Afterward, Romney said the following to the Los Angeles Times:

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no -- and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

The remarks have touched off a storm of snarky commentary from those in the blogosphere who have a slightly better grasp of things aeronautical. Should I join the chorus?

Continue Reading...

In my mind, the key to keeping airplanes safe is, and always has been, stopping acts of sabotage while they are still in the planning stages. Here in the age of the TSA checkpoint, with its toothpaste confiscations and obsession with pointy objects, we tend not to think this way, preoccupied instead with a kind of airport Kabuki -- the tedious, fanatical screening of passengers and their carry-ons. Real airport security takes place offstage, as it were. It is the job of the folks at the CIA and the FBI, working together with foreign authorities. And while TSA has an important role here too, we can do without the spectacle of airport guards rifling through innocent people's bags in a pathological hunt for what are effectively harmless items.

Continue Reading...

From there it's directly overhead the apocalypse of Karachi, followed by a turn southbound, out across the Arabian Sea toward Mumbai.

It's true about the smell. At around 10,000 feet the airplane begins filling with the rank bouquet of India: a soupy waft that tastes of putrefaction and exhaust fumes. As if, somewhere below, the world's largest garbage dump has been set on fire. It's a smell that burrows into your clothes and your hair and right through the concrete bunker walls of your five-star hotel.

Twenty-four hours downtime.

The concierge hooks me up with young driver named Faiyaz -- a most conscientious and law-abiding wheelman with a silver Toyota and remarkably handsome teeth. A hundred U.S. dollars for the day it will cost, gas and sporadic commentary included.

Continue Reading...

I don't expect that to make sense to you -- unless, like me, your childhood was defined by an infatuation with jetliners and summers spent at a beach that sat directly below an approach course to a major airport.

That would be Revere Beach, in my case, just north of Boston, in the mid- to late 1970s.

Then as now, the city of Revere was a gritty, in many ways charmless place: rows of triple-deckers and block after block of ugly, two-story colonials garnished in gaudy wrought-iron. (Revere is a city so architecturally hopeless that it can never become gentrified or trendy in the way that other Boston suburbs have.) Irish and Italian families spoke in a tough, North Shore accent that had long ago forsaken the letter "R." Shit-talking kids drove Camaros and Trans-Ams, the old-country cornuto horns glinting over their chest hair.

(For more on the Revere Experience, check out the work of Roland Merullo, the city's second-most talented and famous author.)

Continue Reading...

I am asked this all the time. It presents a number of complications.

First, you can't simply cut a hole into the side of a plane and add an extra door. Doing so would require a large-scale and extremely expensive structural redesign. And in most cockpits there simply isn't room for such an addition.

Presumably, too, you'd need to add a lavatory to the cockpit. And what about rest facilities? Long-haul flights carry augmented crews that work in shifts, and the off-duty pilots require a suitable place to relax or sleep. You'd be doubling or tripling the size of the average cockpit, which in turn would take up space already used for galleys, storage and passenger seats.

In addition there are times when it's beneficial for pilots to have direct access to the cabin, for checking out certain mechanical problems, helping the flight attendants deal with passenger issues, and so on. Plus, I don't like the idea of there being only one way out of a cockpit during an emergency.

Continue Reading...

I can think of a few: TSA, delayed flights, garbage in your seat pocket. Screaming kids and misdirected luggage. "CNN Airport News."

Or, how about the blizzard of cardboard placards that hotel chains insist on littering their rooms with? I spend a quarter of my life in hotel rooms, and I resent having to spend the first five minutes of every stay gathering up an armful of this diabolical detritus and heaving it into a corner where it belongs. Attention, innkeepers: This is fundamentally bad business. One's first moments in a hotel room should be relaxing. The room itself should impart a sense of welcome. It shouldn't put you to work.

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?

Continue Reading...

This is your chance to hear me repeat all of the things I've been saying for years in my column, except live and in-person, and have your expectations shattered when you discover that the big-shot swashbuckling Pilot is actually just some slouchy old bald guy with a lousy attitude and a terrible speaking voice. Say it isn't so!

I'm thinking maybe I'll just show some travel pictures instead of talking about airlines.  Or hook my iPod up to the speakers and play some Grant Hart songs.

