Presidents, Planes, and Pilot Black Magic. Is This How Donald Trump Won?

Update: November 5, 2024

It would’ve been fun to know that New Day Rising, or Sorry, Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, might be blasting through the halls of power in Washington. But oh well. It’s a wrap. And my streak goes on.

Eight candidates. It’s a little creepy, no?

I need to harness these powers for profit.

 

November 5, 2024

I’VE MET THREE PRESIDENTS. None of them American presidents, but presidents nevertheless.

The first of them was John Atta Mills, the semi-beloved leader of Ghana. Mills died in 2012, but during his tenure, he and his entourage had ridden aboard my airplane at least twice, traveling to or from Accra, the Ghanaian capital.

If you think that’s vaguely impressive, I also had the honor of meeting and flying the President of Guyana, Bharat Jagdeo, two or three times. (Contrary to what my father and others seem to think, Ghana and Guyana are in fact different countries, on different continents, with different presidents.)

Third on the list is Ellen Johnson Sirlief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the President of Liberia. I met her four times, including once at a reception at Roberts Field near Monrovia. On one of those occasions I asked if she’d be kind enough to sign a copy of our flight plan. She obliged, adding her name in green ink at the bottom of the dot-matrix printout.

Things have worked out pretty well for me, I think. Years ago, when I was puttering around over Plum Island sweating to death in some noisy old Cessna, the idea that one day I’d be be carrying presidents in the back of my plane would have struck me as ludicrous.

There is, however, a dark side to my brushes with politicians. And if you’re planning to run for office, you might do well to keep your distance.

What am I talking about? Here are six vignettes, true stories all. Try to figure it out:

One day in 1980 I’m at Boston’s Logan airport, plane-spotting with a pair of my junior high pals. Who disembarks from a TWA plane only a few feet in front of us but Jerry Brown, then-governor (and, yes, governor again!) of California. In addition to his gubernatorial prowess, Mr. Brown, a.k.a. “Governor Moonbeam,” is known for his dabbling in Buddhism, his long liaison with Linda Ronstadt, and his appearance in one of the most famous punk rock songs — the Dead Kennedys’ “California Über Alles.”

Four years later, the late senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts speaks at my high school graduation (St. John’s Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts).

Six years after that, on a Sunday morning in 1990, I’m standing at Teterboro Airport, a busy general aviation field in New Jersey, close to New York City. A private jet pulls up. The stairs come down, and out steps Jesse Jackson and a phalanx of burly bodyguards. Jackson walks into the terminal, passing me by inches.

The following summer I’m back at Logan, using a payphone in Terminal E. Suddenly Ted Kennedy is standing at the phone next to me, placing a call. (Quaint, I know, in this age of wireless, but there’s the famous Senator, slipping dimes into the slot.) I’m talking to a friend, and I surreptitiously hold up the receiver. “Listen,” I say, “whose voice is this?”

“Sounds like Ted Kennedy,” she reckons. And it is.

Next, it’s 1994, at Logan again, and I’m in the captain’s seat of a Northwest Airlink 19-seater, preparing for departure to Baltimore. Up the front stairs comes Michael Dukakis. He stops briefly behind the cockpit and says hello.

Later, in the late spring of that same year, Vice President Al Gore is making the commencement speech at Harvard University, close to my Cambridge apartment. I’m passing through Harvard Yard, and there’s the V.P., his wife Tipper, and his two blonde daughters shaking hands with a line of admirers. I join the line.

So, my question is: what is it that makes those six encounters collectively significant? Think about it. Each has something in common. Or, more correctly, two things. What are they?

While you’re mulling it over, I’ll give you the longer versions of my run-ins with Dukakis and Gore:

After we land in Baltimore, Dukakis thanks us for the ride and remarks, “Not a lot of room in here.” Even at 5’8″ he’s right about that. The Metroliner’s skinny, tubular fuselage earned it the nickname “lawn dart.”

“Yeah,” I answer, “It’s not exactly Air Force One.”

Meanwhile, intentionally or otherwise, the Duke has left a huge sheaf of important-looking papers in his seat pocket — probably because he’s run to a phone to cuss out his secretary for booking him on that stupid little plane with the annoying pilot. I carry the papers inside to the agent. “Here,” I say. “These belong to Mike Dukakis.” She looks at me like I’m crazy.

The day that I met Al Gore was sunny and humid. It was one of those days when I’d ride my mountain bike aimlessly around my neighborhood, hoping to meet a girl or maybe find a bag of money on the sidewalk. I never had much luck on those counts, but then I’d never run into a Vice President either.

I come down Broadway, then up Kirkland Street to the corner of Harvard Yard. The graduation ceremonies have just ended, and Gore — his family and a handful of Secret Service men in tow — have come through a gate and are walking toward the concrete plaza in front of the Science Center. I lock up my bike and follow them.

A crowd of about 50 people quickly gathers. Those of us in front form a straight row, and Gore comes down the line to shake our hands. He’s a Harvard graduate, and most of those around me are Harvard alum, or the parents and families of graduating seniors. People are introducing themselves with lines like, “Charles Tipton-Dune, sir, class of ’68. It’s an honor to meet you.” And Al says, “It’s a pleasure.”

As he approaches me, it’s my plan to say, “Patrick Smith, sir, class of ’88” (a total fabrication, but I’m feeling left out). Instead, I get nervous and do something a lot more idiotic. So idiotic, in fact, that to this day it makes my skin burn with embarrassment when I remember it.

My turn comes, and I look up at Al Gore, the Vice President of the United States of America. I stick out my hand and I say: “How ya doin’?”

Bear in mind, too, that I’m wearing shorts and a ratty old Husker Du t-shirt, surrounded by people in suits and gowns. I’m sweaty from bicycling. Gore shakes my hand and looks at me, a bit crookedly, no doubt wondering if I’m not some protégé of John Hinckley or Squeaky Frome.

“Great,” he answers. “How you doin’?”

After that I break from the crowd and go over to the black limousine parked on the plaza. This is Gore’s car, an ’80s-model Cadillac that looks like the cars of my Sicilian neighbors when I was a kid growing up in Revere. The tinting is peeling from several of the windows. It surprises me that such an important person is asked to ride around in such a shitty car. The Secret Service men inside eye me lazily. They wear sunglasses and have coiled wires sticking from their ears. They don’t seem particularly concerned with my loitering, and I nod to the guy in the driver’s seat. How ya doin’?

Right, okay, so back to my riddle. What do Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Mike Dukakis and Al Gore all have in common, in addition to crossing paths with yours truly?

The answer, of course, is that all six were Democrats who ran for President. And all six, whether it was the party nomination or general election, lost.

