Everything you need to know about air travel: Part 1

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Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Smith Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. —From a Declaration of Principles Jointly Adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor in this book. Published by Sourcebooks, Inc. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 Fax: (630) 961-2168 www.sourcebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments Introduction: The Painter’s Brush 1. Plane Truth: Things about Wings and Why Knots Airfoiled: how huge airplanes stay aloft • But isn’t it more complicated? • On speed: what the hell is a knot? • A primer on parts • What are those upturned wingtips for? • What are those canoe-shaped pods under the wings? • Can a jetliner perform aerobatics? • How does a jet engine work? • What’s a turboprop? • What is that hole under the tail? • Do planes run their engines at the gate? • How much does a jetliner cost? • Boeing v. Airbus: which is better and safer? • Which planes will get me there fastest? • Which have the longest range? • How much does a jetliner weigh? • When it’s “too hot to fly” • Contrails • Air travel and the environment The Airplane in Art, Music, and Film 2. Elements of Unease: Turbulence, Windshear, Weather, and Worry High Art: History, Hype, and the World’s Biggest Planes What Plane Is That? An Airfleets Primer Turbulence: everything you need to know • Wake turbulence • What’s that trail of mist coming from the wing? • What is windshear? • Engine stalls • Can we glide to a landing? • Pressurization: facts and fallacies • Regional jets: are they safe? • How much fuel is on board? • Why and when do pilots jettison fuel? • Lightning: facts and fallacies • Oh my god, there’s duct tape on my plane • Air traffic: how close is too close? • When metal meets feather • Icing and deicing • The truth about toilet water • Broken parts and maintenance protocols • Preflight inspections • Geriatric jets Revere Reverie: A Hometown Memoir 3. What Goes Up…: Takeoffs, Landings, and the Mysterious Between What’s the Matter with Airports? Preflight preparations • Why do planes take off into the wind? • Why do we bounce, bump, and jig during climb? • Engine failure on takeoff • The climbout cutback • How fast are we going at takeoff and touchdown? • Runway numbers • Challenging airports • Aborted landings: everything you need to know • Instrument approaches • Why do some pilots land more smoothly than others? • Reverse thrust • What’s that sudden roar all about? • The nuts and bolts of weather delays • Four bad ideas to fix congestion • An ATC primer: how pilots communicate en route • Navigation basics: BLOWN, BAABY, and LAYED • Why do flights to Europe travel so far north? • FUK, DAM, HEL: those mysterious airport codes 4. Flying for a Living: The Awe and Odd of a Life Aloft The Right Seat: Propellers, Polyester, and Other Memories Captain, copilot, first officer? Who are these people? • Becoming an airline pilot • Training: everything you need to know • Pilot salaries, truth and fiction • The seniority system blues • Pilot shortage: the real story • A pilot’s schedule, and the cross-country shuffle • This is your captain sleeping: the menace of fatigue • Regional pilots: are they safe? • Women and minorities • The truth about cockpit automation • How passengers can (or can’t) gauge a pilot’s skill • Captain Sully: heroics or hype? • Pilots and alcohol • Those fancy watches and mysterious black bags • Cockpit cuisine: first class fare and ramen noodles • Flying naked? • Globetrodden: pilot perks, and the yin and yang of travel Accommodations: On the Road with Patrick Smith 5. En Route: Life in the Cabin North Latitude: Fear and Loathing on the High Atlantic Window shades, tray tables, and seat backs • The barking dog: strange noises on the Airbus • The facts and fallacies of cabin air • Do pilots tinker with the oxygen levels? • Overheated cabins and those hot, stuffy takeoffs • Opening an exit during flight • Why are the windows so small? • The glorious glory • Dogs and cats below • The story on cell phones and PEDs • Those damn dings • Listening in on cockpit chatter • Public address madness and the babble of the safety briefing • Class struggles: first, business, economy, and beyond • The trials and tribulations of boarding, and how to make it better • A round of applause Looking Out: Memorable Views from Aloft 6. …Must Come Down: Disasters, Mishaps, and Fatuous Flights of Fancy Terminal Madness: What Is Airport Security? The Ten Deadliest Air Disasters of All Time Terrorism perspective: the golden age of air crimes • Fear and reason: encouragement for nervous flyers • What pilots dread • Emergencies, real and imagined • Where airlines fear to tread • The ten worst disasters of all time • Foreign airline safety • The myth of the Immaculate Qantas • Budget carrier