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Biometric Wonder

December 21, 2023

THE OTHER DAY I came in from overseas. At immigration I used the Global Entry line, as I normally do. The process was easy: a quick facial recognition scan and I was through.

Later I started wondering about that scan. Where did immigration authorities (CBP) get the biometric information used to identify me? I don’t recall signing over a scan of my face. Do you?

Not to sound paranoid, and I’m not saying we should object, necessarily. But the question is important: how do they know what we look like, and who gave them this data?

Maybe we did. It could happen when applying for a passport, and maybe a driver’s license too. It might be there in the fine print. (Those photos are awfully small, however. How much can be gleaned from them?)

Airlines, too, are beginning to use this technology to expedite boarding. Where did they get the data? If it came from those same passport or license pics, that would mean the government is sharing this information with airlines. Which is logical from a security perspective, but where is the line drawn? Does the government have the right to sell or share biometrics only with airlines, or with commercial entities in general? If so, which ones, and who gets to decide?

I don’t want this to topple into a worried rant over privacy and invasive technologies. There are enough of those out there already. Besides, it’s too late; the surveillance genie left the bottle a long time ago, and like it or not we’re stuck with the repercussions. But I’d like to know the answers.

 

Graphics courtesy of Unsplash and Getty Images

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December 21, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Psyching Out

November 21, 2023

I SHOULD PROBABLY say something about the off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who made headlines after attempting to shut down the engines of a Horizon Air regional jet en route to San Francisco. Joseph Emerson, 44, who was riding in the cockpit jumpseat, faces multiple counts of attempted murder.

Emerson says he believed he was in a dream-state at the time after dosing on psychedelic mushrooms two days earlier. He’d been traumatized by the death of a close friend, and, it has been reported, had been battling depression for years.

Where the drug use and mental health problems intersect is problematic. It’s tempting to see this as a clear-cut case of dangerously reckless behavior, backstory be damned. A heavy-enough intake of magic mushrooms can cause anybody, regardless of their normal mental state, to lose track of reality. So-called microdosing has become common as a do-it-yourself depression treatment; perhaps Emerson upped a dose without realizing how intense the effects can be. And as medical professionals will attest, depression by itself does not typically inspire sufferers to commit acts of violence. It took the mushrooms to push Captain Emerson over the edge.

(Twice in the last week I’ve been treated to snarky, “Hey man, I hope you aren’t trippin’!” comments from passengers. I know that flying brings out the worst and rudest in people, but try to restrain yourself.)

However you look at it, the incident has touched off a difficult conversation about how pilots do, or don’t, deal with ailments like depression and anxiety, the diagnosis of which can cost a pilot his or her livelihood. And we’re reminded, sadly, of Germanwings first officer Andreas Lubitz, who in 2015 locked the captain out of the cockpit and flew his Airbus A320 into the Alps, killing everybody on board. Not to mention first officer Gameel Al-Batouti, who in 1999 flew EgyptAir flight 990 into the Atlantic Ocean, murdering 217 people.

The New York Times ran an excellent story on the subject, here. There isn’t a whole lot I can add, other than to cut and paste from an earlier post…

First, be wary of extrapolation. The total number of pilot suicide crashes over the decades is a tiny one. These incidents are what they are: outliers. You can argue that the certification process for pilots needs fixing, but that’s not reason enough to suggest there’s a crisis at hand, with hundreds of looming Emerson’s or Lubitzes or Al-Batoutis waiting to snap, with nothing to prevent them from doing so.

And in only the rarest cases does mental illness turn people violent. The idea that a depressed individual is likely to be a dangerous individual is an ignorant and unfair presumption about the nature of mental illness. As one Ask the Pilot reader put it after the Germanwings catastrophe, “Andreas Lubitz didn’t kill those people because he was depressed; he killed them because he was evil.” You can say the same for Al-Batouti. In all but the rarest cases, a pilot with a mental health issue is not an unsafe pilot, never mind a suicidal killer.

Pilots are human beings, and no profession is bulletproof against every human weakness. Whether the result of stress or something more systemic, pilots sometimes need help — just as professionals in any industry do, including those entrusted with the lives of others. Unfortunately for us, the association carries a heavy stigma, and anything involving commercial aviation is subject to media amplification and hysteria.

The FAA now permits pilots to take certain anti-depressant medications. Although the process can be onerous, the agency says it will convene a committee to explore and update mental health protocols, aiming to speed up the approval process for those under treatment.

Airlines, meanwhile, have become more supportive and proactive than you might expect, while ALPA and other pilot unions have medical and mental health staff that pilots can contact any time. A proactive, employee-friendly approach keeps the problem from being driven underground; if a pilot has an issue, he or she can pick up the phone, usually with little worry of long-term career implications.

In the U.S., airline pilots undergo medical evaluations either yearly or twice-yearly, depending. A medical certificate must be issued by an FAA-certified physician. The checkup is not a psychological checkup per se, but the doctor evaluates a pilot on numerous criteria, up to and including his or her mental health. In addition, new-hire pilots at some airlines undergo psychological examinations prior to being hired. On top of that we all are subject to random testing for narcotics and alcohol.

We can further debate the merits of additional psychological testing, but at a certain point I’m not sure what more we should want or expect.

In the end, we’re forced to rely on a set of presumptions — it comes down to trust, if you will. As a pilot I do not come to work wondering if one of my colleagues is going to kill me. Passengers shouldn’t either. On the contrary. I don’t want this to sound like an airline commercial or an FAA press release, but you can confidently presume that the people flying your plane are exactly what you expect them to be: well-trained professionals for whom safety is their foremost priority.

 

Related Story:

IS YOUR PILOT DEPRESSED?

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.

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November 20, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Q&A With the Pilot, Volume 6

AN OLD-TIMEY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SESSION.

Eons ago, in 2002, a column called Ask the Pilot, hosted by yours truly, started running in the online magazine Salon, in which I fielded reader-submitted questions about air travel. It’s a good idea, I think, to touch back now and then on the format that got this venerable enterprise started. It’s Ask the Pilot classic, if you will.

Q: I appreciated your rant about excessive public address announcements at airports and during flight. However, announcements from the cockpit can’t escape attention. Seriously, can some of your fellow pilots please stay quiet? We get what we need from the cabin crew; we don’t need the pilots piling on.

I’m okay with pilot PAs so long as they are professional-sounding, informational, jargon-free and brief.

I make one prior to departure. I say our names, then I give the flight time (I always round the minutes to zero or five), the approximate arrival time, and maybe a short description of the arrival weather. The whole thing takes fifteen seconds.

The names part is just to remind people that actual human beings are driving their plane. There’s such a disconnect between the cabin and cockpit; most passengers never even lay eyes on the individuals taking them across the country or across the ocean.

I do not start in with, “It’s a great day for flyin,’ and we’ve got eight of our best flight attendants back there for your safety and comfort,” blah blah blah. That style of folky-hokey chatter is embarrassing.

Q: When I fly, I always love the ka-thunk sound of landing gear coming down, as it signals we’re almost to our destination. Sometimes I notice it comes down much closer to touchdown than other times. Why?

