Air Travel

The plane, we are told, was “flying through terrifying black clouds.” Shortly thereafter commenced “14 minutes of death,” culminating in a “dive of death.” Look, the Post is a tabloid, I know, but still. Stories like this get the basic facts right, but couch them in a context of hysterical language and caricature. If I were a fearful flier, this is the kind of writing that would keep me grounded forever.

And this “black clouds” business is something that other, more august outlets ran with as well. Yes, cumulonimbus storm clouds can be menacingly opaque. But black? I suppose this is accurate in a sense, seeing how the crash took place at night, but how could anybody, with the possible exception of the occupants of the airplane, have any idea what the sky looked like at the time of the incident? I mean, really.

Next we have a Reuters piece from Miguel Lo Bianco. He writes, “Pilots often slow down when entering stormy zones to avoid damaging the aircraft, but reducing speed too much can cause an aircraft’s engines to stall.”

The danger of flying too slowly is not an engine stall, but an aerodynamic stall — that is, a loss of lift over the wings. This is a common media mistake. They hear “stall” and automatically think engines.

More curiously, the BBC also botched a story. Gary Duffy, from BBC News in São Paulo, Brazil, gave us the following:

“The plane disappeared at what would have been the most vulnerable stage of the flight. When flights leave Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, they normally make their way overland, I presume for safety reasons, for the early stages of the flight, for as long as possible. They then turn over the north-eastern coast of Brazil out into the vast crossing over the Atlantic. So it was at that vulnerable stage that unfortunately the plane disappeared.”

Well, not to nitpick, but that “vast crossing over the Atlantic” is actually one of the quicker oceanic crossings. From the corner of northeast Brazil to the next landing spot (either Dakar or Cape Verde), it is about 1,700 nautical miles. From there, the flight would have been very close to land for the duration of its journey. Seventeen hundred miles is a lot of water, but it pales in comparison to many Pacific crossings.

Neither is turning out over the ocean the “most vulnerable stage of the flight.” Actually, it was one of the least vulnerable stages of the flight. Taking off and landing are statistically the most vulnerable stages of any flight.

But the big gaffe is the reporter’s reasoning for why a Europe-bound plane would stay “overland” along the Brazilian coastline for so long. This has nothing to do with safety reasons. It’s merely the shortest distance. Check the globe: A straight line from Rio de Janeiro to Paris takes you right along the eastern edge of Brazil, all the way up to the city of Recife. Without getting into a tedious discussion of ETOPS parameters, as they’re called, an A330 is allowed to be as far as three hours’ flying time from the nearest airport.

There is a similar, widespread misunderstanding about planes flying from the United States to Europe. These flights hug the American and Canadian coastlines, as far north as Newfoundland or Labrador, for hundreds of miles before crossing the open ocean. People often assume this is because they wish to remain close to land for as long as possible. It’s not. Again, it’s merely the shortest distance. Remember, the world is round, and planes fly “great-circle” routes — the shortest distance between two points on a sphere — which on a flat map often appear as great curving arcs. This is discussed in more detail here. Or create your own great circle routes, using one of my favorite online sites, the Great Circle Mapper.

The BBC also came up with this ridiculous hatchet job in response to last week’s Continental Airlines incident in which the captain of a Brussels-to-Newark flight passed away during cruise.

There are those moments when you find yourself staring at the computer screen, taking in something so woefully wrong and distorted that you cannot get your arms around how to begin responding. This was one of those moments.

First and foremost, the comment by David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International magazine, is nothing if not outrageous. “That’s what co-pilots are for,” he says. “To stand in for the pilot in case of emergency.”

It’s possible this was taken out of context, but I have never in my life read a more absurd characterization of a first officer’s job and responsibilities. As a first officer myself, my jaw nearly hit the floor when I read this.

Similarly we have this statement: “The main reason for having two pilots is that something like this occasionally happens.”

That simply is not true. It is not even remotely true. The person who put this piece together clearly has no understanding of what airline pilots do, and didn’t work particularly hard to find out. Could the BBC not have spoken to somebody with some expertise in the operational aspects of flying commercial airplanes?

Elsewhere, coverage of the Continental landing ran the gamut from acceptable to hysterical. Most commendable, of course, were those reporters who bothered to track down yours truly looking for a quote or two — though I’m a tad confused as to why the New York Times chose to cite my name and my age, yet left out my writing credentials altogether. Go figure.

Both your column and news reports have spoken frequently of various “system status messages” that were automatically sent from the Air France A330 before its disappearance. Can you further explain this?

Messages regarding the health of on-board systems (engines, electronics, etc.) are periodically relayed via an on-board communications unit called ACARS, for “Aircraft Communications Addressing And Reporting System.” This is mostly for data collection and trend monitoring, but it also allows ground personnel to be aware of any important faults, failures or developing problems.

Pilots also use ACARS for routine communications with dispatchers and mechanics, and occasionally with air traffic control. Info is typed in using a keypad and screen. The pilot hits a send button, and the message is transmitted over a VHF radio frequency, or via satellite when over the ocean.

Oh, and those times when the pilots announce baseball or football scores, those have been beamed up via ACARS as well.

If an aircraft is out of radar range, how regularly would the pilots keep in contact with air traffic control? It seems that 50 minutes, as was reportedly the case with Air France 447, is an awfully long period.

Fifty minutes between ATC reports isn’t unusual. Crossing the oceans, flights make scheduled position reports to remote ATC facilities at designated points of longitude and latitude. These points can be very far apart — 400 miles or more, at times. The reports are sent via ACARS or FMC, or manually by microphone (voice) over VHF, satellite or high-frequency radio channels.

Even far out over the ocean or other remote area, a flight must always be contactable. If an airplane is equipped with a satellite communications system, it remains more or less in instant and constant touch and can relay messages via ACARS or, if need be, by voice. Aircraft without a satellite system need to remain in VHF radio range in order to stay in unrestricted contact. Flying beyond VHF range, sans satellite, means the cumbersome and annoying use of high-frequency radio.

Why do airplanes rely on easily lost black boxes, as with the Air France plane or the 9/11 planes? Why not a continuous transmission of voice and data that is recorded remotely? That shouldn’t be difficult in the age of GPS, satellite phones, Wi-Fi and so on.

I have been asked about this repeatedly in recent days. I posed the question to Christine Negroni, an aviation journalist and air safety specialist whose forthcoming book, “The Crash Detectives,” examines air crash forensic techniques. Here is her response:

Mostly because it would require tremendous bandwidth in order to download so much information. Two hundred and fifty-six individual data streams are recorded by the flight data recorder [black box] of a modern jet, plus the recording of the conversations and other sounds in the cockpit.

Given how quickly communication and digital technology are evolving, it’s feasible that soon it would be manageable to transmit this information using VHF radio frequencies when an airplane is in radio receiving range, but what about flights over remote areas or over water? Communicating this data would require data streaming via satellite, and that would be hugely expensive.

And where would all this information be stored? There are tens of thousands of commercial flights daily (all of which are uneventful, day after day). And even for that one crash in 2 million flights (the 2008 global hull loss rate), there’s rarely a need for external recording. ‘Easily lost boxes’ is not an [accurate] characterization. It is a very rare occurrence when the boxes are not found.

Having said that, some stripped-down, essential parameters are already streamed from flights via ACARS when the situation warrants, as we’ve all been reading about with respect to the Air France crash.

How hard would it be to install a self-inflating lift balloon in one of these data recorders? Or why not make them buoyant, so they can float?

The recorders are not necessarily flung free from the rest of the wreckage. Chances are, they are tangled up in debris. And you’d need to concoct a way for the units to automatically disconnect from their various electronic inputs. But it certainly could be done. As could other things, many of them very simple, such as designing a black box able to emit a long-range GPS signal so they can find the damn thing, instead of relying solely on a sonar pinger.

Few in the press are saying anything about the possibility of a bomb. Certainly Flight 447 going down in the area of large thunderstorms suggests a proximate cause, but the question of a security-related incident cannot help raising itself in this day and age.

I agree, but the evidence doesn’t suggest a bomb. The automated ACARS-generated messages are pretty explicit about a sequential series of instrument and flight-control faults, followed minutes later by a loss of cabin pressure. This, in or near apparently violent weather. On-board explosions blow holes in a plane, resulting in violent decompressions and/or structural failure, pretty much right away.

Also, just as important, nobody is taking credit for a bomb. Granted, when Libya blew up Pan Am 103, it did so anonymously, as did the Sikh extremists who blew up Air India 181 three years earlier. But today, most potential culprits have greatly different motives and would be seeking instant worldwide attention.

The Internet, of course, is crawling with conspiro-babble about this accident. This is the case with virtually all plane crashes nowadays.