That’s pretty uncanny if you think about it. Six – six! – Democrats who ran and failed. Six losers and me.

Or is it seven? If we consider degrees of separation, I can maybe take responsibility for the election of Donald Trump in 2016 as well. That’s because, in 2012, I shared a shuttle flight from New York to Boston with Chelsea Clinton. She and her husband were sitting just a few rows ahead of me. At one point I was taking something down from the overhead locker when she passed me in the aisle. I was in her way and had to move aside. “Sorry,” I said. “Excuse me,”

“Thanks,” said Chelsea Clinton. And four years later, her mother would run for President and fall short. I don’t know if my curse is contagious among family members, but it felt like a weird coincidence.

And what’s my reason for dredging all of this up? Well, the U.S. Presidential election is happening as we speak, and know this:

A few years ago I was on a layover in San Francisco. It was the day of the annual Pride Parade, which I found myself watching from a street corner at the foot of my hotel. Floats and cars burbled past, their occupants calling and waving: corporate contingents, local pols, VIPs. One of those cars was a festively adorned convertible. And in the back seat, waving to the crowd, sat, you guessed it, Kamala Harris.

Have I struck again? Number eight?

If you’re rooting for Harris to prevail, I’m sorry, but I can’t un-see what I saw. If there’s a means of reversing these dark powers of serendipity, I don’t know what it is.

What’s more is that about six months ago I saw Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, at Washington-Reagan Airport. He stepped off a plane and walked past me, maybe fifteen feet away, accompanied by three or four Secret Service agents.

And no, I have never seen or met a Republican candidate (or their spouses or offspring) for President. Whatever dreary karma I’m lugging around, it’s viciously partisan. If the Republicans were smart, they’d hire me and shuttle me around to their opponents’ rallies.

I should also mention that I once saw James Carville, the famous political consultant and “Democrat strategist,” going through TSA security at La Guardia. That was about fifteen years ago. It can’t explain my earlier encounters, but maybe Carville caught whiff of my bad juju and passed it along to the candidates I saw later.

As I type this it’s 6 p.m. on election night. We’ll find out very soon if the streak continues.

 

Related Story:

DONALD TRUMP WANTS TO REPAINT AIR FORCE ONE.

An older version of this story appeared in the online magazine Salon.

September 23, 2024

I FOUND THIS LIST, over at The Atlantic, published back in 2015: What Was the Most Significant Airplane Flight in History? A roll call of aviation luminaries, myself not included, was invited to weigh in.

The Enola Gay, bound for Hiroshima, that’s a heavy one. And from my fellow blogger Christine Negroni: “In 1914, Abram Pheil became the very first passenger on the very first passenger flight, a 23-minute trip from St. Petersburg, Florida to Tampa. Like the 12-second flight of the Wright Brothers eleven years earlier, his brief time in the air has had an enormous impact on the world.”

It’s hard to argue with her. But some of the other entries, I don’t know. D.B. Cooper, come on. Lindbergh’s solo crossing? Nah. Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer. The idea of lists like these is to draw from different perspectives.

Had I been asked, my entry for history’s most significant flight would be Pan Am’s inaugural of the Boeing 747 in 1970.

Pan Am’s Clipper Victor kicked things off between New York and London on January 21st, about six months after the success of Apollo 11. Why this flight? Well, if we broaden this conversation to planes generally, rather than specific flights, we have to rank the Boeing 747 as the most influential aircraft of all time. The industry’s first-ever widebody, it ushered in the concept of affordable long-haul flying, changing global travel as we knew it — and know it still — perhaps more than any other invention.

Plus, it was a gorgeous design. In a production run lasting more than fifty years, Boeing would sell more than a thousand of them.

(Ironically the Victor was the very same 747 destroyed at Tenerife in 1977, in history’s worst aviation disaster. Remarkably, this single aircraft was involved in two of the most historic flights of all time, one celebratory and the other catastrophic.)

Runner up, for influence if not aesthetics, would be the Douglas DC-3.

Rolled out in 1935, the DC-3 wasn’t really the first of anything, but it perfected the evolution of the all-metal passenger transport to become the first truly profitable and mass-produced airliner. So many thousands of DC-3s were built, in civilian and military versions, both in the U.S. and under license abroad, that nobody knows for sure the actual count.

As late as the 1960s more than a thousand DC-3s were still in airline service. Today every passenger plane, from a ten-seater to the 787, bears a debt to this antique piston twin.

Much the same way, Boeing’s four-engined 707 revolutionized air travel forever.

The 707 was third in jetliner chronology — the star-crossed de Havilland Comet and the Soviet Union’s Tu-104 copycat came before it — but it was faster, with greater range and more seats, taking the Comet’s ill fortune and turning it into gold, safely crossing oceans and continents at twice the speed of mainstay propliners.

When, in 1958, Pan Am launched the 707 between New York and Paris (just like Lindbergh), the jet age truly was born. A year later American Airlines inaugurated transcon 707 nonstops between New York and Los Angeles. The poet Carl Sandburg was aboard.

Yes, well, sorry to some of you who’d lobby for something flashier. The Concorde, I know, makes a prettier icon than the 707 or a DC-3. But while sexy and famous, it proved little beyond the non-viability of the SST concept. Perhaps when hydrogen replaces kerosene this category will be reborn.

 

Photo Credits:

Lufthansa 747 by the author.
Pan Am 747 courtesy of Pan Am Historical Foundation.
DC-3 courtesy of Unsplash.
707 by Boeing, public domain.
707 thumbnail from the author’s postcard collection.

 

September 11, 2024

MY MOST VIVID MEMORY of September 11th, 2001, is my memory of a cockroach.

It was one of the biggest roaches I’ve ever seen — copper-colored and bullet-shaped, the length of my little finger — and it came crawling across the platform of the Government Center subway station at 7:00 a.m., as I stood there waiting for the train that would take me to Logan Airport. It scampered, stopped, then zigged and zagged, in that deliberate yet utterly directionless way of insects, its footsteps so heavy I swear that I could hear them, click-click-click on the greasy concrete.

It portended everything, this giant subway cockroach. Or it portended nothing. And as it came closer I drew my foot back — my right foot, I remember with absolute clarity — and nudged it, gently, off the platform and down into the dark and filthy space alongside the tracks, where it disappeared more or less instantly into the shadows and detritus.

This is how we remember things.

Once on the train, I would chat briefly with a United Airlines flight attendant, whose name I never got, and who maybe, possibly — I’ll never know for certain — was headed to work aboard the doomed United flight 175.

