publication as august as the New York Times.

And while not to pile on... Apart from the technical points, the whole style and tone of Shannon's piece were annoying and immature. What was intended to sound "emotional" and reflective came across like a seventh grade composition assignment.

The mini-sentence, for example, is a tempting, often dangerous affectation for writers when they're trying to sound pithy. Shannon gave us an instant classic: "My brain felt humid."

Then, a few lines later, he drew things out: "You can actually feel the air holding you up when a plane’s engines power down. Like when you’re riding a bike downhill and you stop pedaling, there’s noiselessness in its speed."

I'm sorry, what? Did you say, "noiselessness in its speed"?

Is this the stuff coming out of Brooklyn nowadays?

Okay, I know, I'm taking the low road. I do wish Shannon success on the book about Cormac McCarthy that his bio says he's working on. He and I have at least something in common, presumably, in addition to our great looks and hairlines: McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" is one of my two or three all-time favorite novels. I'd love to hear his thoughts on it.

For real. Just no more nonsense about airplanes.

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot and author of the new book, COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AIR TRAVEL

 
[photo composite by Patrick Smith]
 

Our airports are terrible, and our airlines find it harder and harder to compete. We've done it to ourselves through shortsightedness, underfunding, and flyer-unfriendly policies.

In a CNN poll of 1,200 overseas business travelers who have visited the United States, a full 20 percent of them said they would not visit the US again due to onerous entry procedures at airports, including long processing lines. Forty-three percent said they would discourage others from visiting the US.

"The United States risks falling behind Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as the global aviation leader."

- Carol Hallett, US Chamber of Commerce counsel
In Air Line Pilot magazine

I'd say that battle was lost a long time ago.

This morning I caught a flight from New York up to Boston. The two people behind me were having a spirited discussions about the assorted miseries of flying: wailing babies, long lines, delays, and cramped seats.

It's that last one that jumped out at me, because you hear it so much...

It's legroom, or lack thereof, that most people whine about. There's less and less of it, as airlines cram in extra rows, eager to squeeze out every last penny of revenue in the face of razor-thin profit margins.

Or maybe it just seems that way?

Late in the day on April 25, the US Senate unanimously passed legislation that would end the FAA controller furloughs and restore the nation's air traffic control system to normal, or close to normal, operation. The measure permits the shifting of more than $200 million from elsewhere in the federal budget to cover the required funding. The "Dependable Air Service Act" now moves to the US House of Representatives, where it is expected to be taken up as soon as Friday.

This should put a quick end to the delays and cancellations that have been plaguing the country's airports since last weekend. According to the FAA, roughly 1,000 commercial flights each day were in some way affected by the sequester-induced furloughs, with many delays lasting several hours.

I saw it firsthand:

This is my preemptive plea, an open letter to the media, to rein in another silly airplane story before it garners too much traction.

Too late, I know.

I'm referring to the story, which began making rounds on Thursday, about the possibility of using Android devices or similar gadgets to "hijack" or "take over" commercial airplanes by inputting rogue data to the plane's ACARS or FMS units.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, good. Chances are you do, however. If so, try not to take it too seriously.

It's interesting sometimes, the stories that get media traction.

This time it's the one about the tiny Samoan airline that has decided to charge fares based on a passenger's weight. The move has touched off discussions about whether such an idea makes sense for mainline carriers as well. After all, Americans are quite a bit larger than they used to be, and doesn't that extra weight affect an airplane's performance? Is it just a matter of time before passengers on United, Delta or American are asked to stand on a scale, like their suitcases, when checking in?

Before we get going, thanks to everybody who took the time to read my little paean to Logan Airport a couple of weeks back. If you missed it, it's here.

Logan may not be the greatest airport in the world, but it's underrated, and certainly it's a far cry from the worst. For that dubious honor, see here.

Moving on…

Commercial air travel has long been a breeding ground for myths, conspiracy theories, urban legends, and plain old misunderstandings. Most of what people think they know about flying is wrong.

In my columns, blogs and books, I've spent the better part of a decade trying to set the record straight, but for the most part, it's been a losing cause. Certain notions just never seem to die, to the point where many are now accepted as conventional wisdom. They've been spun and re-spun by a lazy, irresponsible media that sensationalizes even the most innocuous mishap and refuses to check its facts, often trundling out supposed experts who all too often have little idea what they’re talking about.

Here are some of flying's most stubborn myths, fallacies, and quasi-truths:

Is it just me, or is Logan Airport one of the most underrated airports in the country?

There aren't a whole lot of good things to say about US airports in general. They're noisy, dirty, confusingly laid out, often in poor repair, and sorely lacking in public transport options. We've got nothing on the airports in Europe or Asia, many of which are architecturally stunning and jam-packed with amenities. If you've ever been to Singapore, Incheon, Munich, or Amsterdam, among many others, you know what I'm talking about.

But if we had to pick one of our own...

Washington's Reagan-National has an excellent subway connection, and the terminal, with its sun-splashed central hall and vaulted ceilings, is one of America's greatest airport buildings. The international terminal in San Francisco is similarly impressive. Orlando is clean, green, and well laid-out. Portland, Oregon, is many people's favorite.

Nobody, though, ever mentions Logan. And I don't think that's fair. It's squeaky clean, well organized, and unlike the vast majority of US airports, it has an efficient public transport link to the city. It's even got some flair: what's not to like about the inter-terminal walkways, with their skyline views, terrazzo floors, and inlay mosaics?

A tour:

Last week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it would rescind its longstanding ban on the carriage of small knives. Effective in mid-April, passengers can once again carry implements with blades of up to 2.36 inches onto airplanes.

The decision has raised the ire of some, including flight attendant unions, who have called the decision reckless and dangerous.

However, if you ask me, this is one of the more positive things TSA has done in a long time, and will make the checkpoint process at least marginally less tedious. That some are opposed to the changes is not surprising, but the backlash strikes me as counterproductive.

WHENEVER I TAKE THE TIME to remind people of just how inexpensive flying has become, my inbox gets socked with hate mail. People simply hate flying, and the level of anti-airline contempt is so high that it has become almost impossible to say anything positive about the experience without being called a shill, a lackey, or worse.

I wonder if Derek Thompson, over at the Atlantic, is feeling the heat. Thompson just published a short but very revealing piece showing how the price of air travel has fallen 50 percent over the past three decades. You can read it here. It includes a remarkable graph, which I'll reproduce below:

Notice the upswing since 2009 or so, but overall the trend is very clear.

Normally when I bring this topic up, one of the regular rebuttals is the likes of, "Oh, well maybe base fares are down, but it's those [expletive, expletive] fees that are killing us!"

Except they're not. I realize that people feel nickel-and-dimed when asked to pay a surcharge for checked luggage, onboard food, or a reservation change. But as the graph clearly shows, these "unbundling" fees, as they're known, barely change the picture.

Welcome to Ask the Pilot, a blog about All Things Air Travel.

Fewer things are more confounding, aggravating, and frankly, misunderstood than the experience of commercial air travel. Its mysteries are concealed behind a wall of specialized jargon, corporate reticence, and an irresponsible media that sensationalizes even the most insignificant incident. Almost everybody flies, yet much of what people think they know about flying is wrong.

In this space, I will answer your questions and address your worries and anxieties. I will also rant and rave about whatever facet of this weird and exciting business happens to be on my mind.

About me: