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21891_ch00.i-iii.qxd 3/24/04 10:31 PM Page i Ask the Pilot 21891_ch00.i-iii.qxd 3/24/04 10:31 PM Page ii f • Patrick Smith• Riverhead Books New York Pilot w 21891_ch00.i-iii.qxd 3/24/04 10:31 PM Page iii THE K S A PilotPilot ••• Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel ••• RIVERHEAD BOOKS Published by The Berkley Publishing Group A division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 ASK THE PILOT Copyright © 2004 by Patrick Smith Book design by Tiffany Estreicher Cover art and design by Ben Gibson All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. First Riverhead trade paperback edition: June 2004 First Electronic edition: September 2004 MSR ISBN: 0-7865-5271-9 AEB ISBN: 0-7865-5272-7 This book has been catalogued with the Library of Congress. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability. Visit our web site at www.penguinputnam.com 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page v CONTENTS Author’s Note and Acknowledgments . ix Introduction: The Painter’s Brush . xi 1 • Things About Wings and Why Knots? . 1 AIRFLEETS FOR NEOPHYTES Airfoiled—the art of wings and keeping aloft • A primer on moving parts • Aerobatics in a 747? • Turbines and turbofans—an intro to jets and props • No engines? Can we glide to a landing? • Boeing versus Airbus • Too hot to handle, too high to fly? • Those white lines—clouds or conspiracy? 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page vi vi • Contents 2 • Turbulence for Tyros: Windshear, Weather, and Elements of Unease . 37 UP TO SPEED—THE PROMISE AND PERIL OF CONCORDE Turbulence and windshear • Pressurization—how, why, and what if it’s lost? • Are we running out of fuel? • How can ice crash a plane? • The truth about toilet water • Are we flying with broken parts? • Aging planes—how old is too old? 3 • What Goes Up . Takeoffs, Landings, and the Mysterious Between. 69 IDLEWILD, ROANOKE, AND TIMBUKTU TOO Into the wind and backwards to boot • Takeoff trauma and the climbout cutback • V-what? • A runway nightmare—fact or fiction? • From whence the aborted takeoff? For what the aborted landing? • Foggy notions and crooked landings—finding the ground • Those mysteriously missing thunderstorms • SCROD, WOPPO, BOSOX, and Gardner • The biggest and busiest airports • To HEL and back 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page vii Contents • vii 4 • Are You Experienced? The Awe and Oddity of Piloting . 111 THE EXPLODING TOILET AND OTHER EMBARRASSMENTS Labor and loathing—the myth and mirth of pilot salaries • Pilots and copilots—what’s the difference and what do they do? • The workday commute—New Zealand to Atlanta? • Where are the women? • Secrets of skill • Are you irrelevant? Is there a future in pilotless planes? • Up, locked, and loaded—guns in the cockpit • Flight deck fatigue—are the pilots sleeping? 5 • Life in the Cabin . 155 TERRORISM, TWEEZERS, AND TERMINAL MADNESS Class warfare: Where am I sitting and what’s the difference? • Do pilots cut airflow to save fuel? Do they reduce oxygen to keep me docile? • Cell phones, laptops, and headphones • Those damn dings • Are we really cleared to land? • The briefing babble • Tray tables, window shades, safety belts, and seatbacks • The skinny on seats 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page viii viii • Contents 6 • . Must Come Down: Disasters, Mishaps, and Fatuous Flights of Fancy. 183 EN ROUTE ANGST AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR The ten worst crashes in history • Those dangerous foreign airlines? • Cockpits and culture • Fallacies and flotation—getting to know your life jacket • Crackpots and conspiracy • The true and false of shoulder-fired missiles • Crewless catastrophe—can a passenger land the plane? • Soft walls and other lousy ideas 7 • To Fly To Serve. 