All text and photos by Patrick Smith.

April 30, 2018

“Bhutan? Never heard of it.” This I heard over and over again during the weeks leading up to the trip. So, presuming you need an introduction, Bhutan is a small Himalayan kingdom nestled between Tibet and India. “It’s near Nepal,” is how I explained it most of the time. This is true, though it doesn’t actually border that country, a small sliver of India rising up to separate the two.

Our route to Bhutan, encompassing just over 29 hours of flying, went like this: Boston-San Francisco-Dubai-Bangkok-Paro. It was Emirates to Bangkok, and then the little-known Drukair onward to Bhutan. (If you’re traveling to this part of the world, Bangkok, Southeast Asia’s megahub, is the best jumping off point.)

Boston to Bangkok:

You’ll notice some backtracking in that itinerary on the front end, between Boston and San Francisco. This was done for no other reason than to maximize the flight time with Emirates. I had a bucket full of miles to cash in, and the Emirates flight from SFO to Dubai was the longest flight from the U.S. with upgrade seats available. If flying six hours in the wrong direction, with an overnight stay at the SFO Marriott, sounds insane, you’ve probably never flown first class on the Emirates A380: the onboard showers, the fully enclosed suites with your own private closet, the two onboard bars, the caviar and Dom Perignon. And so on.

I’m not claiming that Emirates competes on a level playing field with other carriers. We’ll save that controversy for later. In the meantime, if like me your favorite guilty pleasure in life is sampling the world’s luxury airline cabins, the experience is tough to beat.

An unusually quiet moment in the aft lounge.

Bangkok to Paro:

We airline geeks have lists; airlines that we hope to someday fly on. Drukair, the government-run carrier of Bhutan, was on my list for years, so it was especially exciting to finally be walking up the airstairs and onto a Drukair A319 at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. The carrier also goes by the name Royal Bhutan Airlines, but the local name has more character. The “Druk” (dragon) prefix is a popular trade name in Bhutan, and you’ll see it on banks, hotels, restaurants — and the national airline.

Drukair’s network, centered at Paro airport in the western part of Bhutan, extends to Bangkok, Singapore, Delhi and Mumbai. For years the company was operating the four-engine British Aerospace 146, but has since upgraded to the more modern Airbus A319. The Airbus has good high-altitude, short-runway performance, which is important when your hub airport sits at 7,300 feet with a stubby, 6,400-foot runway. It’s pretty unusual when an airport’s elevation exceeds the length of its longest runway!

I’d splurged for business class, which on Drukair is a four-abreast, four-row cabin. The seats are the old-fashioned, semi-recliner types; a bit blandly upholstered and perhaps not cleaned as often as they should be. I was appalled when I lifted the center armrest console and discovered a verifiable dune of peanut crumbs and dust. That aside, the experience was perfectly pleasant. The food was tasty and the cabin crew attentive. The menus, stitched with a Bhutanese cloth design, were simple but very pretty.

This was a one-stop flight, with a half-hour layover in Gauhati (Guwahati), India. This was the first time in my life that I boarded an international flight headed to a city that, prior to showing up at the airport, I had never heard of before. I’m very good at geography, which made it all the more mystifying. I stared up at the check-in monitor for a few seconds — Gauhati? — wondering vaguely where I was and where I might be going. I’d later discover that Gauhati has a population of almost a million people. I guess that’s India for you.

Drukair business class menu.

Drukair business class breakfast, fruit course.

Sometimes it’s the little things. Like this lavatory display.

Not your typical airport topography.

During the descent into Paro they played traditional Bhutanese music over the PA. This was an evocative touch, adding a certain exotic-ness to the arrival, especially once the mountains came into view. The initial descent had been through a heavy overcast, occluding that view of Everest I’d been dying to catch, but suddenly the rainclouds gave way to an almost fairy tale panorama of jutting emerald peaks. The lower we got, the more exhilarating it got. The landing gear clunked down at what felt like 15,000 feet, and suddenly we were doing hairpin turns in sheer mountain valleys, with 17,000-foot summits on three sides.