I was on my way to Orlando, where I’d be picking up a work assignment later that afternoon. My airplane would lift off only seconds after American’s flight 11, the first of the two jets to hit the twin towers. I had watched the silver Boeing back away from gate 25 at Logan’s terminal B and begin to taxi. United 175 would launch a few minutes later. My plane was in-between.

In an old briefcase here in this room, I still have my boarding pass from that morning. It shows me assigned to seat 11D, on the aisle, but there were empty seats and I slid over the window.

Elevens were wild that day. On the 11th day of the month, flight 11 would collide with the World Trade Center, two buildings that shaped an enormous “11” in the Manhattan sky. I looked down from row 11.

But there was nothing to see, yet. I recall an almost uncannily clear view of Manhattan, taking note, as I always do, of that graceful little bend that the island makes — the way it turns eastbound just below Midtown. There was no smoke, no fire. I was just a few minutes — a matter of seconds, maybe — too soon.

A short time later, about halfway to Florida, we started descending. Because of a “security issue,” our captain told us, we, along with many other airplanes, would be diverting immediately. Pilots are polished pros when it comes to dishing out euphemisms, and this little gem would be the most laughable understatement I’ve ever heard a comrade utter.

Our new destination was Charleston, South Carolina.

A bomb threat had been called in. That was my hunch. My worry wasn’t of war and smoldering devastation. My worry was being late for work. It wasn’t until I joined a crowd of passengers in Charleston, clustered around a TV in a concourse restaurant, that I learned what was going on.

And there I am. I’m watching the video of the second airplane, shot from the ground in a kind of twenty-first century Zapruder film. The picture swings left and picks up the United 767 moving swiftly. This is flight 175. The plane rocks, lifts its nose, and, like a charging, very angry bull making a run at a fear-frozen matador, drives itself into the very center of the south tower. The airplane vanishes. For a fraction of a second there is no falling debris, no smoke, no fire, no movement. Then, from within, you see the white-hot explosion and spewing expulsion of fire and matter.

And then, a bit later, the collapse. And this is the important part. Because to me, had the airplanes crashed, blown up, and reduced the upper halves of those buildings to burned-out hulks, the whole event would nonetheless have clung to the realm of believability. Had the towers not actually fallen, I suspect our September 11 hangover, which rages to this day, might not have been so prolonged. It was the collapse — the groaning implosions and the pyroclastic tornadoes whipping through the canyons of lower Manhattan — that catapulted the event from ordinary disaster to historical infamy.

As I stand awestruck in this shithole airport restaurant in South Carolina, the television shows the towers of the World Trade Center. They are not just afire, not just shedding debris and pouring out oil-black smoke. They are falling down. The sight of those ugly, magnificent towers, collapsing onto themselves, is the most sublimely terrifying thing I have ever seen.

Then I would go to a motel and spend the night. The next morning I’d rent a car and drive all the way home to Boston.

This is how we remember things.

And pilots, like fire fighters, police officers, and everyone else whose professions had been implicated, had no choice but to take things, well, personally. Four on-duty airline crews were victims, including eight pilots. John Ogonowski comes to mind, the good-guy captain of American 11. Of the thousands of people victimized that day, Captain Ogonowski was figuratively, if not literally, the first of them. He lived in my home state; his funeral made the front pages, where he was eulogized for his philanthropic work with local Cambodian immigrants.

Maybe it’s melodramatic to say I felt a bond or kinship with these eight men, but it’s something like that. What they went through, these eight colleagues on the very front edge of the attacks, the very men whose airplanes would be stolen and weaponized, is something I can’t fathom yet, at the same time, I can imagine and visualize all too chillingly.

And yes, in the ten-second bursts it took the towers to fall, I knew something about the business of flying planes would be different forever. I just wasn’t sure what it would be.

Fast-forward. It’s hyperbole to speak of the world having been “changed forever” that day. I’m conservative and skeptical when it comes to these things. History is bigger than us. Try to take the long view, even if, all these years on, the dominos haven’t stopped falling. Heck, tens of millions of people died in World War Two — tens of thousands at a time, as the incendiaries rained down over Europe and Japan. A hundred thousand bodies one night in Tokyo alone.

Sure, things are different now. Albeit for reasons we don’t always own up to. I have to say, I’m discouraged — or should that be encouraged? — because more than any “clash of civilizations,” the real and lasting legacy of Mohamed Atta and his henchmen has been something more mundane: tedium.

Think about it. The long lines, the searches and pat-downs, the litany of rules and protocols we’re forced to follow — all this meaningless pomp in the name of security. Of modern life’s many rituals, few are marinated in boredom as much as air travel. “Flying” is what we call it. How misleading. We don’t fly so much as we sit and stand around for interminable amounts of time.

And most distressing of all, we seem to be okay with this. There’s the real legacy of September 11th. The terrorists have won, goes the refrain, and perhaps that’s true. It isn’t quite what they hoped to win, but they’ve won it nevertheless.

The irony that nobody talks about is that the hijackers’ ability to pull off the 2001 attacks so spectacularly had almost nothing to do with airport security in the first damn place. And none of the measures we see on the concourse today would have kept them from succeeding. I’ve made this point many times, but never have I seen or heard it acknowledged elsewhere.

As conventional wisdom has it, the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling boxcutters onto the airplanes. But conventional wisdom is wrong. What the men actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings and how they were expected to unfold: diversions to Beirut or Havana, with hostage negotiations and standoffs.

The presence of boxcutters was merely incidental — particularly when coupled with the bluff of having a bomb. The men could have used knives fashioned from plastic, broken bottles wrapped with tape, or any of a thousand other improvised tools. The only weapon that mattered was the intangible one: the element of surprise. And so long as they didn’t chicken out, they were all but guaranteed to succeed.

For a number of reasons, just the opposite is true today. The hijack paradigm was changed forever even before the first of the Twin Towers had dropped to the ground, when the passengers of United 93 realized what was happening and fought back. That element of surprise was no longer a useful device. Hijackers today would face not only an armored cockpit, but also a planeload of people convinced they’re about to die. It’s hard to imagine a terrorist, be it with a boxcutter or a bomb, making it two steps up the aisle without being pummeled. It’s equally hard to imagine that organized groups would be willing to expend valuable resources on a scheme with such a high likelihood of failure.

In spite of this reality, we are apparently content spending billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened and cannot happen again. Guards paw through our luggage in a hunt for what are effectively harmless items: hobby knives, scissors, screwdrivers. Meanwhile, even a child knows that a lethal implement can be crafted out of virtually anything, from a ballpoint pen to a shattered first class dinner plate.

And so on.