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Do you have questions for Salon’s aviation expert? Contact Patrick Smith through his Web site and look for answers in a future column.

And here’s another one: the ever-expanding collection of electronic cords, adapters, chargers and gadgets I’m obliged to haul around with me. You know what I’m talking about. Anybody who travels regularly knows what I’m talking about. All of this, supposedly, to keep us “connected.” To make our lives easier and more productive.

Does it?

Don’t get me wrong. Riding the subway out to Logan, I love being able to pop in my earbuds and catch a few cuts from the Wedding Present, the Jazz Butcher or the Velvet Underground. And my MacBook Air is as essential for travel as a change of socks. But there is, or was, something to be said for that unplugged, disconnected age of not so long ago. If nothing else, our carry-ons were lighter, with more room for clothes.

The photo above shows the assortment of electronic gadget and gizmos I take with me pretty much every time I hit the road, be it for work or pleasure. As recently as a decade ago I owned none of this. I didn’t even have a cellphone until 2006.

Clockwise-ish, from upper left:

– That black case contains the camera that I used to take this picture. I currently use a Panasonic DMC-LX3. It’s a decent point-and-shoot with a Leica lens and super-long battery life. (The more recent pictures in my Flickr archives were taken with this camera.) I bring it with me on most, though not all, of my layovers and holidays.

– Earbuds. I recently upgraded to a pair of Klipsch and retired this Apple set.

– 32GB flash drive. For my backup files, and for transferring to and from my “master” computer at home.

– USB connector for camera (optional).

– Ethernet cord. Useful in those (too many) hotels where Wi-Fi is weak and a wired connection runs more robustly. Hotel-supplied Ethernet cords are often broken.

– Power adapter for laptop.

– AC adapter set. Essential when traveling overseas. One problem is, if I’m assigned to reserve status I often don’t know if I’ll be heading overseas until the last minute, so I’ve always got this with me.

– iPhone 4. Product unplug: Am I the only person who despises — and I mean really despises — the iPhone’s messaging keypad? Because the special function keys — caps, space bar, backspace and return — are so close to the normal character keys, I’m constantly capitalizing, spacing and backspacing when I don’t mean to. This happens in either the vertical or horizontal layout, and it’s especially annoying for those of us with fat fingers. It takes me five attempts to complete the simplest sentence.

– USB charger for iPhone.

– USB-to-AC connector thing for iPhone (optional, but a good thing to have).

– USB-to-Ethernet adapter (see Ethernet cord above).

And, in the middle of it all, my beloved MacBook Air.

All together, we’re looking at roughly five pounds of technology that, for all intents and purposes, is mandatory carry-on. Sometimes it’s slightly less, other times slightly more. Not shown, for instance, is my Flip video camera, which I bring on longer trips. ( Flip brought you this, among other works of directorial art.)

Thus the real must-have gadget is a decent case or container in which to consolidate all of this crap. For me, most of the more wiry components above fit nicely into an old business class amenities kit, which keeps them out of the way and avoids tangles. (How frustrating is it, meanwhile, that so many electronic devices require their own proprietary charging cord or adapter? Imagine if every lamp took a different kind of light bulb.)

The amenities case, together with the laptop, camera and phone, fit snugly into either of my larger carry-ons. Now that my flight case has been retired — a milestone previously detailed here — I typically go to work with two pieces of luggage:

The first is a custom crew roll-aboard from Luggage Works. At the moment I use the 26-inch LW with the plastic frame, which is much lighter than the more popular metal frame version. To make it even lighter, I’ve retrofitted the stainless steel retractable handle with an aluminum one.

I don’t know what “custom crew” means. I just thought it sounded cool. Over 95 percent of LW users are airline crew members, but anybody can order one.

A number of my colleagues use Travelpro bags (I’ve owned a couple of Travelpros over the years), but on the whole that brand is more popular with flight attendants than with pilots.

For a long time pilots resisted using roll-aboards at all. The thinking was that rolling your belongings was, like, too effeminate for the macho pilot (take me, for example). And so pilots would hand-haul their 40-odd pounds of personal luggage and pilot gear through the airport, toning their tough-guy biceps and making many a chiropractor happy.

By the way, have you ever heard somebody refer to roll-aboard bags as “roller board” bags? I was on a plane a few weeks ago and the flight attendant made an announcement reminding people to stow their “roller boards” handle-first into the bins.

My smaller bag, hung from my roller board using a hook that I designed myself, is a $300 Tumi briefcase that I bought about six months ago and quickly learned to hate, with its useless, miniature exterior pockets that I can barely squeeze my fingers into.