Yeah, I’d read about the arrival into Paro and watched a couple of videos, but that doesn’t prepare you for the visceral thrill of it. Especially that last, very low-altitude turn toward the numbers of runway 33. The expressway visual at LaGuardia has nothing on the landing at Paro. This was the closest I’ve ever come to being truly white-knuckled on a commercial airplane.

Himalayan High. Arrival into Paro.

The expressway visual this ain’t.

Drukair has four A319s in its fleet.

Only two scheduled carriers operate into Paro — Drukair’s privately owned competitor, the unexcitedly (and confusingly) named Bhutan Airlines is the other — and only a few dozen pilots are qualified to fly there. Frankly, this is how it should be. I’d be quite uncomfortable flying into Paro with any crew that wasn’t intimately familiar with the local terrain and its complex arrival and departure patterns.

(So, to be clear, there’s Drukair, a.k.a Royal Bhutan Airlines, and the privately held Bhutan Airlines. If the names aren’t confusing enough, they both fly A319s, in similar paint schemes, on overlapping routes.)

Only two airlines have scheduled service to Paro. Bhutan Airlines is Drukair’s competitor.

Part airport at dusk. Nearby peaks approach 17,000 feet, and Mt. Everest is only a short hop away.

In addition to the dirty seat consoles, two more gripes against Drukair: First, the carrier’s business class lounge in Paro is located outside security and immigration. I imagine this is due to space constraints; the airport is very small. Just the same, nobody wants to relax in a lounge, then have to get their passport stamped and stand in a security line.

And speaking of lines, during check-in, the queue for business class was extraordinarily slow, to the point where virtually all of the economy passengers were able to check in ahead of us. When I attempted to use the economy line, which by that point was empty, I was rudely sent back to the business line and forced to wait another fifteen minutes. Several agents on the economy side now sat behind their podiums with nothing to do, yet refused to check us in.

Paro’s arrival and departure halls are crowded and noisy (departure in particular), but they’re charming in that way of certain small airports. The architecture is in the style of a traditional Bhutanese home, and the decor riffs heavily on the artwork and ornate craftsmanship seen in the country’s many temples, monasteries and dzongs (fortresses).

The terminal at Paro, with mural of the beloved royal family.

Arrivals hall, Bhutan style.

In country:

“Life is suffering.” That’s the first of the Four Pillars of Buddhism, which is somewhat ironic when you discover that Bhutan, in addition to being perhaps the most intensely Buddhist country on earth (prayer flags cover the Bhutan landscape from end to end, like a sort of heavenly confetti), is also one of the most content. This is the country that invented the Gross National Happiness index, and which frequently tops those “world’s happiest countries” lists.

And for a poor nation in an isolated area, little Bhutan seems to have its act together in ways that few developing nations ever do. As Lonely Planet puts it: “Bhutan is one of the few places on earth where compassion is favored over capitalism. Issues of sustainable development, education and health care, and environmental and cultural preservation…are at the forefront of policy making.” The people of Bhutan are happy and comparatively well educated; healthcare is decent and universal. The roads are in good condition, mobile phone service is everywhere, and 98 percent of citizens, even in remote locations, have clean drinking water — an astonishing statistic, as anyone who has traveled in the developing world will acknowledge.

Granted, these things are comparatively easy for a country with fewer than a million people. An honest, uncorrupt government and a Buddhism-based sense of civic responsibility doesn’t hurt.

The Bhutanese government is also acutely concerned about the effects of climate change. The swelling and potential bursting of glacial lakes, for one, threatens to destroy some of the country’s most historic sites. Doing its part, Bhutan currently the only carbon-negative country in the world. It has banned the of chemical fertilizers and no longer imports food that was grown with them. Thus almost all of the country’s produce is organic.

