R.I.P. Salon

November 13, 2026

Salon.com, the San Francisco-based arts and culture magazine, shut down last week after 31 years of operation.

I mention this because without Salon.com there would be no Ask the Pilot. If not for the good graces of an editor there named Andrew Leonard, this enterprise wouldn’t exist and you’d never have heard of me.

It was the autumn of 2001, shortly after the terror attacks, and I’d just been laid off from my job. I was equal parts in need of spending money and frustrated by the security chaos at airports. I decided to give freelance writing a try, and put a piece together complaining about the irrationality of our emerging security protocols — a topic I’d return to many times in the years that followed. I shopped it around, cold-calling editors and emailing drafts.

I had no formal training in writing or journalism, though it had always been something of a minor hobby. In the ’80s I self-published a punk rock fanzine. Later I wrote a handful of short music reviews for the Boston Globe, and one or two travel-related pieces for the Utne Reader, where a friend of mine was an editor. None of it was especially good.

Nonetheless, Leonard liked the article and, if I remember right, offered me the princely sum of $150 to run it.

Foot in the door, as they say. That first article became a second, then a third, and so on. In June of 2002, Leonard invited me to author a regular column, which he dubbed “Ask the Pilot.” I never liked the name, but the column got traction and it stuck.

Over the ensuing decade, Salon would publish more than four-hundred of my articles. Considering the setting — a magazine specializing in lefty politics, arts and culture — such success was remarkable. I guess what gave me an edge, at least at the beginning, was my perspective and willingness to shoot my mouth off. Here was a commercial pilot, of all people, sharing provocative, no-bullshit opinions about air travel at a time when everyone was thinking about it.

More critically, as things went on, my aim was to humanize flying. Rather than bog down in technical discussions, I’d speak to the fuller drama of air travel, exploring the ways in which air travel intersects with culture, history, or even art. This, more than anything, is why “Ask the Pilot” found a home at Salon (or so I like to think).

At first “Ask the Pilot” appeared weekly, usually on Fridays. When my day job obligations made managing a deadline too onerous, we changed to a semi-weekly format. Somewhere in there, Leonard handed me off to an editor named Ruth Henrich, under whose guidance I wrote until 2012, when the feature was finally retired.

Two books, including Cockpit Confidential (2013), were compiled and adapted from the Salon archives.

The decision to kill “Ask the Pilot” was Salon’s, but I was neither surprised nor disappointed when the end came. It had run its course, and I no longer had the time, or the discipline, to keep the gig going.

As I’m sure Leonard and Henrich will remind you, my relationship with Salon’s editorial staff could be strained. Whether from laziness or inexperience, I was notorious for last-minute changes and post-publication revisions. I’m not sure I ever apologized for that.

“Ask the Pilot” lives on, of course, having migrated to the site on which you’re reading this post. The vibe here is looser and more casual than it was at Salon. And for now I still enjoy it.

(My only gripe is that I don’t make a dime. Salon, at least, paid me grocery money. Here I earn nothing. Google banned me from its advertising platforms for reasons they wouldn’t disclose, and installing a paywall would likely spell disaster. So, while it lasts, it’s a labor of love. I hate making a charity pitch, but you’re free to click that “Buy Me a Coffee” link over on the left side of the page.)

If you’re a reader from the old days, thanks for sticking with me.