Planes normally drop their landing gear at around 2,000 feet above the ground, or when passing what we call the “final approach fix.” That’s maybe three minutes from touchdown, give or take. But it varies, depending on airspeed, spacing with other traffic, and so on. Lowering the gear has a significant aerodynamic impact, mainly in the adding of wind resistance (that is, drag). Sometimes we drop it early to help slow down.

I remember going into JFK early one morning. The controllers initially kept us high and fast, then suddenly gave us a “slam dunk” clearance straight to the runway. We put the gear out at like 5,000 feet to slow down and increase our descent to the maximum possible rate. No pilot likes doing this, as it’s noisy and maybe a little disconcerting for passengers. But under the circumstances, it worked great.

At most carriers the policy is to have the gear down and the plane fully configured for landing no later than a thousand feet above the ground. The idea is to minimize power and pitch adjustments and maintain what pilots call a “stabilized approach.”

Q: And please cure this stupid irrational fear once and for all: could pilots ever forget to deploy the landing gear? What are the safeguards to ensure this doesn’t happen?

Verifying that the gear is down and locked is one of the checklist items prior to landing. There are also configuration warnings that will sound if the plane passes a certain altitude without the gear (or wing flaps) in the correct position.

On top of all that, if you still somehow managed to forget, the whole picture would look and feel wrong. The plane’s attitude would be off, the power settings would be strange, the sounds would be different.

Pilots of small private planes are known to land with their gear up from time to time, but I can’t imagine this happening in a commercial jet.

Q: I recently flew on a 737-900, in row 13. I was surprised to find that there was no window in this row, although there was ample space for one. Why?

You see this on a lot of planes. Usually it’s because there’s some sort of internal component — ducting, framing, or some other structural assembly — that doesn’t allow space for a window. Some turboprops are missing a window directly adjacent to the propeller blades, and you’ll find a strip of reinforced plating there instead. This is to prevent damage if, during icing conditions, the blades shed chunks of ice.

Q: I often listen in to air traffic control on the internet. On the approach control frequencies, pilots will call in and identify themselves “with” a character from the phonetic alphabet. For example, “Approach this is United 515 at ten thousand with Alpha or “Approach United 827, five thousand feet with Uniform.” What does this mean?

Every airport puts out a broadcast that gives the current weather, approaches and runways in use, and assorted other info particular to the airport at that moment (some of it, to be honest, unnecessary). This broadcast, called ATIS (automatic terminal information service), is identified phonetically between A and Z.

On initial contact with approach control (or with ground or clearance control when departing), pilots are asked to report in with the most current letter, verifying they’ve listened to the broadcast and have an idea of what’s going on. Each time something is updated, the broadcast advances to the next letter. I will call in “with Sierra,” and the annoyed controller will snap back, “Information Tango is now up.”

I use the words “broadcast,” and “listened to,” because traditionally crews would tune to a radio frequency for ATIS, and transcribe its highlights onto a slip of paper. Nowadays, at most larger airports, it’s delivered through a cockpit datalink printout or is pulled up on our iPads.

For no useful reason, much of the typical ATIS report is abbreviated and coded using all kinds of nonstandard shorthand, and takes some deciphering. Aviation is frustratingly averse to the use of actual words, preferring instead a soup of acronyms and gibberish. I mean, it’s not the 1950s anymore and we aren’t using teletype machines to communicate.

Q: Tell us something weird?

What’s weird is that I haven’t been to a rock concert in thirteen years.

That’s super weird, really, considering how deeply into music I once was, and how many hundreds of concerts I attended. I can’t explain why, exactly, but I developed a later-in-life disdain for live performances. They suddenly felt goofy and weird to me: Am I watching or listening? Where do I stand? And none of the songs sound right.

You’ll tell me I’m just getting old Whatever the reason, I stopped going, even when the musicians are ones I love.

My last time at a show was in 2010, when I went to see Grant Hart in Cambridge. Prior to that we go all the way back to 2004, when I saw the Mountain Goats, also in Cambridge. Both times I was on the guest list, which made the idea of a night out more appealing. I’m not sure I would’ve gone otherwise. (Somewhere in there was Curtis Eller the banjo guy, and some symphonies, but those don’t count.)

That said, I’m told by a reader that the Bob Mould show in New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago was great, and at least half of the songs he played were classics from the Hüsker Dü canon. I wanna say that I wished I’d gone (the last time I watched Mould play live was in 1995). I was in Tanzania on vacation, so my excuse is solid, but even if I’d been home I may not have done it.

Concerts are one thing, but worst of the worst is any kind of live music in a bar or restaurant. There’s almost nothing I hate more. At least at a concert you’re there because, presumably, you enjoy the music of the artist you’re seeing. The music in a bar may or may not be anything you like. It’s intrusive, and conversation becomes difficult.

Here I’ll make this airline-related: On layovers in Accra, Ghana, I used to love hanging out at the poolside bar at the Novotel. It was such a chill place, with the most relaxing vibe. Then they brought in a piano player. Now the racket made talking almost impossible. He’d sing, too, and the beer mugs would crack when he hit the high notes. I had to find a new place.

EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO patricksmith@askthepilot.com

Related Stories:

Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 1
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 2
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 3
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 4
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 5
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 6
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, COVID EDITION

Portions of this post appeared previously in the magazine Salon.

PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

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October 25, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

The Rolling Report Card

AS MY REGULARS know, critiquing airline liveries is my favorite thing in the world. Especially the ugly ones, which nowadays is pretty much all of them.

From now on, rather than grading them individually in separate articles, we’ll compile them here, one at a time. This post will act as a sort of rolling report card, updated with every new reveal.

 

GOOFY GOLD

Air India was taken over not long about by the Tata Group. The new owners are expanding and hoping to establish the long-beleaguered carrier as a world-class brand. These sorts of reinventions are often accompanied, dangerously, by livery changes. To wit…

There’s a press release explaining all the meanings and symbolism here. It’s a brilliant self-parody. Someone asked ChatGPT to come up with a bullshit announcement full of pseudo-inspirational blather, and it happily obliged. “Purposeful and confident.” “Premium cues.” “Personality and storytelling.” It goes on like this.

Let’s keep it simpler. First of all, the lettering is too big. Billboard lettering is common these days, and Air India, like many others, crosses the line between assertive and overblown.  

Then we have the tail. Where do we start? The airline describes this weird-looking thing as a “hero signature window frame.”  Do we have any idea what this means? Heroes? Windows? What? I’m told the design is an evolution of the Rajasthani-style window decals that have heretofore been part of Air India’s livery for decades (do we dare call them iconic?). Possibly, but what most people will see is just a random, strangely angled pattern. The colors are pretty but the message is unintelligible. Neither does it work from a branding standpoint: it’s a pattern, not a logo, without any context or clarity. 