In nearly a week in the country, I never saw a person smoking. Turns out the import or public use of tobacco products is against the law. As are western-style commercial billboards and advertising. There are, for now, no global consumer chains anywhere in Bhutan. No Starbucks, no KFC, no Ikea.

And bring your Tums, or your Prilosec. Pretty much all Bhutanese food, even breakfast, is centered on the chili pepper.

It was all the more surprising, meanwhile, once in the country, after so many friends and acquaintances of mine seemed to have no idea what or where Bhutan was, to encounter so many Americans. Only India, which shares the country’s southern and western borders, sends more tourists. Americans accents were everywhere: in the temples, dzongs, hotels and restaurants. In an age when many Americans seem aggressively incurious, this was encouraging.

Short of turning this into a full-on travelogue, here are a few of the better pictures from the trip. Sightseeing highlights were the beautiful Punakha Valley, and, it hardly needs saying, the thousand-foot climb to the breathtaking Taktshang Goemba — the famous Tiger’s Nest Monastery.

Prayer wheels at the 7th-century Kyichu Lhakhang temple.

Taktshang Goemga: the Tiger’s Nest.

Pagodas at the Duchu La mountain pass.

Monks climbing the stairs at the Punakha Dzong.

Sunset over Punakha Valley

At the temple in Thimpu.

Prayer flags mark the countryside like a heavenly confetti.

At the Punakha Dzong.

Book your tour with Bhutan Swallowtail

THERE’S NO SUCH THING as a “typical” airline layover. They run the gamut, from eleven tired hours at an airport motel in Pensacola to multiple days in a five-star property in Cairo or Cape Town. The worst of them are depressing; the best are exciting, even a little glamorous, and crewmembers are known to bring along their spouses and kids, turning a work assignment into a mini-vacation.

I’m not as adventurous during my downtime as I used to be, but almost always there’s something to discover. And in keeping with my ends/means philosophy of air travel, I’d be remiss not to share some of these discoveries with my readers. Thus, “Moving in Place” is a new feature, a travelogue of sorts, in which I’ll periodically share unusual highlights from this or that destination.

I might recommend a restaurant or share photos from a tourist attraction, but the subject, most of the time, will be something peculiar or unexpected.

All text and photos by the author.

COLONIAL DAKAR

The best way to see Dakar, Senegal, is with someone who speaks French and has spent some time there. That person isn’t me, but I lucked out on my last visit. One of my colleagues, a 767 captain, grew up in French Africa and knows the town’s nooks and crannies. He played tour guide and took us around. I’ve been to Dakar at least three dozen times, but Billy took us places I never knew existed.

My favorite spot, by far, was the little courtyard restaurant at the Hotel Saint-Louis Sun, a brown stucco establishment on Rue Felix Faure, in the city-center neighborhood known as the Plateau, not far from the waterfront. The restaurant is set amidst garden, surrounded by spindled balustrades and open to the sky. There’s Senegalese food on the menu, or just stop in for a drink.

Saint-Luis Sun probably qualifies as what we nowadays call a “boutique hotel,” but there’s nothing pretentious or prissy. It’s charming in an old-school way, authentic and simple. Here you’re transported to another age. Colonial times, for better or worse, yet lovely just the same. An evocative respite from the bustle of the city. Dakar is losing much of its colonial architecture and quickly becoming just another glass and steel capital. Here’s a chance to savor some of what’s left.

The older I get, the less adventurous I am on layovers. These days, a place like the Saint-Louis Sun hits the spot. Quiet and easy to deal with. Once upon a time, though, Senegal was the setting for what was probably the most thrilling on-the-job excursion I’ve ever taken: a two-day trip down to the Sine-Saloum Delta, where we slept in a forest lodge and rode boats through the mangroves. You can watch the highlights of that trip here and here.

The Cincinnati Mosaics

The derelict spaces beneath America’s highway overpasses are among the nation’s bleakest and best-avoided locations. What’s found there is typically some combination of neglect, decay, danger or despair. But not always. And for that we travel to Cincinnati, Ohio.