A September 11th post isn’t anything I’ve looked forward to, and I’m wary of the maudlin sentimentalizing and over-the-top coverage this anniversary brings each year. But something needs to be said, and so here it is. After all, nothing in my lifetime had a more profound effect on air travel than the events of that Tuesday morning twenty-three years ago.

At least until COVID-19 came along.

As the pandemic played out, it was interesting to notice the eerie parallels with September 11th and the ensuing “war on terror.”

Both crises were born of legitimately dangerous circumstances, but quickly became twisted by politics and hysteria. Curiously, this seems to have happened in opposite ways: After the 2001 attacks, it was mostly people on the right who bought into the hype and fear; who saw terrorists around every corner and were willing to sign off on things like the Patriot Act, TSA, the Iraq War, and so forth. Left-leaning people resisted. With COVID, it was left-leaning people who were more fearful and pessimistic, while those on the right advocate for a softer, more laissez-faire approach.

Why the difference? I suspect it’s because people who lean right are more naturally drawn to responses involving power and conflict; going after enemies, seeking revenge, etc. — all the things that came into play after September 11th. The pandemic, on the other hand, centered on concepts like compassion and “saving people.”

Both crises have mostly receded, thankfully. But one of the crucial takeaways, in both instances, was witnessing how, when people are afraid, they’ll quickly adapt to almost anything, including ways of life that are unproductive or harmful.

Just as the virus will stay with us, chronic and endemic, so will terrorism. There may have been, and may still be, a “war on terror,” but there will never be an end of terrorism.

How we live within this reality defines us for the long term. We can do so sensibly, or by waging a ruinously expensive, self-destructive battle with no conceivable end.

 

About the photos:

The picture at the top was taken by the author from the cockpit of a 19-seater in 1994.

The second picture is a watercolor rendition of the same, painted by Julianna Harhay, the daughter of Michael Harhay, a pilot for United Airlines. That is Michael’s arm in the first photo.

 

An earlier version of this essay appears in chapter six of COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL.

Related Stories:

CONSPIRACY NATION
AIRPORT SECURITY IN THE NEW CENTURY
THE HIJACKING OF TWA 847
THE SKIES BELONG TO US

Unexpected Pleasures at a Terminal Near You.

WITH SCATTERED EXCEPTIONS, airports don’t have a whole lot going for them. They’re noisy, dirty, poorly laid out, and just generally hostile to passengers. As my regular readers are well aware, I’ve made this point in numerous prior posts — perhaps too many times.

Now, so that I’m not always harping on the negative, here’s something different. “Hidden Airport” is a semi-regular feature highlighting little-known spots of unexpected pleasantness.

— NEW: Vonnegut at KIND

I wrote about the KIND Gallery in Indianapolis once before (scroll down). It’s time for a revisit, now that they’ve got an installation honoring the city’s favorite literary son, Kurt Vonnegut.

It’s funny how this happened: I was walking along the concourse towards my gate, and I said to myself: They should have something about Vonnegut here at the airport. Twenty seconds later I saw the KIND Gallery and its new exhibit.

There are books, of course, a typewriter (the significance of which is unclear), photos, and some of the author’s sketches.

This is a big one for me. I had long-time infatuation with Vonnegut’s work, beginning in my teens and running into my early 20s. I think I’ve read everything he published. Just a few months ago I re-read “Jailbird,” my favorite of his novels.

 

— FROM IDLEWILD TO JFK

No sooner did I write about the 100th anniversary presentation at Boston-Logan (see below), when I came across a similar setup at JFK. “From Idlewild to JFK” is a collage of photos following the history of the airport we all love to hate.

Kennedy is a dysfunctional mess half the time, and most of its architectural highlights have been demolished, but it’s nonetheless the most historically significant airport in the nation, if not the world, and this exhibit hits the bullet points: Saarinen’s TWA’s terminal, the Worldport, Pan Am 707s, the Concorde.

The whole thing is a bit half-assed, frankly. The airport deserves more than just a temporary gateside exhibit with a wall’s worth of black-and-white photos, and much is ignored (how is there no mention of I.M Pei’s famous “Sundrome” terminal?).

But it’s better than nothing, and a welcome distraction in the otherwise boring terminal 4. It’s over near the A gates. Have a seat in one of the economy class chairs and relax for a few.

The runway graphics on the floor are cute, I guess. Except there’s no runway 23 at JFK.

 

— Green Bay Game

I discovered this foosball setup near gate B2 at the pleasant little airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

I suppose it could get a little rowdy, but on the morning I was there a couple of kids were quietly knocking the ball back and forth.

Foosball is table soccer, which seems anathema in NFL-obsessed Green Bay (I was taking the Packers to Denver on a charter flight), but what the heck. It’s a welcoming, low-tech, old-school sort of distraction you don’t find much at airports anymore.

 

— Historical Logan

In terminal E at Boston’s Logan International, near the new security checkpoint, is an exhibit called “Logan 100,” commemorating the airport’s centennial. It’s a collaboration between Massport and the Boston Globe.

We Bostonians take a unusual civic pride in our little airport. More than a mere gateway, Logan is a part of the city. It’s a vibe you can feel as the seven LCD screens sequence through a century’s worth of archival photos, showcasing the people, planes, and events that helped shape Boston over the last century: VIP arrivals (The Beatles, Muhammad Ali), airlines that have come and gone (Northeast, Air New England), and the unforgettable headlines (the Blizzard of ’78, the arrival of Pope John Paul II in 1979).

What’s not here are Logan’s more infamous moments. The Delta and Eastern crashes, for example, or the World Airways incident in 1982. But that’s to be expected, I guess.

If you’re flying out, take a few minutes to stop by. You don’t need to be an airline nerd to appreciate the pictures.

Congrats to Massport and the Globe for having the good sense to come up with this. Now, if you’d please turn off those unbearable promotional PAs that blare in the connector walkway between A and E.

 

— BANGKOK GREEN

The new concourse at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport has opened. A short train ride connects it to the main terminal. The gates are designated with “S,” for satellite.

In one of the more peculiar flourishes I’ve seen at an airport, several of the gateside waiting areas include a wide section laid with artificial grass. I’m not entirely sure what the intent is, but I like it.

Do with it what you will: sprawl out and relax; let your bratty kids run around. If you’ve got your clubs, maybe practice your swing. I laid down for a few minutes and stretched.

You don’t see a lot of green in airports, and the effect is strangely pleasant and refreshing — even if it’s fake. I think they should go one better and install some plants or small trees along the perimeter.