The element that really wrecks it all, though, is the gold accenting at the bottom. Specifically, the way it detaches from the red and goes off on its own, fore and aft. The red field, with the Air India name across the lower fuselage, is an obvious jab at Emirates, whose planes are marked similarly, and whose domination of routes into India the Tatas are hoping to unseat. All well and good, but those gold brackets… it’s like they put the wrong numbers into the paint-sprayer. This alone knocks my grade from a potential C to a D-minus. “The gold frame detail adds storytelling and and premium cues,” according to Air India. No, it doesn’t. What it adds is a rather bizarre coup de grace.

A shame how Air India’s look has degraded over time, from the masterpiece red swoosh livery of the 1970s, with its beautiful Sagittarius logo, to this. 

GRADE: D-minus 

 

MINTY FRESH

JetBlue’s livery features a grab bag of different tail patterns. According to the airline, these designs are “fun,” “distinct,” and — here comes that word — “iconic.” The latest one is named “Mint Leaves,” and it celebrates jetBlue’s premium class, branded as Mint. All planes outfitted with Mint suites will feature this look, which uses a scattering of the round-cornered “leaves” that serve as the Mint logo.

This is a nice idea, but it’s bound to be confusing to the average traveler, who has no idea what those little boxes represent. The Mint logo simply isn’t well-known enough. What most people will see is just a bunch of squares. And there are too many of them, top and bottom.

Up front, the oversized lettering is meant to balance out the heaviness of the tail, but it’s needlessly big and looks squeezed-in between the doors. The Southwest-style blue is too syrupy.

GRADE: C-minus

 

REALLY?

“Yesterday, our future was uncertain. Our economy in turmoil,” rumbles the home page. “Today, the dark clouds have passed. And we can take back to the skies. We were not ready for the turbulence that came before. Never again!” And with that we expect a grand crescendo, a sky-clearing crash of cymbals. Let the opening credits roll!

Welcome to Really Cool Airlines, a start-up out of Thailand that hopes to open routes around Asia using Airbus A350s. It should go without saying that any airline whose name requires an immediate set of parentheses to remind you that no, this isn’t a joke (this isn’t a joke), ought to maybe rethink its branding. But let’s save the name for another time. We shall defer, also, any exploration of the company’s business model, which has something to do with crypto and blockchains. (The carrier’s mastermind is Patee Sarasin, the same fellow who started Nok Air, a successful Thai LCC, so conceivably this could pan out.) To the livery…

The plane appears to be wearing headphones. So, there’s that.

I’m getting an LCC vibe here. Not a cheap LCC vibe, like you feel with Spirit or Southwest, but a more sleek and sophisticated one. The colors are part of this. I don’t know about really cool, but they’re cool. What drags this one down is the back of the fuselage: the design is tail-heavy. There’s way too much going on back there. Go easier with all those blue and green squares (ditto for jetBlue, above) and let’s talk again.

GRADE: C

 

DUBAI DO-OVER

If one airline didn’t need a re-fresh, it was Emirates. Can’t leave well enough alone, I guess. The kids have to put their art school degrees and fancy graphic design apps to use. So they took one of the boldest, cleanest, most distinctive liveries in the world and had to get all showy with it. Lo and behold, yet another overdone design fixated on motion and texture.

I don’t hate it. Truth be told, I like it, and if you insist it’s an improvement, I won’t argue. The basic blueprint — the Emirati flag — is still there, and it remains unmistakable. Just a little less so, because now it’s all wavy and scaly and even a little blurry. Identities are becoming less distinctive, not more, and sometimes it feels as if airline branding has been taken over by millennials trying to out-cool each other.

The red winglets are a great addition. The rest was unnecessary.

GRADE: B-plus

 

THE CONDOR BEACH TOWEL

Condor is a Frankfurt-based charter airline. The airline was set up in 1955 by Lufthansa, and for years its markings were handsomely reminiscent of that carrier’s: blue stripe, yellow tail, Lufthansa-esque condor logo. Later the Thomas Cook Group took control, and Condor adopted the group’s mostly inoffensive yellow and gray.

Today the airline is controlled by a European investment company, and in April, 2022, a bold new rebranding was unveiled, timed to coincide with delivery of Condor’s new Airbus A330-900s, which will replace a fleet of antique Boeing 767s. Each jet will feature a nose-to tail pattern of vertical candy stripes, in one of five colors. This, we are told, is to keep things more in synch with the leisure charter vibe: fun, friendly, easy, inexpensive and all that.

The main problem is, vertical stripes really don’t belong on a plane. The very shape of an airplane, in all its horizontal-ness, suggests motion, speed, and the traversing of distances. Vertical stripes suggest the opposite of that. The visual effect is one of negative motion, almost as if the plane is being held back and asked to stop.

Officially, according to the people who were paid to concoct this nonsense, the color representations go like this: blue for ocean; green for island; beige for beach, gold for sunshine, and red for “passion” — whatever that might mean. At least, for a change, there’s nothing here about the northern lights. I’m not seeing sunshine or passion. I’m seeing a picket fence, or maybe a couch cushion.

“Unmistakable,” is how Condor CEO Ralf Teckentrup describes it. And it certainly is — for the wrong reasons.

GRADE: F

 

CARIBBEAN CALAMITY

A hummingbird has long been the tail mascot for Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines. For years the carrier used a photographic-style decal similar to the tails worn by Frontier. It was fetching. Here’s a picture I took one day at the airport in Georgetown, Guyana…

For reasons that can’t possibly be explained, this design has been made over into the abomination you see below. The updated magenta typeface (visible in the other links) is, in fact, an improvement. Nothing, however, can justify the psychedelic madness of the tail.

Caribbean is the successor to BWIA (British West Indies Airways), whose elegant livery and steel pan logo once graced the L-1011 TriStar. Talk about a devolution.

GRADE: F-minus

 

PRETTY IN PURPLE

Let’s ignore for a minute the question of whether we need another low-cost airline. Let’s also ignore the wisdom of operating 737s from the stubby runways at New Haven, Connecticut, one of Avelo Airlines’ hubs (the other is Burbank, where the runway isn’t much longer). Instead, let’s focus on their paintjob, which is rather pleasant.

The use of purple is unusual for an airline, and here it’s quite attractive. As is the typeface, which together with the engine nacelles and tail swoop, combine just right in a handsome, three-point balance.

This is one of those rare designs that works well even with a mostly bare fuselage. And unlike the looks of many LCCs, it’s not trying to be whimsical or amusing; it’s dignified.

I’m not sure the three-color, lightbulb filament tail was executed quite right. Maybe two colors instead of three, with thicker lines? It’s solid as a brand-mark, though, and it works.

GRADE: A-minus

 

UBERBLUE

This one, on the other hand. Were they having a hangar sale on blue paint? David Neelman is the founder of Breeze, which is opening a slew of routes from coast to coast, focusing mainly on secondary cities. Previously of jetBlue and Azul, blue has always been his thing. But come on, Dave, do you have to drown us in it, a light blue and a darker one?

The checkmark motif is an effective one for an LCC — and affirmation of sorts, suggestive of ease and simplicity — but the rest of it is dead weight. Here’s a case where the fuselage isn’t painted white for a change, but probably should be.