There, in a litter-strewn no-man’s land beneath the rusted superstructure tangle of routes 75 and 71, just north of the Ohio River, one encounters, of all things, an urban sculpture garden — a sprawling, somewhat haphazard collection of statues, murals and mosaics composed of mortar, glass shards, pebbles, shells and tile fragments. The artwork depicts mainly bird and marine life, plus a number of abstract shapes and patterns.

I could find nothing about the project online, but according to a plaque it was the work of a dozen students — city kids, presumably — working under the supervision of a team of professional artists in affiliation with the Cincinnati Arts and Technology Center. Whatever its origins, it’s one of the oddest and most intriguing pieces of public art I’ve ever encountered.

The installation is just a few minutes’ walk from downtown Cincinnati. To find it, go a couple of blocks west of Paul Brown Stadium, where the Bengals play, just off Pete Rose Way, below the scary-looking snarl of highway towers.

Paris in Four Bridges.

There are 37 bridges that cross the Seine, but my normal morning walk (about 13,000 steps round trip, according to my Garmin Vivofit) takes me past, or below, four of them. It’s the understructure of these bridges that fascinates me most.

My walk starts on the Île aux Cygnes, a skinny, mid-river island popular with dog-walkers, and it’s the pont de Grenelle that comes first. This is the kind of nondescript span that you’d see in any of a hundred American cities (indeed, a quarter-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty, dating to 1889. abuts the center stanchion), but there’s a sleekness to the metalwork that I like.

Pont de Grenelle

Further along the island is the pont de Bir-Hakeim. Formerly the pont de Passy (1905), this is a two-level bridge with a railway crossing above and a roadway, pedestrian and cycle crossing below. Chinese tourists come here by the dozen every morning to have wedding pictures taken — more than a few of whom have been inadvertently photobombed by yours truly.

Pont de Passy

The Pont Alexandre III, finished in 1900, connects the Invalides and Eiffel Tower on the south side with the Champs-Élysées and Grand Palais (my favorite building in Paris) on the north. The Beaux-Arts style bridge is the fanciest in the city, decorated extravagantly with ornate masonry pedestals, lampposts, cherubs and winged horses. Beautiful for sure, but check out the underside!

Pont Alexandre III

Further along, the passerelle Léopold Sédar Senghor links the Musée d’Orsay with the Tuileries gardens on the other side. It’s named after the first president of the former French colony of Senegal, in West Africa.

The old airport in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, is also named after Léopold Sédar Senghor. The footbridge in Paris is considered something of an architectural marvel and is planked with exotic hardwoods. The airport in Dakar… well, I once described it as “the world’s worst.” Which I’m sure it’s not, but it made for a good story.

A new airport serving Dakar, named after Blaise Diagne, the first black African elected to the French parliament, has since opened after a long series of delays. Maybe Diagne will get a bridge across the Seine.

The Léopold Sédar-Senghor footbridge

September 21, 2017

IF YOU’VE SPENT any time on the internet, you’ve seen Maho Beach, the thin strip of sand and surf abutting Princess Juliana International Airport on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten.

St. Maarten — or St. Martin — is part French and part Dutch. Princess Juliana (SXM) is in the Dutch section, and Maho sits just off end of runway 10. And when I say “just off,” I mean only a few hundred feet from the landing threshold. As arriving planes cross the beach, they are less than a hundred feet overhead. For an idea of how close this is, you can check out any of a zillion online pics. Like the one above. Or this one, or this one, or any of hundreds of YouTube videos. Unlike so many other scary-seeming airplane pictures you’ll come across, they are not retouched.

Thus, planespotting at Maho beach is an experience unlike any other in commercial aviation. Not that you need to be an airplane buff to enjoy it. For anybody, the sights, sounds, and sensations of a jetliner screaming overhead at 150 miles-per-hour, nearly at arm’s reach, are somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying.

