Ask the pilot

Why are American airlines famous for the worst passenger service in the world?

By Patrick Smith

Jun 6, 2003 | Special thanks to those of you who lobbied on my behalf, but Salon still isn't letting me write any travel pieces (see furtive snippets below). Not everyone, however, is disappointed to see my crossover aspirations snuffed.

"I showed your column to my 11th grade English teacher. 'He's trying too hard and has a bad habit of overmodifying everything. Definitely needs work.'"

Or this one:

"Listen, da Vinci, knock it off and get back to questions and answers about airplanes."

Fair enough. I always considered myself a halfway decent technical writer but a lousy artist, and more than a few of you concur. In any event, that wasn't the worst of last week's mail. Much more discouraging was my apparently failed attempt at a little political lampoonery:

"I'm still trying to decide if your reference to a 'terrorist-loving Coalition of the Unwilling' was facetious. Either way, such slander has no place in your column. I found it offensive and I don't think I'm alone."

And:

"Why must you perpetuate the present climate of patriotic arrogance and jingoism with ridiculous statements like these?"

And so on. Both of those comments, and numerous others like them, arrived in response to my May 23 column, in which I revealed the sordid details of a French-led conspiracy to embarrass Boeing and the United States. In writing that piece I assumed two things: First, that the readership of Salon is, generally, an open-minded crowd with a certain distaste for the current political atmosphere -- the kind of people who wouldn't be caught dead ordering "freedom fries" at the company cafeteria. Second, that members of said demographic tend to have a sophisticated and discerning sense of humor.

I'll never make that mistake again. And here now, in the most agonizing exercise thus far in my pseudo-career as an online columnist, I must clarify something I believed to be patently obvious: I was kidding. I was neither advocating nor encouraging the sort of Francophobic silliness rampant in 2003 America. I was making fun of it.

So much for satire. (Of course, I did know a girl once who maintained that "institutionalized humor" was a tool of her bourgeois oppressors, me being one of them. But that's another story.)

Ironically -- or tellingly -- it was my readers from France who took the least offense. Their pointy French noses are better equipped for sniffing out irony, see. And as I figured, the Gallic fondness for Boeing's proposed "Dreamliner" name is nothing more than a matter of language:

"Being French, allow me to offer an explanation regarding the Dreamliner/Global Cruiser situation. It's very simple: 'Dreamliner' is a pretty word, easy to say in most languages, and any French sixth-grader can pronounce it right. Yes, it's flashy and ultimately meaningless, but all non-English-speaking Europeans are accustomed to commercial products bearing meaningless English names. In the end, the only thing that matters is the sound.

"On the other hand, anything with 'Global' in it sounds like the name of an insurance company, and 'Cruiser' is utterly unpronounceable in French. Worse, it sounds like 'croiseur' (battleship). So, a 'Global Cruiser,' heaven forbid, evokes a joint marketing venture between Citibank and Donald Rumsfeld. No reasonable Frenchman would ever vote for such a name."

Cogent, sensible, informative. And equally important, he got the damn joke.

So cut me a break. Besides, I really like the service on Air France. No other airline offers four rounds of wine and unlimited baguettes, served from wicker baskets, in coach. In the past year or so, en route to India and Egypt and Mali, I've enjoyed enough of its wine, bread and cheese to qualify as an honorary chevalier in the Legion of Honor.

If I hate the French for anything, it's because the security guards at Charles de Gaulle took away my expensive cans of mosquito spray. And also because they allow you to take pictures inside the Louvre.

[Slyly added travel anecdote:

[Whatever sublime esthetic experience is to be had in the Louvre is nullified by the museum's harebrained tolerance of cameras. This has turned the galleries into shrieking masses of people, pushing and shoving amid a storm of flashbulbs and the incessant buzzing of electronic auto-winders. For example, each person in the crowd must be photographed by his or her significant other posing before the Venus de Milo. To view the statue is, quite simply, a physical challenge. The crowd is a writhing, stomping organism of shoulders, elbows and knees. You do not look at the statue as much as glance at it from the corner of your eye while jostling -- quickly quickly quickly -- lest you get in the way of a Japanese teenager attempting to immortalize his girlfriend in front of the armless Aphrodite.

[I actually sent off a letter of complaint to the Louvre's management. To which they responded, entirely and unreadably, in French.]

I don't speak French. Nor do I speak Spanish, though for the past six days I was giving it my best shot. The Pilot is just in from a short hiking trip to Peru, which was the reason for his not posting a column the week of May 30. Instead of writing, he was gasping and stumbling his way around the Andes. To those of you who missed me, I'm sorry, but my finances don't justify hauling around a laptop and dispatching stories from atop Machu Picchu.

[Slyly added travel anecdote:

[The key to a successful Peruvian holiday is to spend as little time as possible in the festering urban tumor that is Lima. OK, that's a brutally unkind manifestation of my anti-city bias, but really there's little in Lima for the tourist. For better enjoyment, head north to the spectacular Cordillera Blanca or south to the coastal desert of Nazca; or, as I did, follow the crowds to the old Inca capital of Cuzco.

[Cuzco has changed since I was last there in the early 1990s. It's bigger, busier and cleaner, fully stocked with American-style amenities (ATMs, pay phones, in-room CNN) and trendy cafes. Still it's a charming city, with its cobblestone streets and many of the buildings set on original, centuries-old Inca foundations.

[It's also a kind of ground zero for young American backpackers. I certainly didn't remember it this way, so rife with nose-rings, dreadlocks, and Che Guevara T-shirts -- like it was spring break at Berkeley and everyone had headed to Peru. Over four days in and around Cuzco, I don't think I saw a single tourist over the age of 25. Everywhere I looked were young Americans -- energetic, outdoorsy-looking kids with healthy tans and Tevas, and most of them startlingly attractive. Well, at least the women: lithe and willowy with navel rings and tattoos. Cuzco itself appears to have adopted the hipster set, with Internet cafes sprung up everywhere and posters advertising body-piercing parlors and tattoo joints.

[The only place that compares, in my experiences, is Victoria Falls, in Zimbabwe, which is similarly overflowing with the sorts of rugged bohemian types that give a place the look and feel of a Mountain Dew commercial. The difference is, most of the kids in Peru are Americans. Many of the world's travel circuits are maxed out with Europeans and Aussies and Kiwis, but in Cuzco at least 70 percent of the visitors seem to be from the States. There are two groups: the younger hippie/post-punks as described above, and the older, more serious adventure types, usually spotted wearing those nylon trekker pants.]

As I was leaving my editor remarked, "Wow, I'm sure you'll come back with some fascinating stories about Peruvian aviation."

Well, yes and no.

Next Page: Who has the cleanest bathrooms? And 10,000 pilots need work, so extending the retirement age is a bad idea

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