I’m something of a pro when it comes to short-notice, multi-climate packing. Here’s a tip: Go with lightweight clothing. What a concept, I know, but I’m amazed by how many people travel with heavy cotton jeans — even to hot climates. I own a lot of fast-dry synthetics. They’re not stylish, but when have I ever been? On the other hand I can launder a pair of pants in the hotel room bathtub and they’re dry before morning.

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GO-AROUNDS

Re: The Funniest Thing Ever Written

Several readers emailed demanding that I immediately scan and post copies of the 1988 “Guide to Harvard University Dining Services” booklet that I wrote about last week. A great idea, but the thing is 38 double-sided pages long. Tell you what: I’ll do it, but not for free. My price is $5, sent to my PayPal account. I figure if 20 people are interested, that’s $100, which makes it worth my trouble. Once I hit a hundred bucks I’ll send scans of every page to anybody who wants to see them, or else I’ll post them somewhere on my home site. If I don’t hit the $100 mark within the next 10 days I’ll refund your donations. (I really don’t expect to bring in much beyond that, as people will be waiting for the early birds to cover the cost.)

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Join the Ask the Pilot mailing list. Keep abreast of changes, the newest articles and other info. To sign up, send a message to patricksmith@askthepilot.com with the word “subscribe” in the title.

Another factor is the aircraft type. Two-engine planes are subject to what we call ETOPS (extended twin-engine operations) restrictions, which might result in a different, less direct routing than a plane with four engines can accept. ETOPS rules require planes to remain within particular flying distances (three hours, most commonly) of an acceptable diversion airport. (The diversion airports themselves will vary, subject to weather.) Across the North Atlantic it makes little difference; two engines or four there are always adequate diversion options relatively close by. Over the Pacific, though, it’s a little different, and there might be considerable differences between a route operated by, say, a two-engine 777, and the same route operated by a four-engine 747.

We were flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York on a 757. While taxiing out, the plane’s air conditioning malfunctioned and the cabin temperature became very hot. After several minutes of troubleshooting, the problem could not be fixed and we taxied back to the gate. The captain explained that although it was permissible to continue on with the broken AC, a whole new flight plan was required, including an altered routing that would add over 45 minutes’ flying time — in turn requiring us to take on more fuel. We departed more than an hour late. I’m baffled. Why on earth would a broken air conditioner mandate a whole new flight plan and a longer routing?

For better or worse, crews are often reluctant to to explain the technical nitty-gritty of mechanical failures, and this is a great example of how, as a result, a passenger’s perception of the problem — in this case, “a broken air conditioner” — isn’t nearly the whole story.

Planes are not air-conditioned in the manner of your car or home; there is no air conditioner, per se. The machinery used to heat and cool the cabin is something known in pilot parlance as a “pack” (an acronym for pneumatic air cycle kit). Normally there are two packs, located in the belly of the aircraft. They are supplied by bleed air from the engines, adjusting temperature by means of a compressor, turbine and air-to-air heat exchanger; there is no coolant gas (i.e., Freon). These same packs are also responsible for pressurization, which is where the complications described above enter the picture.

A single functioning pack is adequate to maintain both adequate pressure and temperature. Thus if one fails, a flight can still be dispatched safely. However, you’ve lost your redundancy; if the remaining pack were to fail, pressurization and temperature control would be lost entirely. So, single-pack operation entails some important restrictions — namely a lower-than-normal altitude and the need to stay within a certain distance to a diversion airport at all times. The exact rules vary from plane to plane, but a typical example is having to remain below 35,000 feet and within 60 minutes’ flying time of a suitable landing spot (transoceanic flights are likely to be forbidden outright). Usually this increases both flying time and fuel burn. In this case, a flight from Puerto Rico to New York that was originally planned to be mostly over water now required a longer inland routing at a more fuel-thirsty altitude.

I was once on a flight from Chicago to Atlanta and we had to make an emergency landing in Nashville due to something that made it necessary to fly only as high as 10,000 feet. Due to such a low altitude, we were told, we would burn too much gas and could not reach Atlanta nonstop. Were they telling us the truth and how serious was the situation?

This sounds perfectly legitimate to me. See the previous question. Every so often a plane will be altitude-restricted due to this or that mechanical issue — perhaps something pressurization-related. This will increase fuel burn to the point where an interim stop is required. (Remember that you need enough fuel not only to reach your destination, but enough to reach at least one alternate airport, plus a substantial buffer on top of that.) This malfunction might be something that happens en route, or the flight might be planned that way from the start.