How and why, exactly, are hard to understand. Is it the sense of danger, maybe? Or just the sheer novelty of it? Whatever it is, I felt it this past summer, during my first-ever flight into SXM. I landed a Boeing 757 there, coming in over Maho at about 2 p.m. on a perfect afternoon. It was fun being at the controls, but at heart, I didn’t want to be flying the plane. I wanted to be under it.

Our hotel was just around the corner, and as soon as I could I changed into a swimsuit and a t-shirt, and headed over.

The beach itself isn’t particularly pretty. It’s small, hemmed in between a pair of unattractive restaurants. The water is turbid, and there’s an ugly, two-lane road at the top of the sand. But that’s not the point, I guess. There are better places to swim, but none with a view like this one.

SXM isn’t a busy airport. Only a dozen or so jets land each day, and the nearby hotels and bars post the arrival and departure times. I was staying at the Sonesta, and they had a placard in the lobby listing the day’s flights. People tend to cluster whenever a plane is due — especially when it’s one of the widebodies coming in from Amsterdam or Paris. Air France brings in an A340. KLM was flying the 747 into SXM for years, but recently switched to the Airbus A330. The A330 is significantly smaller, but still breathtaking when it’s close enough to scrape the top of your beach umbrella. Charters from Europe are common too, using A330s, 787s, and other heavies.

I didn’t get to see any of those during the 90 or so minutes I spent there. I saw only smaller jets — a 737 and a couple of A320s. Still it was exciting. At Maho, pretty much any airplane gets your adrenaline going. And the noise will shake your bones. I also got to watch the same 757 that I’d brought in, piloted by the outbound crew, take off to the roar and applause of onlookers.

My landing at SXM wasn’t the smoothest one, if I can be perfectly frank, which I partly blame on the excitement of flying there for the first time. Procedurally, though, it was little different from landing anyplace else. The media will often speak of the Maho Beach experience from the perspective of the airplane — and wrongly so. Planes are described as “swooping in low,” or “low-flying,” or coming in at unusual angles. I found an online article describing SXM as “one of the world’s most dangerous airports.” Another cites the “risky approach” that pilots make to the runway. The Guardian writes that pilots are “forced to approach at low altitude.”

That’s just baloney. The runway at SXM is short, but there’s nothing different or unusual about the approach to it. The altitudes, speeds and angles that we fly all are normal. There happens to be a beach at the foot of the runway, but that’s the beachgoer’s concern, not ours.

And I don’t say that lightly. Jet blast and wingtip vortices at Maho routinely upends people and sends their belongings skittering into the ocean. Or worse. This past July, a 57 year-old woman from New Zealand was killed there after the blast from a departing 737 slammed her into the ground. The takeoff threshold of runway 10 is even closer to the shoreline than the landing threshold, and the tails of departing jets practically throw shadows over the sand. And the fact it was a little-old 737, and not a larger aircraft, attests to both the power of jet engines and the proximity of the beach. Check this out.

The woman was among a group of thrill-seekers who’d tried hanging onto the perimeter fence as the pilots throttled up. Hurricane-force thrust from the engines then slammed her into the pavement. Although she was the first fatality, several others have been injured over the years after recklessly grabbing onto that same fence — some of them sent tumbling head-first into one the concrete barriers that line the roadway — despite the presence of signs warning people to stay clear.

PHOTOS BELOW BY THE AUTHOR

 

Top-of-page photograph by Fyodor Boris

Note to readers: This story was published shortly before the island of St. Maarten, along with much of the Caribbean, was devastated by Hurricane Irma. Both Maho Beach and the adjacent airport were badly damaged by the storm. Our best wishes go out to the people of St. Maarten.

Comments (31)

September 21, 2017 · Filed under Uncategorized

A “Life List” of Planes

Pages from “World Airline Fleets, 1980.”  

 

UPDATE: March 1, 2026

AIRLINER ENTHUSIASTS are like birdwatchers in a lot of ways. We dress funny and tend to own expensive binoculars. And, we’re into lists.