GRADE: D

 

NORTHERN NONSENSE

Northern Pacific is a low-cost upstart out of Anchorage with plans to open routes within the western United States and to Asia. Behold their livery here.

Black is their go-to color. That’s not a bad thing, by itself, and we dig the raccoon-style shading around the cockpit. It’s a trendy flourish these days, but it’s cool. Can we stop there and award them a top grade? Alas, our survey of the wreckage must continue.

Let’s focus on that strange “N” logo. Except we can’t focus on it, because it’s vibrating uncontrollably. That’s not a shadow or a camera blur; that’s actually how it’s painted. Though maybe it’s better this way, seeing how, in its non-vibrating state, it resembles the logo for an amateur sports team.

On the engine nacelles, meanwhile, they’ve applied a completely different logo — a pair of offset thingies that remind us, painfully, of the American Airlines box-cutter. Then, up on the tail, we have yet another design. Isn’t that a black hole, or a special effect from “The Matrix”? The airline says its livery is meant to “evoke the natural beauty of Alaskan wilderness.” What I see here is a bending of time and space.

And sure, why not, go ahead and throw another “N” up in the corner, but this time make it turquoise. While you’re at it, paint the wingtips in turquoise too, because the northern lights or something.

What a garble of elements and patterns — a good example of a livery trying to out-clever itself at every turn.

GRADE: F-minus

 

SPANISH FLY FLOP

My plan is to start a Spanish charter carrier. Step one is to think up the stupidest name possible. I like “Iberojet,” as it sounds like it came from a third-grader. On the tail I want three bands. Mute the colors, and have that same third-grader do the painting so that the bands are warped and pinched, diverging/converging in bizarre random directions. If there’s any paint left over, add a navy blue arc to the underside of the aft fuselage. Do the same thing, more or less, on the engine nacelles, and then write “Iberojet” on the side. Use lowercase letters, because why not.

GRADE: F-minus

 

BOREAL BOREDOM

So, Icelandair has a new look, featuring, guess what, a Eurowhite body with blue titles. How novel.

The tail, though, is the exciting part, because each will boast one of five highlight colors apparently inspired by the people who make Sharpies. Wait, don’t tell me, the colors are meant to suggest… the northern lights! Which every smart tourist knows are best viewed in Finland or Norway, not Iceland.

Officially, according to a company press release, each of the accents “represents a different phenomena in Icelandic nature.” If true, they should include a gray, a black, and maybe a fiery volcanic red. What we get instead is lemon yellow, a magenta, a cyan blue. You could hunt around Iceland for a month and not see those colors. (Two additional colors are yet to debut. Surely they’ll be lovely.)

If they’d chosen only one accent color it’d be worse; the grab-bag keeps it lively, if nothing else. And when you really look at it, the problem is less the tail than the lettering. Sure, billboard-style lettering is meant to be big, but in this case it’s too big.

At least they’ve hung on to their logo, which for decades has been one of the most distinctive in the industry.

GRADE: D-plus

 

UNITED BLUES

After its merger with Continental Airlines in 2010, United came up with an amalgamation blending the United typeface with the Continental globe. Bland and ultra-corporate, it looked like something you’d see in a PowerPoint slide. A refresher was maybe inevitable. Unfortunately, they’ve gone way too far in the other direction. They’ve stayed with the 2010 template; except, now, they’ve sucked away whatever dignity it had.

We start with the “United” title, which has gone big. Big for big’s sake, unbalanced and oddly spaced, as if it were painted over some other name. The gold accenting is gone from the tail now, and the blue has been amped up, turning the old Continental globe into a fluorescent spider web. Is this the airline’s excuse for a logo? Do they even have a logo? It’s a tail that manages to be gaudy and boring at the same time.

And, needless to say, you can’t have a livery these days without some annoying “in-motion” theme. United obliges with a mandatory curvy thing along the lower fuselage. Is it a worm? A garden hose? Worst of all it’s black.

Granted this isn’t as terrible as what American Airlines did a few years ago. It’s bold, I’ll give you that, and you can marvel in the simplicity of it. Or, you can call it what it is: an immature scheme that evokes the downmarket cast of a budget airline — hardly the look that a preeminent global carrier should hope to project.

GRADE: F

 
 

PHOTO CREDITS:

Rocco Smet (Caribbean Airlines)
Daniel Shapiro/Unsplash (Breeze)
Jan Rosolino/Unsplash (Iberojet)
Patrick Smith (United Airlines)

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August 12, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Dignified and Old

July 26, 2023

A PROPOSAL is moving through the U.S. Congress right now that would increase the mandatory retirement age for pilots from 65 to 67. The proposal has momentum and bipartisan support, and many expect it to become law.

Count me among those hoping this happens.

Those pushing for the change cite the ongoing pilot shortage as one of the reasons. Fair enough, though for me it’s more personal. For one, I really enjoy my job. As things currently stand I have eight years left, and I’d love to stay at it for a couple more (assuming all the radiation exposure doesn’t kill me first). But perhaps more importantly, I have a substantial amount of lost income to make up for, having been laid off for half a decade in my mid-thirties — prime earning years.

Not everyone is on board, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Also among the opposers is the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the world’s largest pilot union. This might seem a bit of a head-scratcher, and I suspect their resistance is owed to demographics: pilot rosters are skewing younger and younger these days, and many of the newest pilots see age 67 as a threat to their career progression. Older pilots like me will stay on the property slightly longer, the thinking goes, impeding their seniority advantages (aircraft bidding, seat bidding, and so forth).

Forgive me if I’m less than sympathetic.

In 2001, after slogging it out at the regionals and a cargo carrier for nine years, I was hired by a major carrier at age 35. Starting annual pay at the time was around $30,000, and I was promptly furloughed in the wake of the September 11th attacks. (My ensuing gig as an online columnist and author was fun, but by no means lucrative.)

While I was out of work, my airline, along with several others, declared bankruptcy. Industry-wide, wages were cut some 40 percent and retirement plans eliminated.

Then, in 2007, shortly after being recalled, the retirement age was extended not merely two years, but five, from age 60 to age 65. Not only did I miss out on several years of major airline salary, but the minute I got back, seniority movement slowed to a crawl.

You wanna whine about threats to your career progression? Try five years of furlough, a bankruptcy, and a massive seniority slowdown first.

If this sounds like a sob story, it’s not just mine. Thousands of other airline pilots went through all of the same things — or worse.

The industry has since changed dramatically, and pilots entering the ranks today have never had it better. It’s common now for the legacy carriers to bring on pilots in their mid-twenties, and under the latest contracts, new-hires are earning in their first one or two years what it used to take a decade or more to make. When I returned from furlough, my sixth-year first officer hourly rate was $65 per flight hour. Pilots are now making $100 or more per hour on day one.

These same pilots are upgrading to captain in record time (at some airlines, new-hires are getting widebody captain slots), and otherwise racing up the seniority lists. Projected over a thirty or forty-year career, the earning potential for a pilot hired today is absurd. Adjust for inflation all you want; the differential over any length of time is huge.