About a year ago I was working a flight from South America to the United States. Over the Caribbean, a pressurization malfunction dictated a prompt descent. Efforts to troubleshoot the problem failed, and so we had to stay low. Together with our dispatchers we ran some calculations, and sure enough, it would have been impossible to complete the flight without violating legal fuel parameters. And so we wound up diverting to Puerto Rico.

You speak of an “emergency landing.” Passengers have a habit for referring to any diversion or precautionary landing as an “emergency,” when most are in fact precautionary or even routine. Declaration of an emergency is reserved for situations that are a lot more urgent — such as when there is a risk of injury or damage to the airplane, when the extent of a problem is not fully known, and/or or when priority air traffic control handling is required. Knock on wood: I’ve made several diverts and one or two precautionary landings, but never an emergency landing.

My mother was on a flight that couldn’t take off because an engine wouldn’t start. They were towed back to the gate and had to have the engine started with the help of an external cart of some sort. Could you explain what causes an engine to fail to start, how the external is used, and why it’s safe to fly in this condition?

That “the engine would not start” doesn’t sound right. That’s not telling me much. Starting a jet engine is a multi-step process and the malfunction could involve any of several components — not all of which are ultimately responsible for the continued running of the engine. Again, an airplane is not a car, and a jet engine does not start, stop or run the way a piston engine does.

Jet engines are started using compressed air, which is normally supplied either by the APU (the small auxiliary turbine in the back) or another, already running engine. This air spins the engine’s compressors to a certain minimum RPM, at which point fuel is introduced. Combustion then accelerates the compressors and turbines to “idle” speed, and the starter (air valve) is shut off.

It sounds to me like there was a problem with the APU generating adequate duct pressure to get the compressors spinning to the necessary RPM. Why this may have been happening I can’t say. There are different possibilities (duct problem, valve problem, unusually high elevation …). And so, an external air machine — sometimes referred to as an “air cart” or “huffer cart” — needed to be hooked up instead. In fact, before the advent of APUs (the Boeing 727 was the first jetliner to have one), jet engines were always started this way.

Once up and turning, jet engines don’t shut off or “stall” the way the engines in cars sometimes do. However, if for whatever reason an engine failure occurred later in flight and was to be restarted, this air problem no longer applies. You can use the APU, the other engine or the speed of the airplane — the airflow itself pushing into the engine — to turn the compressors to the required RPM.

More on the weirdness of jet engines here and here.

I was on a Southwest flight from Chicago to Portland, Ore. We were at 35,000 feet and the air was very choppy. The captain came on and apologized. He told us that although it was much smoother at 37,000 feet, we were “too heavy” to climb that high and would have to ride out the bumps for a while. Really? Why would another 2,000 feet make that much difference?

For fuel economy, if not a smoother ride, higher is always better, but planes can climb only as high as their weight allows. As you climb, the air thins. Engine output is reduced, and the wing cannot support as much airplane as it can down low. A given cruise altitude must account for both high-speed and low-speed stalls, in both smooth and turbulent conditions. Over the course of a flight, climb capabilities improve as fuel is burned away. The allowable altitude at any given time isn’t something you ballpark; there are specific maximum altitudes based on very specific weights, and they must be adhered to. The difference between 35,000 and 37,000 can be fairly significant.

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Don’t believe me? You can always “Ask the Pilot.” This guy, I mean. Introducing my latest imitator.

For that matter, would any of these measures have prevented the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103? How about the bombings of Air India 182 or UTA 772?

Again the answer is no. It was bombs in the lower holds that got those planes.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m on a plane I worry a lot more about what’s going on below deck — in checked luggage and cargo — than I do about passengers and their carry-ons. The Transportation Security Administration tells us that all checked bags are scanned nowadays for explosives, and that’s about the most valuable thing the agency does for us. I just hope agents do it with as much over-the-top scrutiny as they use to paw through carry-ons looking for forks and toothpaste.

I’m traveling off-duty, just a regular old passenger. Approaching the body scanner, I “opt out,” as I always do. I’ll be taken aside for a thorough pat-down.