As I kid I was a planespotter. I’d spend entire weekends holed up in the 16th-floor observation deck at Logan Airport, logging the registration numbers of arriving and departing jets. There were books you could buy — annual global fleet directories with the registrations and specs of every commercial plane in the world, arranged alphabetically by country and airline. There were little boxes where you could check off each plane once it was “spotted,” or, you could just line through the listing with a highlighter.

World Airline Fleets, I remember, was one of these books. It came from the U.K. and was edited by a fellow named Gunter Endres (who, the Interweb tells us, is still writing aviation books). An even bigger volume, published in Switzerland, was called J.P. Airline Fleets. The idea was to mark off as many planes as you could.

Up there on the 16th floor, things could get competitive. I’ll never forget the jealousy I felt toward a legendary Boston spotter named Barry Sobel, because he’d been there to record a Pakistan International 707 freighter that landed unexpectedly one weekday while I was in school.

At one point, way back when, I could have told you the model and airline of every commercial plane I’d ever seen. Birders have tallies like this, too. They call them “life lists.” Braniff DC-8, El Al 707, Aeroflot IL-62… check, check, check. There were hundreds. Somewhere along the way I stopped keeping track, and all these years later I couldn’t begin to reconstruct such a catalog.

What I can do, however, easily and accurately, is present a slightly different life list: a record of each airplane type, and each airline, that I have flown aboard. It appears below. I’ll also include which classes I’ve sat in, using the traditional industry codes:

F = First
C = Business
Y = Economy

The accompanying photo is from April, 1974. That’s my sister and me walking up the stairs to an American Airlines Boeing 727, on our way to Washington, D.C. This was the first airplane, large or small, that I ever set foot in. I’m fortunate to have the moment preserved like this.

Even then, at eight years-old, I knew it was a 727.

BOEING 727

American   F,Y
Northwest   F,Y
Eastern   Y
Delta   F,Y
Pan Am   Y
TWA   F,Y
USAir/US Airways  Y
Trump Shuttle   Y
Fawcett (Peru) Y
Aeroamericana (Peru)  Y
DHL (cargo, cockpit jumpseat)

 

BOEING 707

TWA Y

 

BOEING 737 CLASSIC

Piedmont  Y
USAir   Y
United  Y
Delta  Y
Aloha Y
Rutaca (Venezuela)  Y
Cayman Airways Y
Sky Airline (Chile)  Y
PLUNA (Uruguay) Y

 

BOEING 737 (Next Generation)

American Y
United  Y
Delta   F,Y
Southwest  Y
KLM  C,Y
Malaysia Airlines  Y
SAS  Y
South African Airways  Y
Jet Airways (India) C
Turkish Airlines  Y
Thai Lion Air Y

En route to Taipei on an Eva Air 777.

BOEING 747 (All series)

Pan Am Y
Northwest F,C,Y
El Al  Y
United  C
British Airways  C,Y
Air France  Y
Qantas  Y
Singapore Airlines  Y
Thai  C
Delta  C,Y
Korean Air  F,C
Royal Air Maroc Y
South African Airways  Y

 

BOEING 757

Northwest  Y
American  F,Y
United  F,Y
Delta  F,C,Y
British Airways  Y
Icelandair  Y

 

BOEING 767

United F,C,Y
Delta  F,C,Y
TWA C
All Nippon  Y
Kenya Airways  C

 

BOEING 777

United  Y
American C
Delta  C,Y
Emirates  F,C,Y
Malaysia Airlines  Y
Thai  C,Y
Eva Air  Y
Korean Air Y
Royal Brunei  Y
Cathay Pacific  C
Qatar Airways C
Singapore Airlines  C
Jet Airways (India) F
China Eastern C

AeroSanta 727 at Cuzco, 1994.   Author’s photo.