There will be a meet-and-greet sort of thing afterward. I accept cash, checks and gift certificates, plus canned goods and other non-perishables.

* The Funniest Thing Ever Written is exactly that. It's a line from one of Alex Beam's columns back in the fall of 2000:

Continue Reading...

I routinely fly from Los Angeles to Beijing on United. It's an all-daylight flight over Alaska and Russia. How can I find the approximate route the Air China flight takes on the same route? I'm flying that airline later in the month and would like to know what I'll be seeing below.

Routings aren't commonly airline-specific. The determining factors tend to be air traffic control constraints and weather (winds, storms, etc.). Routings tend to be somewhat consistent, but it can vary day to day, even for flights between the same two cities.

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.

Continue Reading...

All of these measures in place today -- the liquids and gels rules, the pointy object confiscations, the multiple ID checks, the body-scanners and the pat-downs -- would they have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks?

Of course not. The success of the 2001 attacks had nothing to do with box cutters. The hijackers' critical tool was an intangible one: the element of surprise. That is, taking advantage of our understanding and expectations of a hijacking. What weapons they had in their bags was irrelevant. They could have used anything.

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.

Continue Reading...

Why, then, is it so bloody hard to find a proper bookstore at an airport? Not all of us pre-load our reading material on a Kindle.

I was in Detroit the other day. The terminal at DTW is one of America's best, and the mile-long concourse is jammed with retail shops. But do you think I could find a book in there? If I wanted a diamond bracelet, a $300 Tumi briefcase or a cup of gourmet coffee, on the other hand, no problem.  But a book?

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.

Continue Reading...

JFK's Terminal 3 (scheduled for replacement in 2013) was voted the worst, while the Hajj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was ranked best.

These things are subjective, and we all have our own criteria, but both lists leave me scratching my head.

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.

Continue Reading...

Weird or fantastic? I know what you're thinking. I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no.

A reader once asked me about a supposed "tacit agreement" between pilots in which we will not openly discuss UFO sightings out of fear of embarrassment and, as the reader put it, "possible career suicide." I had to laugh at the notion of there being a tacit agreement among pilots over anything, let alone UFO sightings. And although plenty of things in aviation are tantamount to "career suicide," withholding information about UFOs isn't one of them.

For the record, I have never met a pilot who claims to have had a UFO sighting. Honestly, the topic is one that almost never comes up, even during those long, dark flights across the ocean. Musings about the vastness of the universe are one thing, but I cannot recall ever having had a conversation with another pilot about UFOs specifically. Neither have I ever seen the topic discussed in any industry journal or trade publication.

Continue Reading...

During turbulence, for example, people believe that an airplane is dropping hundreds of feet at a time, when in reality the displacement is seldom more than 20 feet or so -- barely a twitch on the altimeter.

It's similar with angles of bank and climb. A typical turn is around 15 degrees, and a steep one might be 25. The sharpest climb is about 20 degrees nose-up, and even a rapid descent is no more severe than 10 degrees nose-down.

I can hear your letters already: You will tell me that I'm lying, and how your flight, was definitely climbing at 45 degrees and banking at 60.

And you're definitely wrong. I wish that I could take you into a cockpit and demonstrate. I'd show you what a 45-degree climb would actually look like, turning you green in the face. In a 60-degree turn, the G forces would be so strong that you'd hardly be able to lift your legs off the floor.

Also routinely exaggerated are the flight times between cities.

"Oh my god, when I flew from New York to Sydney it took, like, 35 hours."

Continue Reading...

Americans will pronounce it hypercorrectly, with the "a" sound too shortened. "D'Car." Sort of the way they say "Khaaan" instead of "Can" when referring to that certain city in France.

The Senegalese say it more forcefully and flatter, both syllables equally stressed: "Dackkar."

There used to be graffiti here, scratched out in what looked like charcoal, on a concrete wall behind the Pullman Hotel. "OBAMA, BIDEN," it said. "THE NEW WORLD BILDERS [sic]" You can see it above.

This was just before the election in 2008, when so much of the world, it seemed, was looking at America with a renewed sense of optimism and expectation. "Hope" was the big word, if I remember right.