 

— MSPee BREAK

Yes, it’s a mosaic in the vestibule of an airport men’s room. Minneapolis-St. Paul, concourse F. The artist is Josie Lewis, who presumably is this person. (She may or may not have a similar installation in the nearby women’s bathroom. For obvious reasons I didn’t check. Maybe a reader can report back.)

It feels wasted, maybe, to have such a pretty work of art in such an easy-to-miss space, where the only people who see it are rushing to take a whiz. On the other hand, aesthetic non-sequitirs like this can be charming, popping up where you least expect them. It’s aviation-themed, too, if that’s not too much of a stretch.

 

— NORFOLK SPECIAL

This one isn’t so hidden. Indeed it’s the entire main terminal of the airport in Norfolk, Virginia.

I’ve always been fond of ORF, and was happy to find myself there on a layover recently, for the first time in at least a dozen years. We love the clean, almost Scandinavian-style architecture, the unencumbered spaciousness, the skylights. I was able to get two great photos; one evening and one daytime, from more or less the same vantage point.

U.S. airports can be dreadful. Sometimes it’s the smaller ones that set themselves apart. Norfolk is a great example.

 

— CHAIRLESS IN BOSTON

This one is an almost. It’s a squander.

Where we are is Boston, at the south end of the pedestrian bridge connecting terminals A, E, and the central garage, just at the top of the escalator. This tucked-away alcove, right at the end, is a sunny, quiet spot out of range of the loudspeakers, with great views of the tarmac and the skyline beyond. It’s a perfect little spot. Except, there’s nowhere to sit. A hideaway like this needs to be savored. We dig the bottlcap sculpture, don’t get me wrong, but why are there no chairs?

The pedestrian bridge, in place for about twenty years now, was a welcome addition to Logan and architecturally handsome, the floor inlaid fetchingly with sea life mosaics created by Somerville artist Jane Goldman. But if you’re making the walk, the experience is ruined by a constant bombardment of public address announcements. What could be a relaxing six-minute stroll is spoiled by a tape-loop of needless “Welcome to Boston” promotions and parking instructions. This alcove offers a relaxing escape, but without a place to sit it’s easily overlooked.

Note to Massport: Chairs. Get some chairs. And turn off the bloody PAs while you’re at it.

 

— CINCINNATI READING ROOM

Cincinnati International (CVG) isn’t as as bustling as it once was, with Delta drawing down service after its merger with Northwest. But it’s a fairly busy airport and a pleasant one at that. And over on concourse B you’ll find this little library of sorts.

It’s more of a book swap than a proper library; you’re free to abscond with the title of your choice, or exchange your half-read copy of “Our Country Friends” for something better. Or drop into that funky chair and peruse a few chapters of some shitty crime thriller.

I have to say, the pickings were pretty dismal on the day I dropped by. And it feels a little ad-hoc: we wonder if this isn’t just a place-holder standing in for some unrented retail space, soon to be yet another overlit shop selling magazines and phone chargers. Possibly, but we like the idea, and for the time being it’s a peaceful nook to steal away in.

 

— BAHAMA CHILL

Nassau’s Lynden Pindling International Airport, in the Bahamas, doesn’t give you much to write home about. It’s an unpleasant complex of noisy kids, dirty fast food joints and hour-long security lines. But just outside, in a space between the domestic and international departure halls, you’ll find this sunny oasis of greenery and water.

We had three hours between flights, and this was the perfect spot to wait things out. No children, no crowds, no racket save for the sound of birds (which, I discovered, is piped in through a speaker). There are shady spots with benches, and the free airport wifi signal is strong enough to stream on.

You can sit inside at a greasy table at KFC, or you can sit here.

 

— BLEACHER FEATURE

A vast, overcrowded echo chamber of concrete, Mexico City’s terminal two is one of the least enjoyable airport buildings around. Downstairs in the arrivals lobby, however, set back against the rear wall, is one of the most creative and idiosyncratic features I know of: a set of bleachers, seven benches tall and about fifty feet wide, where family and friends can wait for passengers to emerge from the customs hall.

Arrivals lobbies are often a chaotic scrum of jockeying and shoving, people calling out names and craning their necks. From the bleachers, you have a clear view across the crowd, and can easily pick out your mom, your son, or your mistress without having to wade into the mob.

Here’s a low-tech idea that saves space, is eminently helpful, and costs almost nothing. Why have I not seen this anywhere else in the world?

 

August 5, 2024

“Meltdown” is the buzzword used when computer glitches throw air travel into disarray, as happened a couple of weeks ago. But is there a more literal application? How do extreme temperatures impact air travel? The question is important, as heat waves pummel the globe and we keep breaking records for the hottest-ever temperatures.

On the most basic level, hot weather affects air travel the way it affects most things: it makes people uncomfortable and wears them down. Things happen more slowly. With all that nonreflective asphalt and open space, airports become “heat islands,” subjecting people and equipment to sometimes unbearable conditions. Imagine what it’s like slinging suitcases out on the tarmac when the mercury hits triple digits.

Workers are subject to overheating, and so is their equipment: tugs, tractors, cart and lifts — all the myriad moving parts of airport logistics. Airplanes themselves, meanwhile, have a lot of internal machinery, both electronic and mechanical, and much of it runs hot to begin with. Throw in soaring temps and things can break down.

Aerodynamically, warmer air is less dense than cooler air, meaning that in hot weather a wing produces less lift. Jet engines don’t like this low-density air either, producing less thrust. Engines also are subject to internal temperature limits — exhaust gas temps, etc. — beyond which operation isn’t permitted. Together, this dictates higher takeoff and landing speeds — which, in turn, increases the amount of required runway.

What all of that means for travelers is that your flight might be weight-restricted and unable to take a full load of people or cargo. How much so will vary with the temperature and runway length.

Outright grounding of flights is rare, but at a certain point that can happen too. Some aircraft have a hard temperature limit — usually around 50 degrees Celsius — beyond which taking off simply isn’t permitted. We also get a detailed paper printout before each departure that factors in weight, temperature, wind, runway length, and so forth, providing us with the speeds, thrust, and flap settings that we’ll use for takeoff. Sometimes, above certain temperatures, data doesn’t exist.

So, you could say there are hard and soft limits. The aerodynamic limits are soft. That is, you don’t know for sure if a flight can safely depart, or at what weight, until you juggle the numbers. The hard limits are the absolute temperature maximums, set by the manufacturer, that you’re not allowed to exceed.

If your flight is weight-restricted — or canceled — you’re liable to get a dumbed-down synopsis over the gateside loudspeaker or from your pilots. Something along the lines of, “We’re sorry but it’s too hot to fly today.” This makes it sound subjective, or up to the whims of the crew, but in reality it’s more scientific.