I don’t opt out because of worries about radiation. I do it because I find it appalling that passengers are effectively asked to pose naked in order to board an airplane. And because the scanners are strategically ineffective. I don’t “believe in them,” you might say. I mean, think about it: You’ve got a scanner at one checkpoint, but no scanner at the one right next to it; scanners at some terminals, but not at others. Are terrorists really that stupid? And what about overseas? If somebody is going to sneak something deadly through a checkpoint, it is far, far, far more likely to happen at an airport in Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East, than in Peoria, Wichita or Cleveland.

Is this one of those “follow the money” situations? Are these machines really in the interest of safety? Is that what this is about? Or is it about the corporations who stand to make billions of dollars in their design and deployment? Why not explosives-sniffing dogs instead? Are they not just as effective, and cheaper and friendlier to boot? Or is that the problem?

I’m chatting with the TSA guard about this while he frisks me. He shrugs. “A lot of waste in government,” he says.

“Bag check!” A woman’s voice, loud.

Oh great. Off to the side, the X-ray machine has detected an extremely dangerous 6-ounce bottle of aloe vera gel in my roll-aboard.

“Is this your bag, sir?”

“Um, er, ah, yes.”

She sticks a gloved hand inside and pulls out the tube. The look she gives me — it’s a scolding sort of glare with an unmistakable glint of satisfaction.

“But … but it’s only half-full.”

“I don’t have a scale to weigh liquids, sir.”

“Why do you need a scale? You can just look at it. It’s a 6-once tube and obviously it’s only half-full.”

She doesn’t look. “Sorry. You cannot bring this through.”

“But …”

Plop. She throws my aloe into a waste barrel.

Aha! But in tossing it away like that, hasn’t she just admitted that the container is harmless? After all, if it was something potentially dangerous, you wouldn’t just fling it into the garbage.

Are TSA screeners looking for bombs, or are they looking for innocent liquids? I’m reminded of those tests I’d heard about, when, supposedly, water bottles were attached to mock-up bombs and sent through the X-ray machines. Screeners found the bottles, while the bombs went sailing through. “An Easter egg hunt for minor banned items,” in the words of former TSA chief Kip Hawley, from his upcoming book, “Permanent Emergency.”

“Look,” I say. ” Since you’re throwing that tube away, you’re telling me that you know it’s nothing harmful.”

Perturbed stare.

“So, like … can I have it back?”

She stares at me, clearly annoyed and unable to tell if I’m kidding or not.

I am kidding, of course. My gel is gone for good; another $4.65 into the TSA hole. But am I not correct at the same time? I’ve lost my property, but I feel that I’ve made a useful point and can walk away having established the upper hand. Yeah. I’m proud of my snappy little assessment: so tight, so logical and righteous!  Take that, TSA!

And it’s exactly at this moment, the screener’s eyes still fixed on me, that my cellphone goes slipping out of my hand. I drop it; catch it; drop it and catch it again. My arms are wiggling and flailing in a ridiculous little dance until finally the phone flies completely away from me. It goes clattering off a stack of gray bins and slides pathetically onto the floor — directly at the screener’s feet.

She picks up the phone and hands it to me. “Good day, sir.”

I skulk away feeling like the biggest goofball in the world.

And maybe this was a kind of divine intervention, a dose of humiliation engineered to shut me up and kick me on my way. A lesson summed up in two easy words: lost cause.

If the TSA’s tactical flaws are ever going to be fixed, it certainly won’t be me who gets it done. I spend too much time writing about it, and too much time worrying about it.

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GO-AROUNDS

Re: Airport bookstores, or lack thereof

As various emailers pointed out, not every airport bookshop is a glorified magazine stand. There are still some good retails options in U.S. terminals. Renaissance Books at Milwaukee, for example, got several kudos from readers. There’s Powell’s still at Portland’s PDX, I’m told. I can personally vouch for a place called BookLink (formerly a Borders franchise) at terminal A in Boston. Even JFK’s Terminal 3, for all its demerits, has a decent bookstore just inside the east-side security checkpoint, abeam gates 4 and 5.

And the following letter is from a vice president of Hudson Booksellers, one of the companies mentioned in my story:

Having been a buyer for airport bookstores for over 15 years, I have witnessed the amazing growth and diversification of airport bookselling, as well as the recent downturn, largely due to the e-book effect. Blending customer expectation with personal passion is the essence of our selection process. Yet, so frequently when we see Hudson in print, including in your article, we are pigeonholed as corporate peddlers of “airport books.” Clearly our message and product isn’t getting through the way we’d like.