That fever has passed. And the graffiti is gone now, blotted away with gray paint.

I pass that wall on my way to dinner at La Layal, the Lebanese place I'm known to frequent.

It's important, see, not to eat at the Pullman, where the surly poolside waitress might, eventually, bring you the pizza you ordered 90 minutes ago, and where the room service menu offers such delectables as:

Chief Salad
Roasted Beef Joint on Crusty Polenta
The Cash of The Day
Paving Stone of Thiof and Aromatic Virgin Sauce

Continue Reading...

For more on pilot fatigue overall, see my prior column, here. As for the new rules specifically, they are perhaps more convoluted than they need to be. The document outlining the changes is more than 200 pages long. But that's the FAA for you, and we probably should have expected this as part of a package that would be acceptable to pilots, regulators and the airline industry together. It was going to be a compromise.

Continue Reading...

That's right, two week ago guards in Las Vegas took a frosted cupcake away from a woman named Rebecca Hains as she prepared to board a flight to Boston. The frosting, you see, was "gel-like" and thus a potential security threat.

I'm really not sure how to approach this one, other than to weep uncontrollably.

According to a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson the confiscation was in error -- the work of an overzealous (or maybe just hungry) screener. "In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage," said the spokesperson. Still, I don't know if that makes it OK. That we can use the words "cupcake" and "security" in the same sentence is a bright red flag that something is very, very wrong in America. TSA says the incident is "under review." I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.

This is yet more fodder, of course, for my American Hysteria Hall of Shame.  The hall isn't limited to airport security foibles, but clearly TSA is gunning for the bronze, the silver and the gold. Operation Cupcake joins a pretty fat list:

Continue Reading...

A couple of weeks ago  I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Motto: "Malignantibus Parta! Timor vincit omnia!"

Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?

Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.

It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I'm dropping the "American" part and changing the name to the "Security Hysteria Hall of Shame," since, as you'll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds.

I knew there was trouble when the X-ray belt came to a stop and I was asked to open my bag.

Continue Reading...

The Baldwin brouhaha comes on the heels of a splashy New York Times story about the supposed harmlessness of electronic devices. The gist of public perception -- certainly the perception of Mr. Baldwin -- fueled and refueled by articles like this, is that the prohibition against personal electronic devices is a waste of time.

Well, it is and it isn't. It depends which gadgets you're talking about, and for what reasons.

Can a cellphone really interfere with a plane's systems and avionics? The answer is that it's highly unlikely, but possible. That's not the answer you want, I know, but like almost everything in commercial aviation, it depends. For example, although a plane's electronics are designed with interference in mind, if the shielding is old or faulty there's a greater potential for trouble.

Continue Reading...

And in place of "something funny" you may substitute the words "exasperating" or "troubling" or "a national embarrassment."

The latest from the Department of You Can't Make This Up involves a teenage girl who was not allowed to carry a purse onto a flight in Norfolk, Va., because it was embroidered with the design of a handgun.

That's right, embroidered. According to reports, 17-year-old Virginia Gibbs was told by Transportation Security Administration that bringing such a purse through the checkpoint constitutes a federal offense. She was given the option of giving up the purse or sending it along as checked luggage.

TSA says the problem is that such designs can be mistaken by scanners for the real thing, resulting in checkpoint closures and delays. On the one hand that is not unreasonable (though it does make us think that if you can't tell the difference between a purse and a gun, how good is this technology at identifying explosives?). On the other, more logical hand, once they saw and realized it was a purse, what would the harm have been in giving it back to the girl and letting her through? If there was going to be a closure or a delay, it already happened. Confiscating the bag no longer served a purpose.

Continue Reading...

My reason for wondering is that at last I finished chiseling my way through Andrew Earles' Hüsker Dü biography, "The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock." I also finished Bob Mould’s autobiography, “See a Little Light,” written with the well-known music journalist Michael Azerrad.

Let’s do Earles first.

Earles is a saint and a hero for giving us this long overdue account, there’s no denying that, and I feel terrible knocking anybody who appreciates Hüsker Dü enough to have researched and produced a 250-page biography. His heart was certainly in the right place. But I need to be honest: It's a cumbersome read.

Continue Reading...