Extreme heat is no fun for airlines or their customers. Unfortunately, you can expect more of it as climate change causes more and more extreme weather events, including extreme heat waves.

It’ll be especially interesting to see the effects on those carriers whose hubs are located in what are already the hottest places on earth. The Gulf Carriers, for example (Qatar, Emirates, and Etihad) or Saudia, or Air India. Fortunately for them, many of their long-haul flights arrive and depart in the dead of night, when it’s cooler.

All well and good, but I’ve failed to address the one question you’re lining up to ask: Why are are planes so damn hot when parked at the gate?

Well, a plane’s air conditioning is supplied one of three ways:

1. Via the engines. Air for the “packs” as the AC units are called (it’s an acronym from the words “pneumatic air cycle kit”), is plumbed from the engine compressors. This is the most effective way of cooling or heating the cabin.

2. However, planes can’t run their engines at the gate. And so, during boarding and deplaning, air is supplied to the packs via the plane’s APU, or auxiliary power unit. This is a small jet engine usually located up under the tail. The APU can power the packs as necessary, but they won’t run as robustly as when the main engines are supplying the air.

3. Via an external air supply. You’ll sometimes see fat, caterpillar-like hoses connected to the belly of a plane. These provide hot or cold air as requested from an air conditioning unit attached to the jet bridge. The effectiveness of this method tends to vary plane to plane and gate to gate.

Variations in 2. and 3., above, are the reason the cabin is sometimes sweltering. Or, in winter, freezing cold.

 

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Landing photo by Victor Forgacs, courtesy of Unsplash.
Emirates photo by the author.

July 15, 2024

Everyone’s talking about turbulence. Each week now, it seems, we’re reading about this or that flight getting wracked around by unusually rough air. People are being injured, flights are diverting. In one case a passenger died after a Singapore Airlines flight hit severe turbulence over Southeast Asia.

Are dangerous turbulence encounters becoming more prevalent, or are they merely getting more attention?

I honestly don’t know. That’s a bummer of an answer, but I’m unaware of any stats indicating things one way or the other. For now it’s all pretty anecdotal.

That includes my own observations. For instance I seem to notice more and larger thunderstorms these days — over the U.S., over the Atlantic — than I did in years past, but that’s without any objective measuring; it’s just a hunch.

Either way, the media loves a scary-sounding airplane story. In an age when large-scale air disasters have become vanishingly rare, news sources — to say nothing of social media — have taken to hyping minor mishaps instead. That Singapore Airlines incident (the passenger actually died from a heart attack after the turbulence upset) got as much coverage as a crash that killed 200 people would have gotten in decades past.

Another factor is the number of planes in the air. There are more than twice as many commercial flights aloft at any given moment as there were a generation ago. More flights, more people; an uptick in incidents is inevitable.

It’s also possible that yes, turbulence is getting worse. It stands to reason that as climate change intensifies weather patterns and causes bigger, more powerful storms, flying will, to a small but perhaps measurable extent, be bumpier.

How much bumpier is impossible to know, but cases where passengers are hurt or aircraft are damaged will likely remain uncommon. (This is being studied as we speak, though you can expect any results pointing to climate change to set off further squabbling rather than, as it were, clearing the air.)

Also helping are the technological tools now at our disposal. The weather apps that we use in the cockpit are far more advanced than they were even five years ago, and are remarkably accurate when it comes to predicting the where, when, and how bad of turbulence — and how best to avoid it.

Even in worst-case turbulence encounters, meanwhile, the seat belt will probably keep you safe. The vast majority of turbulence-related injuries are suffered by crew members moving through the cabin, or passengers who weren’t belted in when they should’ve been. Flights might get bumpier, but the basics of staying unhurt remain the same.

 

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July 18, 2024

My custom is to set my alarm an hour or so earlier than our scheduled wake-up. For coffee and Instagram and such.

Having done so this morning, and now with nothing better to mull before the phone rings, it strikes that the name “Half & Half” is both redundant and meaningless.

If a product is half of something, then it’s automatically half of something else, no? A single percentage sum, by itself, should take care of it, obviating any need for a second one. This product should be called “Half.” (Which, admittedly, doesn’t carry much of a ring.)

Further, we ask, “Half & Half” of what, exactly? The name goes out of its way to overstate the obvious, yet fails to inform us what these respective halves consist of. Olive oil? Cranberry juice? Sand? Why the mystery? Indeed, as revealed in the picture above, and despite the kind assurance of ultra-pasteurization, the carton front displays no ingredients whatsoever.

Once again we find ourselves beguiled by the whims and foibles of corporate branding.

Now, in fairness to both mathematics and marketing, the second 50 percent of content could be easily diminished into additional fractions of whatever might compose it. The product could be half of one thing, but smaller amounts of multiple other things. Thus the name “Half & Two Quarters,” or some such.

This makes the whole conversation somewhat semantic (if less fun).

What we also see in the photograph, to our considerable dismay, is one of the more sadly devolved touches of modern carton manufacturing: the plastic screw top.

Those of us of a certain age remember the old-fashioned fold-back carton top. We miss the simplicity once employed to open, then quickly re-seal, a carton of milk or juice or “Half & Half.”

The choreography of the act was more complex than it looked, acquired through habit until performed without thinking, akin to tying one’s shoe: a tear, an unfolding, a bend, a squeeze.

The carton had no separate or moving parts. Rather, it was manipulated through a kind of muscle-memory origami. And when finished pouring, the resultant spout was, even more effortlessly, flipped back and restored to its original shape.

When did the transition to screw-tops begin? I want to say it was the early 1980s.

An inspirational debt is owed here to the author Nicholson Baker. Or vice-versa, perhaps, since this complaint was composed, at least in my head, before I’d read his wonderful book, The Mezzanine — the only other other place, to my knowledge, in which this subject is explored (page 42 in my edition). The book dates to 1986, which gives my timeline credence.

“The radiant idea that you tore apart one of the triangular eaves of the carton,” writes Baker, “using the stiffness of its own glued seam against itself.” The hand-formed, diamond-shaped opening was, “a better pourer than a circular bottle opening, because you could create a very fine stream of milk very simply.”

Indeed. The screw top, barbaric in comparison, with its jagged throw-away pull-ring and propensity to drip and splash, presumably provides more freshness, but at the cost of an almost magically elegant design.

Equal parts curiosity and nostalgia had me attempt the old-style maneuver at home, on the carton shown below. Results were mixed. The basics still work, but the molded circular collar now gets in the way. The adhesive seems different as well. The seams are no longer as tolerant to tearing, neither do they re-fold with as much authority.

April 23, 2019

DID YOU HEAR the one about the flight that went to Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf?