I should mention also that salaries at the regional carriers have vastly improved. Most airline pilots begin their careers at the regional level, and here too they are cashing in. In my day, starting pay at the regionals was under $20,000 a year, working conditions were abysmal, and in some cases you had to pay for your own training. Today an RJ pilot can easily bring in six figures. You can make a good living even before scoring that dream job with a major.

To say nothing of the fact that junior pilots skated through the COVID-19 fiasco without so much as a hiccup. Thanks to the taxpayer bailouts, they avoided furloughs and in some cases were paid nearly a full salary to simply stay at home for a year. Many of them took on second jobs and collected two salaries.

For those of us of baby-boomer and Generation X vintage, such fortune is difficult to fathom. Hence, when I hear some twentysomething hotshot whining about the “damage” the age 67 change might wreak, my reaction is a combination of exasperation and bemusement. You’ve got to be kidding.

Wars, recessions, and any of a dozen other calamities could set the industry reeling yet again, it’s true. But that doesn’t offset the tremendously good fortune the newest pilots are currently basking in. I, along with thousands of my peers, faced those same risks, but without the front-end benefits of today’s generation. Things might go sour at some point, but if nothing else they’re making fantastic money in the meantime. For us that wasn’t the case.

All told, it has never been a better time to be a pilot.

If you’re worried about competency, training cycles and medical certification standards are there to ensure older pilots are up to the task. And, I should add, nobody is going to force you to work until 67. You’re free to retire at 65, or any other age at which you feel comfortable. And the extra two years aren’t just for the older workers; they’re for the new-hires as well, eventually.

The idea isn’t without its complications. Most foreign authorities remain committed to the age 65 limit, effectively blocking any U.S. airline pilot over that age from flying beyond American borders. Unless that changes, pilots between 65 and 67 would be restricted to domestic-only routes. This will cause some training headaches and require some finessing of airline seniority lists, but it’s certainly doable.

You’ll maybe detect a tone of resentment in this piece. That’s not quite how I mean it. Much as I might be jealous, I cannot begrudge anyone the advantages of youth and fortuitous timing. Good for them. Just please don’t take it for granted. They need to understand how lucky they are, and how different things used to be. While most new pilots realize this, there are those who don’t, and who seem to think they’re entitled to a hassle-free career and a bursting bank account before they’ve hit 30. If you’re in that camp, try to understand why and how, to some of your older coworkers, griping over a two-year age extension sounds greedy and petty.

 

Related Story:
THE REGIONAL RECKONING.

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
Numbers graphic by the author.

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July 26, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Open Door Policy

May 31, 2023

LAST WEEK, a distraught passenger opened an emergency door aboard an Asian Airlines flight as it prepared to land on the Korean holiday island of Jeju. A dozen people were injured in the ensuing melee.

Numerous readers have sent unfriendly emails taking me to task for statements I’ve made in the past about the ability to open a door in flight. Specifically, we turn to chapter five in my book, where one beholds the following:

You cannot — I repeat, cannot — open the doors or emergency hatches of an airplane in flight. You can’t open them for the simple reason that cabin pressure won’t allow it. Think of an aircraft door as a drain plug, fixed in place by the interior pressure. Almost all aircraft exits open inward. Some retract upward into the ceiling; others swing outward; but they open inward first, and not even the most musclebound human will overcome the force holding them shut. At a typical cruising altitude, up to eight pounds of pressure are pushing against every square inch of interior fuselage. That’s over 1,100 pounds against each square foot of door.

Well, yes and no, the over-confidence of that first sentence being the main offense. What I describe is basically correct, but as a plane descends, the pressure differential lessens, eventually dropping to zero at the point of touchdown. When very close to the ground, the “weight” holding the doors shut may in fact be negligible enough to permit a door to open. In the case of Asiana, the Airbus A321 was at only 700 feet; just a minute or so from the runway.

The book further states…

Even at low altitudes, where cabin pressure levels are much less, a meager 2 p.s.i. differential is still more than anyone can displace — even after six cups of coffee and the aggravation that comes with sitting behind a shrieking baby. On the ground, the situation changes—as one would hope, with the possibility of an evacuation . During taxi, you will get the door to open. You will also activate the door’s emergency escape slide.

While the part about being on the ground is true, there’s a difference between low altitudes and very low altitudes. I should’ve made this clear. If my publisher is kind enough to move forward with a third edition, I’ll revise this entire Q&A.

What I was trying to do, a bit too eagerly, is dispel the idea of opening a door during cruise, creating the sort of disaster movie situation that people envision when this topic arises: the one of complete chaos, with people getting sucked through the hole. That can’t happen. What can happen, though, is what happened aboard Asiana.

Fortunately, the very ability to get the door open also means that nothing catastrophic will occur. It’ll be noisy and scary, and unsecured objects could get whipped around; but without any serious pressure differential, nobody’s getting sucked out.

 

Photos courtesy of Unsplash.

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May 31, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Flying With Air Baltic

May 23, 2023

NOT MUCH GOING ON, so I’ll bore with you some details about my vacation flights with airBaltic.

A young company that got its start 1995, Air Baltic lacks the recognition factor of the mainstay European airlines. But it’s maybe a bigger company than you’d expect, with a 40-strong fleet of Airbus A220s and a network touching every major city in Europe. New routes extend all the way to Dubai and Armenia. Its main hub is in Riga, Latvia, with smaller hubs out of Tampere, Finland, and the Estonian capital of Tallinn. We flew up to Tallinn, then down to Riga a few days later.

airBaltic follows a quasi low-cost carrier (LCC) model, with a la carte pricing and a streamlined onboard product. There’s a small, unfussy business class up front with complimentary hot meals. Economy class is no-frills, but with ample legroom and a reasonable selection of buy-on-board food and drink. Similar to jetBlue in the United States, airBaltic is more of a hybrid than a true LCC. Service-wise they’re leagues ahead of European budget giants Ryanair and easyJet. (They also borrow jetBlue’s and easyJet’s unusual branding affectation, using a lowercase “a” and the camel-cap “B.”)

I wasn’t hungry, so I can’t vouch for the quality of that buy-on-board food, but the guy next to me ordered a tasty looking wrap. He also got annoyingly chatty after two very large cans of Latvian beer.

The seats in airBaltic’s A220s feature an unusual design in which the tray table pivots from the bottom of the seat structure. If you’ve got food or a laptop on your tray, this avoids any pinching or crushing when the person in front of you reclines.

There’s no entertainment system or seat-back screens, but most of airBaltic’s flights are under three hours long.

The airline’s website is straightforward and user-friendly.

The airports in Riga and Tallinn are quiet and compact. Both have Priority Pass lounges that, surprise of surprises, were pleasantly uncrowded. My only gripe was the third-degree experience at the security checkpoints. The lines were short, yet it still took half an hour to get through because the guards pored through our bags, scrutinizing every last container of liquid, no matter how small.