Airport bookstores are in competition against many other product categories. For the last 15 years my team and I have been turning over every stone in trying to meet the challenge of bringing the best books to the most readers.  One of your reader comments mentioned — incredulously — discovering Roberto Bolaño at the airport in San Francisco. But that type of thing honestly happens every day at Hudson. We’ve sold hundreds of Bolaño’s novels, which are part of our core bookstore selection. You mention Gary Shteyngart, another personal favorite, who we have been promoting since “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook.” We went all out with “Absurdistan” and sold over 26,000 copies the year it came out, which I believe was more than 25 percent of all copies sold. We have many great locations with a locally curated assortment that I would put up against Powell’s or Compass, etc. — in Denver, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Newark, Raleigh.

I am also surprised at your statement about your own book, “Ask the Pilot.” We have carried your book since it came out in 2004, selling over 1,000 copies in one LAX store alone — thousands more over the years — and we are still carrying it in a few locations.

Sara Hinckley
Vice President of Book Purchasing & Promotions
Hudson Booksellers

Author’s note: In retrospect, I ought to have been a little more gracious in my references to Hudson.  Indeed, many of the chain’s airport outlets are full-fledged bookstores with a very good selection, and the chain did stock and sell many copies of my book when it was new. (Though, honestly, the thing is so out-of-date at this point that I’m pleased when I don’t find it for sale.)

Sure, there are places selling books — there are lots of places selling books — provided you’re interested in one of a tiny sample of titles. There was something vaguely North Korean about walking the length of the concourse and seeing the exact same hardcovers, over and over and over and over — Steve Jobs staring out at me every 20 steps or so from the shelves of any of 50 different shops, all utterly indistinguishable from one another.

Not long ago almost every major airport had a proper bookseller. Nowadays they are harder and harder to find. Usually, what passes as a bookstore is really just a newsstand. The vast majority of these outlets are owned and controlled by one of two companies: Hudson Group and an Atlanta-based company called Paradies Shops Inc. Both conduct business under numerous sub-brands that hawk a very thin selection of bestsellers, business books, thrillers and pop-culture trash.

The terminal guide at DTW told me there was something called Heritage Books — two of them, in fact, one at either end of the hall. That got my hopes up. Maybe I’d score a copy of Gary Shteyngart’s new novel.

As they say, good luck with that. Turns out that Heritage is just one of those Paradies Dba franchises.

They did stock a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” (yet not “The Corrections,” which was much better), and obviously no retailer can get by without a token Malcolm Gladwell or two, a gesture to the “sophisticated” reader who is seeking something headier than “American Sniper,” or the latest Suze Orman guide to success, or one of two — two! — books by Chelsea Handler.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

On the bright side, though, am I correct in observing that America’s fascination with Sudoku has begun to taper off?

Lingering resentment, yes. Several years ago I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to get Paradies and Hudson to stock my own lousy little book, “Ask the Pilot — Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel.” I was stupid enough to think that the airport, of all places, might be a good selling point for a book exclusively about air travel. I’ll never make that mistake again. It was carefully explained to me that, no, it matters not what your book is about, captive audience be damned. What matters is getting on the company’s shortlist of airport-worthy bestsellers, or having your publisher pay for an airport promotion. Hudson carried “Ask the Pilot” briefly, into the fall of 2004, after which it disappeared from airports forever.

All of airport retailing, though, seems to suffer from a kind of dementia. This is something I explore in my famous essay, “What’s the Matter With Airports?” Enough already with the jewelry, the souvenir sweat shirts, the remote-control helicopters and the high-end luggage.

(The fixation with luggage is particularly strange to me. Who in the world buys luggage * after * they get to the airport? No wonder these places are always empty.)

How about something practical instead? Like a halfway decent bookstore.

But I digress.

Getting back to the positive…

Thanks to the many readers who contributed to my “Hidden Airport” collection. The idea, for those of you who missed it, is to highlight spots of unexpected pleasantness at U.S. airports. I showcased two: the garden adjacent to the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s LaGuardia, and the connector walkway between terminals B and C at Boston-Logan.

Several of you wrote in with pictures and descriptions of other little-knows oases. For example, the SFO Aviation Museum and Library at San Francisco International. But my favorite so far, I think, is the sculpture garden at the Greenville-Spartanburg (GSP) airport in South Carolina.  You can view it here in this interactive panorama put together by reader John Riley.