On March 25th, a British Airways regional jet took off from London City Airport (LCY) bound for Dusseldorf, Germany. An hour or so later, the passengers found themselves in Edinburgh, Scotland. Not until the jet touched down did they realize they were headed to the wrong city.

Reporting on this incident has been inconsistent at best. Obviously certain outlets find the whole “the pilots flew to the wrong airport!” angle irresistible. But that isn’t what happened. The pilots, the flight attendants, and their aircraft were dispatched, flight-planned, and fueled for a trip to Edinburgh. That’s where they were expected to fly, and that’s where they went.

The passengers, on the other hand, thought they were going to Dusseldorf. In other words, the plane didn’t fly to the wrong city. The passengers were put on the wrong plane.

The breakdown was apparently between the technical staff (pilots, dispatchers and flight attendants) and the airport personnel who processed and boarded the passengers. The former were Edinburgh-bound. The latter were handling a flight to Germany — or so they thought.

But, you’re thinking, wouldn’t the “welcome aboard” spiel by either the pilots or cabin crew have given things away? We always mention the destination, don’t we? And surely flight attendants would have noticed “Dusseldorf” on the customers’ boarding passes, right? The signs and announcements at the gate, too, would have referenced Edinburgh. Could all of this have somehow been missed?

I, for one, can see it happening. Those PAs are sometimes perfunctory, and how many people are listening to begin with? And I can easily — easily — imagine a scenario where the gate personnel and flight crew found themselves on separate pages, regardless of any boarding announcements or signs above the podium. The fact this was a contract company flying on British Airways’ behalf, rather than an actual BA aircraft operated and overseen by BA personnel, could also have been a factor.

Embarrassing, sure. But not the same thing as two pilots taking their plane to the wrong destination. Which, I’m the first to admit, has happened. More than once…

In 2013, a Southwest 737 destined for Branson, Missouri, instead ended up at a small general aviation field nearby, touching down on a runway less than four thousand feet long. Only a few months earlier, a 747 freighter operated by Atlas Air found itself at the wrong airport in Kansas. In June, 2004, a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Rapid City mistakenly landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. And, in 1995, a Northwest DC-10 touched down in Brussels instead of Frankfurt. And this is only a partial list.

The idea of highly trained aircrews with troves of technology at their behest landing astray sounds, I’ll agree, amusing, quaint, or even patently ridiculous. So how does it happen? Improperly keyed coordinates? A navigational computer gone crazy? Or is there a more visceral, seat-of-the-pants explanation, such as a tired crew mixing up a pair of similar-looking runways.

If there’s a common thread, it’s that often in these cases pilots were flying what we call a “visual approach.” Most of the time, jetliners land using what we call an ILS (instrument landing system) in which controllers guide us onto a pair of radio beams — one vertical, the other horizontal — that form a sort of crosshair that we track to the runway, either manually or by coupling the ILS to the plane’s autoflight system. There are also what we call “non-precision” instrument patterns, in which a GPS-guided course takes you to a few hundred feet or less above the pavement.

But a visual approach, as the name implies, is almost entirely pilot-guided. This is when high-tech goes low-tech. Essentially you eyeball the airport through the windshield, report “field in sight” to ATC, get your clearance and go ahead and land. When available we back-up a visual with whatever electronic landing aids might also be available (an ILS signal, usually), But sometimes our orientation is based entirely on what we see through the window.

Visual approaches are very common, very routine, even at the biggest and busiest airports. Airline pilots perform thousands of these approaches every day without incident. However, you need to be sure of what you’re looking at. This is particularly true at smaller airports, where cues on the ground (roads, coastlines, buildings etc.) aren’t as obvious, and where you might not be familiar with the surroundings. Certain combinations of circumstances make a mistake more likely: a nighttime visual with low-altitude maneuvering, for instance, at an airport you’re not used to, with perhaps a similarly laid-out airport nearby.

In the winter of 1990 I was copiloting a small turboprop when we were cleared for a nighttime visual approach to New Haven, Connecticut. As it happens, the lights and orientation of nearby Bridgeport, Connecticut, appear strikingly similar to those of New Haven. After a minute or two we realized the error and corrected course. All of this happened far from the runway, and, somewhat in our defense, we were flying a 15-seat Beech-99 — a vintage relic from the Age of Aquarius, with as many electronic accoutrements as my mountain bike.

In addition to whatever human errors catalyze such events, weather and air traffic control (ATC), to name two, can lend a hand in getting from point A to, as it were, point C. In the case of that DC-10 finding its way to Belgium instead of Germany, air traffic controllers had been given the wrong information, and began issuing a long and complicated series of vectors and course changes to the crew, sending it toward Brussels. Airspace in Europe is complex and congested, and roundabout routings aren’t uncommon. Thus it wasn’t necessarily obvious to the crew that they were being led astray. By the time the crew realized they were being vectored to Brussels, they decided to land there rather than have to recalculate fuel reserves and orchestrate a last-second re-routing. In the end, it was probably safer to land at the wrong airport than the right one.

The act of landing a plane is, on one level, inordinately simple. At the same time, it’s a maneuver beholden to technology. It can be one, or the other, or both, depending on circumstances: the aircraft type, the approach being flown, the weather, the airport. There are times when an old-school, seat-of-the-pants skill set is exactly what’s required. Other times it’s all but impossible to find a runway without help from the instruments and screens in front of us. Either way, though, it comes down to judgment and decision-making. Despite everything you hear about autopilot and the alleged sophistication of modern jetliners, it’s the fight crew — the pilots — who are very much flying the airplane. Sometimes it takes an embarrassing mistake to make this clear.

May 27, 2024

IT WAS THE FRIDAY of Memorial Day weekend, 1979. I was in seventh grade, and a diehard airplane buff. It was a warm and sunny afternoon, and I was sitting in the dining room of the house I grew up in when the phone rang. It was a friend from school. He told me to turn on the television.

It had been a sunny day in Chicago, too, when just after 3 p.m. American Airlines flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with 271 people on board, roared down runway 32R at O’Hare International Airport, headed for Los Angeles. Just as the plane lifted off, its left engine broke loose. The entire engine, which weighed about eight thousand pounds, together with its connecting pylon and about three feet of the wing’s leading edge, flipped up over the wing and slammed back onto the runway.

As the engine ripped away, it severed hydraulic lines, releasing the hydraulic pressure that held the wing’s leading edge slats, deployed to provide critical lift during takeoff, in place. The slats then retracted, causing the left wing to stall. The plane rolled sharply to the left and plunged to the ground, disintegrating in a trailer park just beyond the airport perimeter.