Overall grade: B

Most people couldn’t care less which airline they fly with. Many can’t remember which carrier took them to their last vacation. I guess it’s different for airline geeks, with our weird notions of posterity. It always excites me flying on an airline for the first time, and this was no exception. A new one for my list.

 

PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

For pictures from Estonia and Latvia, visit the author’s Instagram feed.

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May 24, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Jet Bridge Blues

May 15, 2023

PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR.

THE JET BRIDGE, that strange, too-often troublesome umbilicus connecting terminal to fuselage.

The other day I was stuck on a regional jet for twenty minutes because the gate agent couldn’t get the damn thing into the right position. If only I had a dollar for every time this has happened. And much of the problem, I think, is that these devices are so monstrously over-engineered. Take a look at the typical jet bridge. The things are enormous. They must weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds and cost millions of dollars.

(Note: I’ll be using the generic term rather than “Jetway,” which is a brand.)

That wayward bridge at JFK was twice the size of the plane. As the agent fumbled with the thing, it looked like she was trying to steer a battleship. Hydraulic arms flexed and groaned, machinery wailed, lights flashed and bells rang. Finally the tires began to turn — like the wheels of those huge mobile barges that NASA used to position the Saturn rockets. All of this so that fifty people could walk the negligible distance from the aircraft to the terminal.

I realize the bridges are multifunction. The air conditioning and power connections used by the plane during its downtime are part of the assembly. But do they need to be so big and heavy, with all of this Rube Goldberg machinery? It’s just a gangway for crying out loud. You see simpler, lightweight, often glass-sided jet bridges in Europe and elsewhere around the world (see the following photo), but here in the U.S. we rely on these ponderous, lumbering contraptions.

Of course, I’m opposed to jet bridges on principle. I prefer the classic, drive-up airstairs. Some of the international stations I fly to still employ those old-timey stairs, and I always get a thrill from them. There’s something dramatic about stepping onto a plane that way: the ground-level approach along the tarmac followed by the slow ascent. The effect is like the opening credits of a film — a brief, formal introduction to the journey. The jet bridge makes the airplane almost irrelevant; you’re merely in transit from one annoying interior space (terminal) to another (cabin).

Plus, it takes me back to my first-ever ride on an airplane. It was 1974 and I was eight years-old, and I vividly remember walking up the stairs to that American Airlines 727. A photo snapped by my mother immortalizes the moment…

I know, the bridges are important for passengers with limited mobility or who rely on wheelchairs, and for avoiding inclement weather. But the old-style stairs worked well for decades, and I see no reason they couldn’t still. Hydraulic lifts could be used for wheelchairs while the rest of us climb the stairs. I’m convinced this would be a faster and more efficient method. Ryanair is one carrier that agrees with me. The European budget giant relies on stairs, not bridges, at most of its stations.

But if we’re going to rely on jet bridges, we ought to have not only simpler ones, but more of them. Airports outside the U.S. routinely board and deplane a widebody jet through multiple doors using multiple bridges — at least two, and sometimes even three. This makes a massive difference in how long it takes to move hundreds of people, and their hundreds of carry-ons, between the terminal and the cabin. Here at home it takes 45 minutes to get a few dozen people onto a regional jet, and it’s chaos the entire time, while in Asia I’ve seen 500 passengers board an A380 in under thirty minutes. Dual-bridge boarding does exist in the United States, but it’s uncommon.

In Amsterdam, KLM boards some of its flights using forward bridges, plus a unique, over-the-wing bridge that connects to the rear fuselage. These overwing bridges are by no means lightweight, slung from a superstructure that looks like something you’d see in a shipyard where they build aircraft carriers, but they do make getting on and off the jet quicker and more pleasant.

Another reason that boarding is more efficient in other countries, Asia especially, is that carriers there tend to use bigger planes. In Asia, even a 45-minute hop is often aboard a 777 or A330. Widebody planes, with dual aisles and all-around greater spaciousness, are by their nature easier to get on and off. In the U.S., aircraft size has been steadily shrinking over the past three decades. More people are flying than ever before, it’s true, but we’re doing it on smaller planes: regional jets, A319s, 737s and the like. The reasons for this are a subject for another time, but the narrow aisles and limited bin space mean longer boarding and deplaning times.

A few years back, my friend Harriet Baskas penned this interesting story for USA Today on the history of the jet bridge.

In closing, just an observation…

Look around, and it seems that 90 percent of the world’s jet bridges are emblazoned with logo of HSBC.

I’m not sure this advertising strategy has been all that effective, however, because although millions of people see these four letters every day, relatively few of them know what they’re looking at. I did a little impromptu research, asking several colleagues if they knew what HSBC was. Not one of them could tell me.

HSBC is a British bank, originally founded in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The letters stand for “Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.” It’s one of the ten biggest banks measured by assets. The company pays tens of millions of dollars every years to airport authorities the world over — mostly at major international hubs — for the rights to put its name on boarding bridges.

In 2012, HSBC was hit with a $1.9 billion fine for laundering money on behalf of drug cartels and terrorist groups — carrying on a tradition of questionable practices that goes back generations, apparently, to the days of the opium trade.

 

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May 15, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Short Haul Surprise

On the apron at Lusaka, Zambia.

December 4, 2019

All photos by the author

WHEN IS economy class better than business class? Never, basically. The distinctions, though, can sometimes be blurry, particularly on shorter flights. Which brings us to a pair of intra-Africa hops I took recently with South African Airways.

Logistically the flights were similar. Both were international but brief sectors, at about 90 minutes each. The first was aboard a widebody Airbus A330; the second on a much smaller, single-aisle A319. Now, any flight review comes with a critical disclaimer: experiences can very tremendously from one flight to the next. A terrible flight on Tuesday could be a wonderful flight on Wednesday, depending on everything from who’s sitting beside you to the temperament of your particular crew. Duly noted, but would you believe that coach on an A319 could be a better experience, and certainly a better value, than business on an A330?

Indeed it could, and here’s how:

Business class, Johannesburg (JNB) to Victoria falls, Zimbabwe (VFA). Airbus A330-300.

Like any premium class experience, this one started in the lounge. South African has two lounges in the international wing at JoBurg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, named “Platinum” and “Premium.” The former is reserved for high-level frequent flyers, so for us it was the latter. Walking past the smoked-glass entry to the Platinum room, not to mention the luxe facade of the Emirates lounge just down the hall, it was easy to feel envious. But the Premium lounge was a more than comfy respite after the hectic immigration and security lines. It’s a bright, amply appointed space with plenty of seats and a sweeping view of the apron. This was a morning departure, and the buffet had all the breakfast fare you’d expect, both hot and cold. And maybe the best surprise of all, there were no shrieking kids or other obnoxious patrons.

Boarding, on the other hand, was noisy and chaotic, as it always is, with people ignoring the zone calls and crowding around the doorway and podium. (Something desperately needs to be done, industry-wide, about the boarding crush.) A placard indicated a priority lane for business class, but getting there meant pushing our way through a scrum of heedless passengers. When we finally stepped into the plane, the sudden peace and quiet was palpable.

