PILOTS SPEND a lot of time looking down. One of the odder sights I’ve beheld is that of Sable Island, a low-lying castaway crescent in the North Atlantic, about 170 miles east of Nova Scotia.

I remember the first time I saw it, maybe two decades ago, flying back from Europe one afternoon. I looked down, and there was this stretched-out sickle of land where common sense told me there should be nothing but blue. “What’s this thing underneath us?” I asked the ATC facility in Gander.

“Sable Island,” came the answer. I jotted down the name and looked it up.

It’s Ile de Sable, in French, which means Island of Sand. That more or less sums it up. It’s about 27 miles long, but only a miles or so across at its widest point. From 35,000 feet it looks like a giant toenail clipping lost at sea.

It’s home to a small airstrip, a research station, and about 500 Sable Island horses, a feral breed that has roamed there since the 1700s. A Canadian National Park Reserve, Sable is off limits to visitors without a permit. Which is probably just as well, considering its remoteness and the bleakness of the North Atlantic climate.

Sea level rise and erosion have the island marked for oblivion by the end of this century, so see it while you can. Keep your window shade cracked next time you’re flying westbound from Europe, and maybe sneak a peek.

 

Photo by the author.

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.

— SCHIPHOL UNDERGROUND

In the central departure hall in Amsterdam, there’s a cutaway in the floor laid over with glass. About fifteen feet long, it’s sort of like the sections of sidewalk you’ll find in certain cities, beneath which pedestrians can look down at ancient ruins. In this case, you’re looking down into a section of the airport’s luggage transfer system. As you walk along, you can see suitcases shuttling forth on the conveyors beneath you.

It’s nothing elaborate, and the no-slip stickers blot out too much of the view. But it’s the sort of quirky, flyer-friendly gesture Schiphol Airport is famous for, and it helps give the terminal some charm.

 

— RETRO BOS

I don’t know if this is permanent or not, but in baggage claim at Boston’s terminal A they’ve set up this vintage arcade with 1980s-era video games. Gen-Xers can relive their younger days with some Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

 

— 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?

 

July 10, 2025

THERE’S NOSTALGIA, and then there’s time travel.

The latter is impossible, but every once in a while, in the right circumstances, you can nudge up against it.

For me it happened a few nights ago, at a small concert venue in Malden, Massachusetts. Up on stage was an outfit called Greg Norton & Büddies. The buddies, or Büddies, were guitarist Jon Snodgrass and drummer David Jarnstrom. And Greg Norton was Greg Norton, bassist from the legendery Minnesota threesome Hüsker Dü.

I hadn’t seen Greg since October of 1987, when Hüsker Dü performed at a club called Toad’s in New Haven, Connecticut. This was shortly before the band’s demise; the thirteenth, and last, time I would watch them play.

Even before the death of drummer/vocalist Grant Hart in 2017, the possibility of a reunion was never taken seriously. It wasn’t gonna happen, and we superfans knew it. We had our memories, our albums, our bootlegs. That would be it. The closest we could come was going to see Hart or Bob Mould on their solo tours, enjoying the newer stuff but always waiting impatiently for whatever Hüsker classics they might sprinkle in.

Then one day, all these years later, Greg Norton says fuck it. He teams up a pair of outstanding musicians and hits the road playing nothing but Hüsker songs. “Celebrating 40-plus years of Hüsker Dü!” boasts the promos. No ambiguity here; you don’t have to wait for an encore to hear “Books About UFOs” or “Celebrated Summer.”

I’d skipped out on the last several Bob Mould shows, but this was something different. Barring the outlandish possibility of Mould teaming up with Norton, this would be as close to seeing Hüsker Dü again as will ever be possible. I couldn’t not go.

Call it a cover band if you have to. But then, is it a cover band, exactly, when one of the guys is, well, one of the guys? How to even describe this? Imagine Beatlemania, except way cooler and starring an actual Beatle.

Which is probably an insulting way to put it, because there was nothing superficial or gimmicky about the hour-long set Norton and his mates blasted through. I knew ahead of time that a number of songs would be sung by audience members ambitious enough, and sentimentally motivated enough, to give it a try, and so I expected it to be fun. And it was. What I didn’t expect was how passionate it would be.

That’s probably due, in part, to the energy that longtime devotees like me brought with us into the room. This was, for us, more than a novelty act. (And yeah, it was a distinctly older, Gen X crowd.) But it’s also true that the band kicked ass.

One third of Hüsker Dü can never be Hüsker Dü, but damn if the songs weren’t nailed. Greg might hate me for saying this, but their set was tighter than some of the Hüsker sets I stood through back in the 80s. I missed the sight of Mould’s iconic Ibanez flying-V, but Jon Snodgrass knew the songs backwards and forwards. As did Jarnstrom on drums (who unlike Grant Hart wears shoes while he plays).