Everybody aboard was killed, along with two people on the ground. With 273 fatalities, the crash of flight 191 was, and remains, the deadliest air disaster in U.S. history.

Descriptions of the accident are jarring enough. But we can see the horror, too, quite literally. Because a man named Michael Laughlin captured what might be the most haunting aviation photographs ever taken: a sequence of pictures showing the stricken jet literally sideways in the sky, in the throes of that ghastly twist to the left. And then the explosion. I don’t have permission to republish the photos here, but Google will oblige your queries.

When pylon cracks were found in several other DC-10s, the entire U.S. fleet was grounded for five weeks by the FAA. American, United, Northwest, Western and Continental were forced to pull all of their DC-10s from service. Foreign carriers were banned from flying DC-10s into the country.

NTSB investigators would eventually lay most of the blame on faulty maintenance practices and FAA oversight thereof. American — and other airlines, too — had been using a workaround procedure that caused unseen cracks to form in the engine pylon. But design flaws played a role as well. Unlike other planes, the DC-10’s wing slats were held in the extended position by hydraulic pressure, not by a mechanical lock. When the detached engine sheared the hydraulic lines, the slats retracted and the left wing essentially ceased flying.

The stall warning system also lacked a critical redundancy. It was powered only from the left-side electrical system, which had failed when the engine broke away. Thus, the pilots never realized their jet was stalling. Had captain Walter Lux and his crew understood, aerodynamically, what was happening, it’s very possible — likely, even — the catastrophe would’ve been averted.

I’d flown with my family on an American DC-10 on a vacation to Bermuda only two months before O’Hare. In the photo below you can see my mother (in pink), my sister (yellow), and my grandmother (gray), climbing the airstairs on the Bermuda tarmac. It’s possible — who knows — this was the same jet that would plummet to earth on May 25th.

The DC-10 had a checkered past even before O’Hare. In 1974, the horrific crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 outside Paris was caused by a defectively designed cargo door and a poorly reinforced cabin floor. McDonnell Douglas, in a race wtih rival Lockheed to produce a three-engined widebody jet, had hurriedly built a plane with a door that it knew was unsound; then, in the aftermath, they tried covering the whole thing up. It was reckless, maybe criminal.

The plane’s reputation was such that some people refused to ride on one. This included one passenger booked on AA 191 who, learning that he’d be boarding a DC-10, switched his travel plans at the last minute, effectively saving his life.

After the 191 crash, American began swapping out the “DC-10 Luxury Liner” decals from the plane’s nose, replacing them with a more generic “American Airlines Luxury Liner.”

So where am I going with this? I’m not sure, to be honest. But here on the 45th anniversary of flight 191, on Memorial Day no less, the story feels important.

And it hardly needs saying that what happened to the DC-10 reminds us in no small way of the ongoing drama of Boeing’s 737 MAX. The similarities are uncanny: multiple crashes, a grounding, a manufacturer accused of negligence and shoddy design.

In the case of the DC-10, fines were paid, lawsuits were settled, technical fixes were put in place. (Among the lawsuits was one against McDonnell Douglas filed by the family of Captain Lux.) The plane soldiered on and Douglas regained the public’s trust (mostly; the 1989 United crash at Sioux City was another black eye). Time works wonders that way. The Clash would even shout out to the DC-10 on “Spanish Bombs,” from the London Calling album.

How things will pan out for the MAX, and for Boeing, remains to be seen.

For a thirteen year-old airplane nut in Boston, the most exciting thing about the FAA grounding in ’79 was a temporary influx of exotic airplanes into Logan. For a month carriers would substitute other types. United’s DC-10 to Chicago became a 747 — the only 747 I’d ever seen in that carrier’s livery. Swissair brought in DC-8s, Lufthansa sent 707s. And so on. New planes, new colors. I couldn’t get to the airport fast enough.

You can always count on a kid, I guess, to find a silver lining in something so awful as a plane crash.

The DC-10 wasn’t the prettiest plane of its day, lacking the grace of its main competitor, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. Both were three-engine widebody jetliners with room for around 250 people, and both were built with a center engine mounted in the tail. But the TriStar was the sleeker by far, with that center engine integrated into the rear fuselage through a sexy, S-shaped intake duct. Douglas just jammed the engine through the base of the fin, like they didn’t know what else to do with it. For the same reason, there was no mistaking it. Few planes had a more distinctive profile.

 
DC-10 PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR

May 28, 2024

LAST WEEK, a passenger died and multiple more injured when a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 encountered severe turbulence while en route from London to Singapore. The encounter happened over Myanmar and the flight diverted to Bangkok. Then, on May 26th, twelve people were hurt when a Qatar Airways jet hit severe turbulence during a flight to Dublin.

The media is off and running, no doubt triggering panic among the many flyers for whom turbulence is an acute fear.

If you’re one of those people, the first thing I can do is refer you to the turbulence essay found in the Q&A section of this website. You can read it here.

The second is to emphasize the rarity of incidents like this one. Any turbulence encounter powerful enough to hurt scores of people and tear away ceiling panels and overhead lockers, is a frightening prospect. And as climate change intensifies weather patterns and creates more powerful storms, we may see more of them. But they are, and should remain, exceptionally uncommon.

And maybe most important of all, it’s been reported that most, and possibly all, of the injured passengers were not wearing seatbelts. If you’re belted in, even the worst turbulence is unlikely to cause harm. Keep your belt on anytime you’re seated. Crews will often make a PA reminding you to keep your belt on on anytime you’re seated. This is a good example why.

We should also mention that the man who passed away on the Singapore flight died from a heart attack, not from any sort of impact trauma caused by the turbulence directly.

Prior to last week, if I’m counting right, the most recent turbulence-related fatality on a commercial jet occurred in 2009. Before that, a passenger was killed aboard a United Airlines flight in 1997. That’s two or three deaths in a roughly 25-year span, during which close to thirty billion — with a b — passengers traveled by air, aboard tens of millions of flights. Try to let those numbers sink in. This is the kind of thing even the most frequent flyer (or pilot) won’t experience in a lifetime.

What happened is unfortunate and scary, but it’s not a reason to freak out and cancel your flight because the turbulence app on your iPhone shows yellow.

The media focus, meanwhile, has been relentless. An accident in which one person died has received as much attention as a disaster that killed 200 people once would have. That’s not an exaggeration; I can remember when major crashes, in other parts of the world, would be buried on the second or third page of the newspaper. Most people didn’t even know they occurred.

This is one of those “for better or worse” things. It’s precisely because of how rare crashes have become that we hyper-focus on the smaller stories.

 

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Photos by the author.