The business cabin had 46 sleeper pods in a 1-2-1 configuration. This is South African’s top-of-the-line product. Not even its A340s, used on its longest intercontinental routes, have these seats, using a much tighter six-abreast layout instead. I was struck by the colors: sandy tones accented with red and silver. It was one of the more attractive cabins I’ve seen in some time, and the feel was warm and inviting. A shoulder panel featured all the usual mod cons: AC and USB ports, a reading lamp, seat controls, and a storage nook.

There was no amenities kit of any kind, though, and the headset compartment was empty. And the lack of a headset rendered my 15-inch video screen all but useless. Granted, this was a long-haul aircraft filling the gap on a quick morning turn between runs to Accra, Lagos or wherever, and we weren’t gonna get all the frills. That’s to be expected, and a missing amenities bag and headset aren’t much of a penalty on a flight so short. Nonetheless, it seemed a little… skimpy. I settled in, looking forward, at least, to a glass of champagne.

Seat 5A on the A330.

Except, there wasn’t any. Indeed, this goes down as the first time I’ve ever sat in business class and was not offered any type of pre-departure beverage. No champagne, no juice, nothing. Quite peculiar.

After takeoff I switched on my screen. The remote control device was cumbersome to manipulate, but after a few minutes of fumbling I managed to pull up the moving map display, tracking our progress as we crossed from South Africa into Botswana, taking in a sunny view of the Limpopo River and Botswana’s Makgadikgadi salt pan, where I visited some years ago.

A short while later a breakfast was served. Or snack, maybe, is the appropriate word. There was no printed menu, so I’m unsure what the airline called this particular entree, but imagine a cold, saucer-sized plate of sliced tomato, pepper, mushroom and cheese. It sounds better than it was. Julia had gone for the vegetarian option, which was far worse. In fact, it may have been the worst meal I’ve ever seen served on a plane: a plastic box of cast-off fruits and veggies featuring a deflated tomato, carrot shavings, a dehydrated pickle and lemon slices.

And the strangeness of the lack of a pre-departure drink was outdone only by a lack of wine once aloft. Drink options were restricted to coffee, juice, and soda. Again, very unusual. There was no hot towel service, either.

By the time we touched down at Vic Falls, I was bored and eager to disembark. This is not my usual feeling when traveling in premium class. If an airline is doing it right, you don’t want to get off. With a flying time of an hour-and-a-half, I didn’t expect the same service I’d get on a transoceanic flight. Still, this was a widebody plane on an international sector, however short, and the global standard — at least on legacy carriers outside the United States — is a higher one. It was a perfectly relaxing flight, but underwhelming just the same, especially at a price that was double the economy fare.

You call this business class?

Economy class, Lusaka, Zambia (LUN) to Johannesburg (JNB). Airbus A319.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the second leg, from the Zambian capital of Lusaka back to JoBurg, turned out to be more enjoyable. In economy class, no less, on a much smaller plane. Had the seat next to me not been empty, or had the flight been longer, the take-away might not be as positive. But the seat was empty, and it was a short flight — a surprisingly pleasant one that managed to throw the shortcomings of the first one into starker relief.

There were no jet bridges at LUN, and the aircraft was parked a good distance from the gate. While it might seem a silly thing, I appreciated the chance to walk to the jet, by way of a marked pathway that ran along the inside of the apron, rather than be forced into a jam-packed bus, which is usually how it works with remote parking. And I always thrill at the chance to board via old-timey air-stairs rather than through a window-less tube. I fully understand the negatives of stairs, but here’s something dramatic about stepping onto a plane that way: the ground-level approach along the tarmac followed by the slow ascent. The effect is like the opening credits of a film.

My big gripe was the hideously long check-in queue and disorganized boarding lounge, which probably had more to do with poor design than any failure on SAA’s part (a new, Chinese-built terminal is opening at LUN soon). I’ll also dock some points for the absence of any seat-back video on the A319. On the plus side, however, the 32-inch pitch felt unusually generous, cabin staff were extra-friendly, and the meal — a hot chicken and pasta dish — was five times better than the weird little pile of tomatoes and peppers I’d picked at on the way to Vic Falls.

And what’s this, complimentary wine! That Victoria Falls is predominately a leisure market might explain some of what happened on the A330, but let me get this straight: we were served complimentary wine in economy class, yet not in business, on what were otherwise identical routes? Talk about a head-scratcher.

For the price ($180), I got what I paid for and a little bit more. And isn’t that what it’s all about: expectation? This cannot be said for the first leg. Pretty much everything was better on the economy class ride, save for the seat itself. The business class pod was stylish and comfortable, but impossible to properly savor on a flight so brief. For twice the fare, it simply wasn’t worth it.

Economy meal, LUN to JNB.

Maybe SAA’s financial troubles have something to do with this? The carrier has been in distress for some time, under pressure from the Gulf carriers and fast-growing African juggernauts like Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways. In December the carrier was placed under the provisions of “business rescue” — the South African equivalent of bankruptcy protection.

For now, SAA holds membership in what I call the Six Continent Club. That is, it’s among only a handful of airlines to serve at least one city on each of the major continents. (For SAA that means New York and Washington in North America, Hong Kong in Asia, Sao Paulo in South America and Perth in Australia.) Nevertheless, I was startled when I flipped open the inflight magazine and had a look at the destinations map. What used to be a respectable global network has been whittled away. The airline currently serves only three cities in Europe, and a high percentage of its flying — even across much of Africa — is handled by partner carriers.

South African Airways is one of the world’s “classic” legacy carriers. In the 1970s and 1980s, its 747s and 747SPs helped pioneer ultra long-haul flying. South Africa itself has a rich aviation history, and has trained thousands of pilots whom, faced with a dearth of jobs at home, have gone on to work for airlines elsewhere around the world. Surely the country deserves an airline to call its own.

South African’s radio call sign is “Springbok” — one of the coolest and most evocative call-signs out there. For that reason alone I hope they make it.

 

This article appeared originally on The Points Guy website and is being used with permission.

 

 

 

 

For photos from Zambia, visit the author’s Instagram stream.

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LONG LIVE AIR MALTA

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March 15, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

Bush Boutique

Hippos and Haute Cuisine in a Zambian Safari Lodge.

March 15, 2023

IT WAS FOUR in the morning. The footsteps outside were wet and concussive, one after the other, like a sort of hydraulic pile-driver. They came closer, drifted away, then came closer again. I tugged the sheets up and slowed my breathing, convinced that if I made so much as a sound, he or she would come crashing through the canvas wall of our chalet and devour me.

The culprit was a hippopotamus, a nightly visitor to the grassy patches only a few feet from our beds, contentedly munching in the moonlight. Supposedly there was nothing to worry about. We’d been assured that a hippo would never pose a threat, so long as we stayed inside. But that didn’t make it less scary. This was an animal the size of minivan, with teeth that could puncture aluminum. Each night I’d lay awake in the predawn hours, waiting for the hippo to rumble in from the river, equal parts thrilled and terrified.