safety • Flight and punishment • Exploding tires and other nightmares • Could a nonpilot land a jetliner? • Parachutes for passengers? • The truth about midair collisions • Runway congestion: cause for alarm? • The legacy of September 11 • The folly of a barricaded cockpit • Shoulderfired missiles • “Soft walls” and other hooey • Conspiracy Nation We Gaan: The Horror and Absurdity of History’s Worst Plane Crash 7. The Airlines We Love to Hate The Yin and Yang of Airline Identity Service woes: taking on the world • Why are airlines such terrible communicators? • Which are the largest carriers? • The upside for consumers: routes and fares • Airfares à la carte: the pros and cons of unbundling • Tarmac delays and the “Passenger Bill of Rights” • The magic mojo of Southwest Airlines • Which are the oldest airlines? • Code-share confusion • Where do flight numbers come from? • Red-eye rationale: why do flights to Europe always go at night? • Size matters: big planes on short hauls • The longest hauls • The poetry of airliner names How to Speak Airline: A Glossary for Travelers About the Author AUTHOR’S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I began this book, it was intended to be little more than a mildly refreshed edition of its predecessor, Ask the Pilot: Everything You Need to Know about Air Travel, published in 2004. The more I revised, the more it grew and changed. Eventually it became an entirely new book. The framework is similar and I’ve retained some of the chapter names, but the material within is vastly different. Virtually everything has been updated or expanded in some way, and about 70 percent of the material is entirely new. The contents are drawn from more than three hundred articles and columns originally written for the online magazine Salon, beginning in 2002 under the brand Ask the Pilot. The Q&A sequences were provided mostly by my readers at Salon, to whom I am deeply grateful for their enthusiasm and encouragement over the years. I have done my best to ensure long-term timeliness of the information, but please bear in mind that 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. Special thanks to my agent, Sophia Seidner, and to Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks. Logistical, proofreading, and creative support was provided by Julia Petipas. Acoustic accompaniments by Bob Mould, Grant Hart, Greg Norton, and the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. All thoughts and opinions herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of any airline, agency, or entity. For further information and additional reading, please visit www.askthepilot.com. Patrick Smith Somerville, Massachusetts INTRODUCTION The Painter’s Brush More than ever, air travel is a focus of curiosity, intrigue, anxiety, and anger. In the chapters that follow I will do my best to provide answers for the curious, reassurance for the anxious, and unexpected facts for the deceived. It won’t be easy, and I begin with a simple premise: everything you think you know about flying is wrong. That’s an exaggeration, I hope, but not an outrageous starting point in light of what I’m up against. Commercial aviation is a breeding ground for bad information, and the extent to which different myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories have become embedded in the prevailing wisdom is startling. Even the savviest frequent flyers are prone to misconstruing much of what actually goes on. It isn’t surprising. Air travel is a complicated, inconvenient, and often scary affair for millions of people, and at the same time it’s cloaked in secrecy. Its mysteries are concealed behind a wall of specialized jargon, corporate reticence, and an irresponsible media. Airlines, it hardly needs saying, aren’t the most forthcoming of entities, while journalists and broadcasters like to keep it simple and sensational. It’s hard to know who to trust or what to believe. I’ll give it my best shot. And in doing so, I will tell you how a plane stays in the air, yes. I’ll address your nuts-and-bolts concerns and tackle those insufferable myths. However, this is not a book about flying, per se. I will not burden readers with gee-whiz specifications about airplanes. I am not writing for gearheads or those with a predisposed interest in planes; my readers don’t want to see an aerospace engineer’s schematic of a jet engine, and a technical discussion about cockpit instruments or aircraft hydraulics is guaranteed to be tedious and uninteresting—especially to me. Sure, we’re all curious how fast a plane goes, how high it flies, how many statistical bullet points can be made of its wires and plumbing. But as both author and pilot, my infatuation with flight goes beyond the airplane itself, encompassing the fuller, richer drama of getting from here to there—the “theater” of air travel, as I like to call it.
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