As to the worsts, they’ve obviously never been to the arrivals hall at Dakar (or, from what I’ve been told by several emailers, to N’djili Airport in Kinshasa, Congo). The best list, too, is a little strange. I’m unsure how fair it was including the Hajj terminal — a building that is open only six weeks each year and visited almost exclusively by pilgrims. Seoul’s Incheon airport is a well-deserved inclusion, but conspicuously absent is Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi. BKK ought to be there on aesthetic merits alone — its central terminal is one of the most stunning buildings I’ve ever seen.

I’m also disappointed to see JFK’s Terminal 5, the much overhyped home of JetBlue, rated near the top. As I’ve opined before, this building has to be one of the most disappointing airport projects of the last three decades. It’s certainly one of the ugliest. The airside view — the exterior as seen from the runways and taxiways — is criminally hideous. It looks like the back of a shopping mall; all that’s missing are some pallets and dumpsters. (Which is fitting, I suppose, given how the ongoing trend in airport design is to make terminals and malls utterly indistinguishable from each other.) On the inside … wow, hey, a food court. And although the terminal is only a few years old, already it’s overcrowded.

With scattered exceptions, U.S. airports don’t have a whole lot going for them. Putting aside aesthetics, cleanliness and a lack of public transport options, another thing that doesn’t help, and which you don’t hear about much, is that American airports simply do not recognize the “in transit” concept. All  passengers arriving from overseas, even if they’re merely transiting to a third country, are forced to clear customs and immigration, recheck their luggage, pass through TSA screening, etc. It’s an enormous hassle that you don’t find in most places overseas. Compare it to Singapore, Dubai, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and so on, where transit passengers walk from one gate to the next with a minimum of fuss.

Here’s how this hurts us: Flying from Australia to Europe, for instance, a traveler has the option of flying westbound, via Asia (namely Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong) or the Middle East (Dubai, Qatar), or eastbound via the U.S. West Coast (Los Angeles or San Francisco). Even though the distance and flying times are about the same, almost everybody will opt for the westbound option. The airports are spotless and packed with amenities, while the connection is painless and efficient.

Change planes at LAX or SFO, on the other hand, and you’d have to stand in at least three different lines, be photographed and fingerprinted, collect and recheck your bags, endure the TSA rigmarole, and so on, just to change planes. Few passengers will choose this option, and I suspect it costs our airlines many millions annually in lost revenue. Indeed, this is part of what has made carriers like Emirates, Singapore Airlines and others so successful.

But now …

So that you don’t accuse me of harping on the negative, allow me to introduce a new feature. I’m calling it “Hidden Airport.” The idea is to highlight little-known spots of unexpected pleasantness at U.S. airports. It can be a place for some peace and quiet, an unusually good restaurant, etc. It should be somewhere out of the ordinary and relatively unknown — an escape spot.

I’ll start things off with two:

1. I’ve already written at length about the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. This historic art deco building, in a far southwest corner of LGA, adjacent to the Delta Shuttle, is one of the most special places in all of commercial aviation — the launching point for the Pan Am flying boats that made the first-ever transatlantic and round-the-world flights. Inside the cathedral-like rotunda is the 240-foot “Flight” mural by James Brooks, as well as Rocco Manniello’s Yankee Clipper restaurant — a good greasy-spoon place that is one of the few remaining non-chain airport restaurants. What few people know about, however, is the cozy garden just outside. Facing the building, it’s to the right of the main entryway, set back from the street. It’s a quiet, tree-shaded hideaway amid grass, flowers and shrubs. There’s even … well, I guess sculpture is the best description. Grab a sandwich from the Yankee Clipper and enjoy it on one of the wooden benches.

Getting there: Take the A Loop inter-terminal bus to the Marine Air Terminal. The spot is best appreciated in the warmer months, of course. Like the Marine Air rotunda it is outside of the TSA checkpoint, so you’ll need some time.

2. The connector walkway between Terminals B and C at Logan International Airport in Boston.  This isn’t one of the newer, elevated walkways with the inlaid sea life mosaics, cool as they are, but rather the old, main-level passageway between gates used by AirTran and Virgin America. Massport has installed a series of whimsically painted rocking chairs that face floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the runways. There’s relatively little foot traffic and, best of all, no public address speakers. It’s a quiet, sunny location to read, send some text messages or otherwise relax.

Getting there: From terminal C, walk toward B. From B, walk toward C. Stay on the main level; don’t take the stairways into the elevated walkways.

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Do you have questions for Salon’s aviation expert? Contact Patrick Smith through his website and look for answers in a future column.