223 MOURNING THE CHEAT LINE The oldest, biggest, best, and worst carriers • What, no Africa? • Small countries, big airlines • Red-eye rationale • A code-share primer • The world’s longest flight • Flight numbers, Shamrocks, Clippers, and Cacti 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page ix AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The realm of commercial aviation is a landscape—or skyscape if you’d rather—of ever-shifting facts and statistics. Airlines come and go; planes are bought and sold; routes are swapped and dropped. Now and then comes a tragedy. I’ve done my best to en- sure long-term timeliness of the information, but always bear in mind the nature of the business. The Q & A sequences herein were provided by readers of my online column, to whom I am deeply grateful for their interest and encouragement. Certain questions are verbatim submissions; oth- ers I’ve adapted and revised for clarity. ••• I extend foremost gratitude to Sophia Seidner, whose clear think- ing saved this project from ruin on more than one occasion. A similar debt is owed to the patience of Marc Haeringer and Amy Hertz at Riverhead Books. Logistical and proofreading support was provided by the indis- pensable Julia Petipas. Creative liaison was Michael G. Kennedy. Research and consultation courtesy of Todd Gagerman, David 21891_ch00.v-x.qxd 3/24/04 10:34 PM Page x x • Author’s Note and Acknowledgments Walsh, Elizabeth and James Cradock, Douglas Hoeschle, Tom Daly, and John Mazor. Thanks also to Alex Beam and Deacon Blues. Acoustic accompaniments by Pat Fish and the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. Special acknowledgment to Andrew Leonard at Salon.com, without whose gamble on a cold call more than two years ago these pages would not exist. 21891_ch00.xi-xviii.qxd 3/24/04 10:36 PM Page xi INTRODUCTION The Painter’s Brush ••• “I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly.” —WINSTON CHURCHILL We assume Churchill was thinking aerial bombardment and Gatling guns, not overcrowded cabins, broken armrests, screaming infants, or terrorism. I figure he had the Luftwaffe in mind; not a tourist charter to Majorca. Six decades later, flight remains no less a focus of curiosity, fear, and anxiety, if mainly, though not com- pletely, for different reasons. Fair to say every passenger has a question, a doubt, and probably a list of complaints in the back of his or her mind. The chapters that follow are a revised and adapted collection of articles and columns written for an online magazine, Salon.com, beginning in the winter of 2001 just after the World Trade Center catastrophe. I was getting more and more irritated by distortions 21891_ch00.xi-xviii.qxd 3/24/04 10:36 PM Page xii xii • Introduction and inaccuracies in the media’s aviation reportage, and also by the less than captivating attempts of industry experts to set things straight. I grew bored with the dry swagger of the usual post-crash suspects—crew-cut FAA spokespeople, this or that retired TWA captain. They know their stuff, but always there was something missing—they were never speaking to, and never able to exploit, people’s general sense of curiosity. The purpose of this book is not to describe the metallurgy of a jet engine or the error tolerances of GPS navigation. It is not a book targeted for gearheads or aviation aficionados, and the intent is not to burden readers with jargon or tire them (or the author) with specs about airplanes. Neither is it a muckraking exposé or sensationalist tell-all. Herein you will find no lurid accounts of in- flight orgies or scary admonishments of danger. Whether I consider myself more, or less, cerebral about flying than most pilots is open to debate. My enthrallment as a youngster was—and remains—with the workings of the airlines themselves. I have limited fascination with the sky; I feel no ecstatic glee at the breaking of any “surly bonds.” In grade school I’d pore over the system maps and timetables of Pan Am, Aeroflot, Lufthansa, and British Airways, memorizing the names of the foreign capitals they flew to, then drawing up my own imaginary airlines and tracing out their intended routes. The sight of a Piper Cub meant nothing to me. Five minutes at an air show watching the Thunderbirds do barrel rolls and I was bored to tears. Airplanes helped me appreciate the world. They turned me on to geography, travel, and culture. By studying the airlines as a kid, I was inspired, later in 21891_ch00.xi-xviii.qxd 3/24/04 10:36 PM Page xiii Introduction • xiii life, to visit places like Botswana, Cambodia and India. It was a direct connection. The disconnect between air travel and culture seems to me wholly unnatural, yet we’ve seen virtually a clean break. Nobody gives a damn anymore how you get there. I’ll ask friends about trips they take, always wanting to know which airline and aircraft they rode on. Often enough the answer is “I don’t remember.” A shame for the means to be so coldly separated from the ends, for people to find travel so valuable and enriching, yet to deem irrelevant the tools that allow it to happen.