BOEING 787

Japan Airlines  Y
Qatar Airways C
Virgin Atlantic C
Korean Air C

 

DOUGLAS DC-8

Air Canada  Y
DHL (cargo, cockpit jumpseat)

 

McDONNELL DOUGLAS DC-9 (Classic)

Northwest Y
USAir  Y
Delta  F,Y
Air Canada  Y
Finnair  Y
Aeropostal (Venezuela)  Y
ValuJet  Y

 

McDONNELL DOUGLAS MD-80 Series (DC-9 Super 80, MD-88/83/87, etc.)

TWA  F,Y
Delta  F,Y
American F,Y
New York Air  Y
Continental  F
Austral (Argentina)  Y

 

McDONNELL DOUGLAS MD-90 Series (MD-90, Boeing 717)

Delta  F,Y
Bangkok Airways  Y
Uni Air (Eva Air)  Y

 

McDONNELL DOUGLAS DC-10

American  F,Y
Northwest  F,C,Y
Aeromexico Y
Finnair  Y
British Airways  C
Continental  Y

 

McDONNELL DOUGLAS MD-11

Delta  C,Y

Boarding a DC-10 in Bermuda, 1979.   Author’s photo.

LOCKHEED L-1011

Eastern F,Y
Pan Am  Y
Delta  Y

 

FOKKER F-28

USAir  Y

 

AIRBUS A300

Eastern  Y
American  Y
Thai  Y
DHL (cargo, cockpit jumpseat)

 

AIRBUS A310

Lufthansa  Y

 

AIRBUS A320 Series (A319, A320, A321)

United F,Y
Delta  F,Y
America West F
US Airways Y
British Airways  Y
Air France  Y
Lufthansa Y
TAP Y
Royal Brunei Y
Air Malta   C
SAETA (Ecuador) Y
LanPeru  Y
AirAsia  Y
JetBlue  Y, C
China Eastern F
Drukair (Royal Bhutan Airlines) C
Avianca C
VietJet Y
Qatar Airways C
South African Airways Y
Aegean Airlines Y

 

AIRBUS A330

Air France  Y
Sabena  Y
Delta  C,Y
Cathay Pacific  C,Y
Thai  Y
Asiana  C
Singapore Airlines  C
Turkish Airlines C
China Airlines  C
Philippine Airlines C
Qatar Airways C
South African Airways C

On board a China Airlines A350.   Author’s photo.

AIRBUS A340

Air France  C,Y
EgyptAir  Y
SriLankan  Y
Cathay Pacific Y
China Airlines Y
Qatar Airways C

 

AIRBUS A350

Qatar Airways  C
China Airlines   C
Cathay Pacific C
Delta C, Y
Thai Airways C
Qatar Airways C

 

AIRBUS A380

Emirates  F,C
Qatar Airways C
Asiana  C

 

AIRBUS A220 (Bombardier C-Series)

Delta  F,Y
airBaltic Y

 

EMBRAER 190

JetBlue Y
American  Y
US Airways  Y
Aerorepublica (Colombia)  Y

 

EMBRAER 190

JetBlue Y
American Y
US Airways Y
Aerorepublica (Colombia)   Y

 

TUPOLEV Tu-134

Aeroflot  Y

 

TUPOLEV Tu-154

Aeroflot Y

 

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve left out regional jets and turboprops. Partly because they’re boring, and partly because, for that same reason, I can’t remember them all. Highlights would include a Pan Am Express Dash-7, an Air New England FH-227, an Aeroperlas (Panama) Shorts 360, and a cargo-carrying Twin Otter in which I sat on the floor during a hop from St. Croix to San Juan.

The winners, if we can call them that, are the 737 and A320, predictably enough. That’s not very exciting, and it’s pleasing to see the infinitely more impressive 747 coming in third place. Somehow I’ve managed to fly aboard 747s from 13 different carriers.

Northwest Airlines, some of you might recall, was the launch customer for the 747-400, back in 1989. That spring, they had been using the jet on domestic “proving runs” mainly between Minneapolis and Phoenix. Finally on June 1st, they inaugurated international service. The first departure was flight NW 47, from JFK to Narita. My friend Ben and I were passengers on that flight. It was the day after my 23rd birthday. I still have one of the commemorative sake cups that they handed out.

