Patrick Smith (1) (1966–)

I have been reading Patrick Smith's blog on Salon for several years. He's a professional airline pilot and always brings sense and rational thinking to the often hyperbolic world that is so prevalent in a society that prefers the fearful over understanding. I was hooked from the start, especially by his enthusiasm for the journey as opposed to just the destination when traveling. I think he's also correct when he describes air travel as having become so commonplace it's now, by definition, show more tedious. I found the information to be fascinating and useful. He's opinionated and sometimes pedantic (does one lead to the other?) but since I suffer from the same flaw, it's hard for me to be critical.

I remember my first sight of a 747. I had just dropped off my wife at the Minneapolis Airport decades ago and I had just left the airport and drove by the end of a runway when I was confronted by this behemoth, resembling a ship in size, as it accelerated just a little overhead. "Jesus H. Christ" (note the presence of the middle initial prevents it from being blasphemous - then again, blasphemy is a victimless crime) was all I could come up with. There is no way something that large could ever fly. And now we sit (crammed, if you must know,) in a tube called the "Boeing 747, a plane that if tipped onto its nose would rise as tall as a 20-story office tower. I’m at 33,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, traveling at 600 miles per hour, bound for the Far East. And what are the passengers doing? Complaining, sulking, tapping glumly into their laptops. A man next to me is upset over a dent in his can of ginger ale. This is the realization, perhaps, of a fully evolved technology. Progress, one way or the other, mandates that the extraordinary become the ordinary." What a shame when the extraordinary becomes the ordinary (the laptop being another example.)

Smith's goal is lofty: "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. “

I loved his comments about airports and what they should be like. I had no idea the difficulty foreign visitors have simply using an American airport as a transit point to other places. They have to go through immigration, get fingerprinted, suffer all sorts of other indignities, collect and recheck their luggage, not to mention go through TSA indignities again. Even if they are only passing through. This is why US airlines are losing business to airlines like Emirates and Singapore which fly through Frankfurt and Dubai, airports which cater to transit passengers. Why can't airports have short-stay hotels inside secure areas? How about free wireless? Stores that sell something other than Mont Blanc pens? Multiple power ports? Play areas for children (the Kids' Forest in Amsterdam would attract even adults if no one was looking)? Information kiosks that actually dispense information? Not to mention enough seats in the waiting area for the size plane at the gate (no more sitting on the floors.) Airports in other countries have managed to do these things. What's wrong with American airports? I part company with him about airstairs however. Give me a jet-way any day. Taking the bus from the terminal to the plane in Frankfurt and then climbing up a set of stairs in the rain was not what I signed on for. *He* may think it's thrilling and a reminder of yesteryear; not me. And must we be bombarded with constant CNN at the gate which no one ever watches and can't be shut off (there aren't even power cords.)

If you've ever wanted to know what happens when lightning hits an airplane (it happens frequently), what declaring an emergency really means, what planes dump fuel and why, (dumping toilet waste is impossible), and why when someone says the turbulence was so bad they dropped thousands of feet it was probably only 20 feet (I actually enjoy turbulence,) what a walk-around accomplishes, the hidden but crucial role of dispatchers, why V1 is an important decision point, why losing an engine on takeoff is more of an inconvenience than a danger, then this book is for you.

And, of course, how could we discuss flying without mentioning the security theater run by the TSA. As Smith notes, maximum security prisons staffed by jack-booted guards who have total control can't keep knives or drugs out of prisons, so whatever gives the TSA the idea they can prevent box-cutters from getting on an airplane when they have to screen 2,000,000 people a day. And the premise is wrong. They are looking for "things" rather than "people." The success of the terrorists on 9/11 had nothing to do with airport security; it was a failure of "national security." The CIA and FBI failed us. And the terrorists benefited from a mindset that viewed hijacking as they had occurred in the seventies (when in one year there were 40(!) skyjackings, usually resulting in a brief layover in Havana. Armored doors on cockpits would have prevented all of them and what happened on 9/11 (airlines refused for decades to install them because of the cost and added weight.) So now everyone from age 2 to 95 (including pilots who could bring down a plane with a twitch of a thumb - he had a butter knife confiscated from his carry-on once) is considered a suspect even though even a moron knows how to craft a weapon from a ball-point pen. But we all love our delusions (and over 80% of Americans believe in angels.)

He comments on UFOs and the conspiracy theories that pilots have agreed not to talk about them. "For the record, I have never seen one, and I have never met another pilot who claims to have seen one. I had to laugh at the notion of there being a tacit agreement among pilots over anything, let alone flying saucers.... And although plenty of things in aviation are tantamount to career suicide, withholding information about UFOs is not one of them."

Happy flying.