That river would be the Kafue, in west-central Zambia. A tributary of the more famous Zambezi River, the Kafue meanders for almost a thousand miles. Midway along, it intersects the enormous Kafue National Park, tracing the park’s eastern boundaries. The second-largest park in Africa, and one of the largest protected areas in the world, Kafue is home to elephant, lion, zebra, antelope, hundreds of bird species, and plenty of hungry, hungry hippos to mess with your sleep cycle.

Think “safari” and Zambia isn’t among the places that normally pop to mind. Kenya, Tanzania, and Botswana get most of the attention. They also get the crowds. Many African parks have come to feel more and more like zoos, replete with screaming kids and conga lines of minivans encircling some bewildered cheetah. It was the promise of a quieter and more secluded experience that drew me to Zambia, and to Kafue in particular.

Here you’ll find 8,600 square miles of unspoiled wilderness. Lush swaths of greenery skirt the riverbanks, then give way to endless expanses of the semi-deciduous woods known locally as “miambo.” Sun-baked plains of scrub and thorn are studded by century-old termite mounds; Baobab and fig trees soar in prehistoric-looking clusters. It’s as beautiful as it is hostile, but either way offering some of the most spectacular vistas you’ll ever see. Tourists are here, but not many. On a game drive you’re more likely to encounter an elephant than a Land Rover.

Of course, as much I appreciate remoteness and solitude, I’m also a sucker for creature comforts and letting someone else arrange the logistics of what to see, when to see it and how. That’s where the Kaingu Safari Lodge comes in. Five hours by road from the Zambian capital of Lusaka, or six from the southern frontier town of Livingstone, Kaingu is the most idyllically set of the Kafue game lodges. It’s right on the river, with six tented chalets, a “family” chalet with space for eight guests, and three campsites.

Kaingu was established in 2005 by Rick and Lynda Schultz, a pair of globe-trotting Australians from Melbourne. They were joined six years ago by Gil and Julia Dixon, by way of Scotland and Germany respectively. The two couples oversee a staff of up to 22 employees, including two chefs and a team of guides.

Kaingu deftly navigates the sometimes uneasy line between luxury and adventure. There’s that phrase, “white tablecloth safari,” with its colonialist overtones and 19th-century style affectations. That’s not Kaingu. Instead, you get just the right blend of rustic and indulgent. It’s not inexpensive, but neither is it extravagant or pretentious. “Bush boutique,” is how Julia Dixon describes it. The tented chalets, with thatched roofs and walled-in outdoor showers, are stylish but unfussy. Each overlooks the river, with a porch and chairs for that golden hour gin and tonic. Just remember to latch the screen door any time you step away. The resident vervet monkeys are as dastardly as they are amusing, and are liable to run off with your passport or binoculars.

Kaingu’s outstanding pair of chefs, Wina and Elizabeth, prepare thrice-daily meals as good or better than anywhere in the country. I’m the ultimate non-foodie, yet there I was jumping with anticipation at the sound of the dinner bell (there is, literally, a bell). Every appetizer and entree, without exception, left me in a state of blissful satisfaction. One night it was the Kafue River crayfish with smoked tomato risotto and snow peas. The next it was lamb chops with ginger and almond sauce. Fish curry with cucumber lime salad? Seared breast of duck with glazed sweet potatoes? Hundreds of miles from the nearest big city, and I’ve never eaten so good. The ingredients are grown at the lodge or otherwise locally sourced, and everything — even the bread — is cooked on site.

Guests are assigned a guide, in whose company you can enjoy any of several partial or full-day activities, from game drives and treks to excursions along the river. The lodge has three aluminum outboards, each with seats for six. Overnight stays are available on nearby islands.

Our guide was the curiously named John Deere. We took this to be a humorous coincidence until John explained that Zambian children are often named in honor of material objects of meaning to their families. In this case, yes, a venerable tractor that had been a fixture on the family farm. John Deere turned out to be the most startlingly knowledgable nature guide I’ve met in over thirty years of travel. In an instant he could identify and describe virtually any of the park’s flora or fauna, be it a tree, a bird or a mammal. Some of these were the sort of marquee stars that needed no introduction (elephant, zebra, warthog, hippo), but without John, we wouldn’t have known a bushbuck from a waterbuck from a reedbuck; a grysbok from a hartebeest from a kudu.

He was particularly helpful when it came to birds. After a pair of full-day game drives I had logged close to 90 species, including several I’d never seen before, like the schalow’s turaco and the red chested cuckoo. The majority of these, if not for John’s keen eye and expertise, would have gone onto my life list accompanied by question marks or asterisks.

In the dry season, water levels in the Kafue drop substantially, revealing strings of almost comically picturesque islets. Soft sandy beaches are backdropped by stacks of enormous boulders buffed smooth and white after millennia of erosion. Beneath the boulders grow lawns of brilliantly green grass, strangely manicured to a perfect 3/4 inch, as if by machine. Thus each islet looks uncannily like a primordial miniature golf course, complete with rock sculptures and putting greens.

I was standing in the center of one of these putting greens when, to my consternation, John Deere matter of factly explained that the “machine” responsible for keeping the grass so neatly trimmed is, of course, the hippopotamus. I’d been dealing with enough hippo-related anxiety as it was, and didn’t need to hear this. We’d seen several hippo pods during the boat ride over, and I knew they were lurking nearby.

That anxiety would reach a crescendo 24 hours later:

It was our final afternoon, and the plan was to take a trip down the Kafue in inflatable kayaks. Whose idea this was I can’t remember, but I spent the morning dreading it, wracked by premonitions of being impaled on a hippo tusk and dragged to my demise. John Deere and Gil Dixon did their best to assuage my worries, employing such non-encouragements as, “It’s not likely to be dangerous.”

“But a hippo can chomp through metal,” I protested. “A golden retriever can sink an inflatable kayak.”

“You’ll be fine,” promised John. “If we do see a hippo anywhere close, just turn 90 degrees and paddle to the bank.”

We weren’t five minutes into the river when exactly that scenario happened. We’d entered a small channel alongside one of those cartoon islets when, right there, not thirty feet in front of me, I saw the hippopotamus, its ears wriggling adorably in that way you see in nature documentaries. It turned directly towards us, then ducked under.

“Hippo!” I yelled, digging in my paddle with an energy I’m scarcely capable of, yawing us hard toward the shore.

A few minutes later we were standing in the mud, waiting for a rescue boat. I refused to go any further.

That evening, on the veranda overlooking the river, Gil handed me a cocktail. “You know,” he said. “That hippo, it was just minding its business. I doubt it posed a threat.” He sighed. “But I guess I can’t blame you.” He then went on to entertain me — which is to say embarrass me — with tales of other guests whose bravado and derring-do made me feel like the biggest coward in Africa. Like the swaggering foursome of Aussies who took to the river in inner tubes, armed with only a pocket knife and a broomstick. They survived, and I would have too.

But heck, it wouldn’t have been a safari without a dose or two of fright. Even if most of it was self-induced.

ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

This story was originally published in 2020 in the Boston Globe.

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March 15, 2023 · Filed under Uncategorized

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