Of all the planes that ought to be on the list, but aren’t, the most painful example is the Concorde. Years ago, when I was a regional airline pilot, British Airways used to offer a special “interline” Concorde fare to London, available only to industry employees. It cost $400, and it was what we call “positive-space” — as opposed to standby.

A remarkable bargain, looking back on it. But when you’re a young pilot making twenty grand a year, $400 is a lot of money, and so I kept putting it off, putting it off. I’ll do it later, I promised myself. Next year.

And then it was gone.

 

Comments (74)

June 7, 2017 · Filed under 1

Flying: A Look on the Bright Side

May 28, 2017

Is Air Travel Really As Bad As Everybody Claims? Here Are Some Reasons Why Not.

AN OP-ED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BY PATRICK SMITH

Click the Picture to Read

 

Some follow-up notes:

This is the sixth op-ed that I’ve had published in the Times, and I’m always grateful for their interest. I’m a little disappointed, though, at the headline they chose for this one. It’s misleading. The article isn’t about flying in the old days; it’s about flying today. I’m making a case that the golden age of air travel is in many ways happening right now, not in some mythologized past.

As expected, the angry and sarcastic letters have been pouring in. A lot of them are flip and fail to acknowledge my points. Here’s a typical example, sent anonymously…

We need to look at this objectively. Is flying cheaper than it used to be, yes or no? Is it safer, yes or no? Is it faster and, in a surprising number of ways, more comfortable and convenient? Either it is, or it isn’t. And the answer, in each case, is yes. That’s not me talking; it’s simply the facts. That doesn’t mean flying is a wonderful experience. And, if you’re at all familiar with my writing over the years, you’ll know that I’ve amply criticized the airlines when that criticism has been due. Poor communications, terrible customer service, lousy onboard products, miserable airports — I’ve covered that stuff countless times without pulling punches.

Duly Noted

What I’m doing in the Times piece, though, is pointing out a few of the good things that are seldom acknowledged.

No matter, a number of readers already have insisted that not only am I wrong, and that flying is truly awful, but in fact it’s never been worse. To which I ask: really, are you sure? And if so, let’s try this: Imagine that you’re planning an economy class trip from, I don’t know, Seattle to Paris. You have two theoretical options. Option number one is that you can fly the route tomorrow, on the carrier of your choice, and experience flying exactly as it is. Or, option two, you can travel back in time and do it in 1964. What’s your pick? Just keep in mind that if you choose the latter, you’ll get a couple of extra inches of legroom, shorter lines at the airport, and maybe a chirpier flight attendant. Your journey also will take several hours longer, cost more than twice as much, and you will sit in a cabin with no personal entertainment system, filled with people smoking. And, just for good measure, your chances of being in an accident will be about eight times higher.

Are you still down for it?

For what it’s worth, a colleague and I were talking the other day, and we both agreed that so much of what people hate about flying isn’t really airline-related, per se, but rather infrastructural. The decrepit state of our airports, for example, and our outdated air traffic control system, contribute significantly to delays and congestion. Then you’ve got TSA. Our security checkpoints are badly overcrowded and poorly designed. Customs and immigration procedures, too, are flyer-unfriendly. These are bureaucratic and government-funding issues more than anything else. Fix them, and I estimate that 75 percent of passengers’ frustrations would disappear.

In the meantime, how trendy has it become to bash the airlines? The New York Post even has a “Hell of Flying” section…

Comments (82)

May 28, 2017 · Filed under Uncategorized

Questions & Answers

Essays & Stories

"I wish I could fold up Patrick Smith and put him in my suitcase."

- Stephen Dubner,
Coauthor of Freakonomics

Terminal Madness: What Is Airport Security?

"Always excellent."

– James Fallows,
The Atlantic

Blog Archives

Follow and Support Us!

RSS Facebook

Subscribe to our mailing list

Subscribe

COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL

Second Edition Now Available