Addendum: 7/2/13 Just ran this article that shows precisely what is wrong with aviation coverage in the general media: http://apnews.myway.com//article/20130702/DA7967K80.html

This is an example of everything working exactly the way it should. Note that at no time did the planes come within 1.6 miles of each other, the TCAS system worked the way it should, the pilot could see the other plane, the ATC reported its proximity, the pilot took appropriate action descending 1600 feet, and the only injury (if one could call it that) was that a couple flight attendants "bumped" their heads. Geez, this is so not a story except for the ridiculous reaction of passengers who wanted to get their names in the paper. show less

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot and therefore knows a thing or two about air travel. In this book, he provides clear, realistic answers to common questions about how planes work, what makes pilots tick, why air travel is so frustrating, and more. The realistic answers are what I like best: when there’s no easy answer to a question, he says so and explains why. I also enjoy his humour, particularly when describing his own experiences in his early days of pilothood. I’d recommend this show more book if you’re interested in aviation from the perspective of a pilot. show less

Absorbing, informative, quirky and hugely entertaining warts & all expose of the airline industry. Smith is a celebrated blogger with a long experience of both the glamourous and decidedly less glamourous sides of the aviation industry, and he answers all the questions that nervous or curious fliers have always wanted to ask, and along the way kills forever the notion that being an airline pilot is a romantic occupation. Long hours, hard work, long separations from home and family and, show more particularly in the brutally cut-throat regional airline sector, miserably low pay. He throws in anecdotes from his own career to illustrate both the excitement and the banality of flight, exposes the secrets of air travel (what do airport abbreviations actually mean, can you still visit the cockpit (yes, you can, at least while the plane is still on the ground), what does "disarm cabin doors and cross-check" mean, what do pilots carry in their bags and so on. He also unleashes on his pet peeves, most notably the time-wasting airport security since 9/11, which he contends is mostly useless anyway. He also broaches the subject of airplane safety, solemnly listing the worst air accidents in history (more than 2500 lives lost in 10 crashes), and devotes a special mention to the worst of all, the Tenerife crash in 1977 which killed 583. He also rates the world's airlines on their service, and somewhat more humourously, on the attractiveness or otherwise of their livery. Fascinating, informative and useful book. show less

I greatly enjoyed Patrick Smith's "inside" look at commercial airlines, which covered a number of areas of the industry in an interesting and accessible manner. I appreciated this updated version which covers events through 2012, though much of what is in this great read would still be fascinating and accurate once the current edition is no longer brand new. I jumped right into the book after picking it up at the bookstore. While I had thumbed through it at B&N, I didn't read the table of show more contents carefully, but saw enough of interest for me to shell out the $14.99. While reading the book, I remember thinking: "I hope he will address that question I always had about...". And do you know what? He never disappointed. That was gratifying and drove home the point to me that the author tried to really cover a wide swathe of questions, while keeping the content manageable and the book readable. The book is very thorough, at least from this occasional flyer's point of view. I have taken enough flights in my life (40-50 flights) to have some questions about how everything works in the civil aviation world, but am not seasoned or technical enough to know a lot of the answers.

Mr. Smith, a veteran pilot, starts off by providing a helpful introduction to the mechanics of flying and explains some of the differences between various airplanes. This also allows him to go into a bit of aviation history, which I also enjoyed. A majority of the book is presented as question and answer, presumably with questions he has received via his "Ask the Pilot" series at Salon.com. He provides just enough personal history and experiences throughout to bring certain topics to life without making it a book just about him. He seems a fairly humble man, who has a real love for flying. I greatly appreciated his explanation of why he loves flying and what got him into the industry. "...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."

He also writes: "The disconnect between air travel and culture seems to me wholly unnatural, yet we've seen a virtually clean break." I think this is a very unfortunate truth. It perhaps shouldn't have shocked me when he stated that most pilots don't care much about their destinations and many are not travelers in the experiential sense. And many of those passengers who are using the airplane as a means to get somewhere only see it as that and don't appreciate it for all the technical and logistical aspects that make it possible. It is a little disheartening to me, since I still remember when getting there was part of the adventure. Flying commercially these days just doesn't have the same attraction, perhaps because accessibility to inexpensive tickets has literally and figuratively cheapened the experience, but also because those cheaper tickets have come at a cost of comfort and ease. Mr. Smith is not slow to point out the role the airlines and TSA have had in making flying less attractive and less fun as the years go by. He is certainly not an apologist for the airlines, but he does make some valid points to answer the common critiques one hears from the flying public.

The book discusses pilot and crew culture, the process of becoming a pilot, and how pilots actually get us from point A to B. Famous (and some not-so-famous) air disasters are explained, as well as the developments regarding airport and airplane security. Some may find that he goes on a bit about his opinion regarding increased security and which methods actually help protect us from terrorist attacks. As I agreed with 99% of his sentiments, it didn't bother me at all. And regardless of whether you agree completely with him or not, I think most will accept that he presents some very valid arguments. Actually, I felt that it validated some of my long-held opinions on this topic and helped to further articulate them for me. Mr. Smith also takes a look at the airlines, their successes and failures (in staying afloat financially, in re-branding and in actual flight safety).

Probably the only complaint I have -- and I imagine that this was a publisher's decision rather than the author's decision -- is that there are no diagrams or photos. When discussing the various parts of the plane (or the differences between their general shapes) and movements of certain equipment, or the evolution of airline logos, or a number of other aspects of flying, it would have been extremely helpful to have something graphical on the page or in a series of plates somewhere else in the book. This was probably a cost issue, especially since some of these diagrams would be best in color. I found myself going to Wikipedia to help this visually-inclined reader. Again, I do not fault Mr. Smith, but find this to be the main -- and probably only -- negative this book has.

I often enjoy the "inside the industry" books and this is probably among the best. While parts would likely be too basic for aficionados, I recommend readers of this type of book who have any interest whatsoever in the airline industry to give "Cockpit Confidential" a look. Even if you know quite a bit about the industry, you are likely to learn something new in this quick and satisfying read. The reviews I have seen have been overwhelmingly positive, and I am certainly in agreement with those reviewers. The next time I fly, I will be so much more aware and will probably enjoy flying all the more because of it...even with the cramped seating, extra charges and delays. show less