The set list was just about perfect, though I wish they’d done “Terms of Psychic Warfare.” I loved the choice of “It’s Not Funny Anymore” as the kickoff, and kudos too for bringing out Hart’s, “Back From Somewhere.” There aren’t a lot of memorable cuts on the Warehouse album, but that’s one of them them — one of Grant’s mini-masterpiece sleepers.

At one point Snodgrass took the mic and and talked for a moment about the song “Divide and Conquer,” comparing it to a Bob Dylan song. He wasn’t kidding around, and this leaped out at me. What it made clear is that these guys weren’t just doing an imitation of Hüsker Dü. They were doing their best to replicate, and to wholeheartedly respect, the band’s energy and spirit. They know and understand why people like me take their music so seriously. Led along, of course, by Greg, who was there for the real thing.

And who, by the way, at 67, can still get some air with those signature jumps.

Close your eyes for a second, and let that time machine kick in. This was as close to 1985 as you’ll ever get again. A tribute in the best possible way.

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Photo courtesy of Joshua Pickering.

July 9, 2025

THAT SOUND you heard was the sudden rejoicing of tens of millions of U.S. air travelers. They’re whooping it up because TSA just rescinded its longstanding requirement for passengers to remove their shoes prior to screening. The change was announced on July 7th. It came without warning and went into effect immediately.

The shoe rule was put in place in 2006, five years after British terrorist Richard Reid attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight with explosives hidden in his sneakers.

“Thanks to our cutting-edge technological advancements and multi-layered security approach,” said the agency in a press release, “We are confident we can implement this change while maintaining the highest security standards.”

Whatever that means, exactly, is unclear. The important part is, lines will move more quickly.

One of my biggest gripes with airport security has been how entrenched the rules and protocols have become. Aside from the PreCheck program, not much has changed since the early 2000s — other than the fact we’ve gotten used to it all. There’s been little outside pressure to overhaul or re-think our berserk approach to keeping the skies safe, and travelers have merely grown accustomed to the tedium. The time and resources we’ve wasted over the last two decades is staggering.

So consider me surprised. And encouraged.

Hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit. Most of Europe and Asia came to their senses a while back, but a number of countries still make flyers doff their Birckenstocks.

We hope, too, that the liquids and gels policy is next.

 

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Photos courtesy of Getty Images and Unsplash.

October 18, 2021

LATE LAST WEEK, Alitalia operated its final flight and officially ceased to exist. For seventy-four years, Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A., as it was formally known, had carried Popes, kings, despots, movie stars, and tens of millions of tourists, across a network that once spanned six continents.

Its demise was both a complete surprise and not the least bit shocking. The airline spent its existence in a more or less permanent state of distress, yet it always managed to pull through, be it from a government bailout, cash from a foreign partner, or some combination. Not this time. Thus, one of the most recognized names in the industry has disappeared, joining the likes of Swissair, Sabena, Malev, and the other classic European carriers that have vanished.

A new, government-owned entity, Italia Trasport Aereo (ITA) is taking its place. With the whole thing being schemed out in advance, it’s more of a reincorporation — a reinvention — than a shut-down in the traditional sense, with ITA absorbing most of Alitalia’s assets and employees. Could they not have done this without totally dissolving such a well-known brand? Though, maybe, having left such a legacy of struggle, that was the point.

The transition has so far been messy. The ITA website and mobile app have been plagued with problems, and the new airline has struggled to receive U.S. government approval to operate here. While they sort things out, let’s do the fun thing and have a look at the identity they’ve come up with…

I can’t get my head around this one. It’s not ugly so much as confusing. Or maybe it’s confusing and ugly. The colors and styles are so mis-matched as to seem almost arbitrary — a big, weird, non-sequitur. The patterned tail motif reminds me of a doily, or the kind of tablecloth you’d find in certain Italian restaurants. To replace Alitalia’s iconic “A” emblem, worn since the ’70s, they needed to step up. They didn’t.

About the only positive thing is the ITA logo. The typeface is distinctive and elegant in an old-school sort of way. (In fact it’s almost too old-school, reminiscent of a made-up airline from a movie.) And, smartly, they’ve kept the red, white and green, which is a nod to Alitalia and the colors of the flag. On the airplane, however, the blue background requires the letters to be rendered only in white, so the whole effect is lost.

In an annoying last-minute decision, they went and added “Airways” into the carrier’s name. “ITA,” just by itself, was smoother, simpler, and perfectly adequate. But no, they had to jam “Airways” in there, because apparently passengers are stupid and might forget that it’s an airline. Loosely translated, the carrier is now called “Italian Air Transport Airways.”

With or without the extra word, it lacks the poetry of “Alitalia.” Still, it’s better than “Italian Air,” “Prego,” or any of several other garish possibilities. We may have dodged a bullet there.

Grade: D

 

Alitalia photo from author’s postcard collection.

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June 18, 2025

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE, pilot and celebrated journalist, has passed away at age 70.

Langewiesche’s articles covered a lot of ground, from the 9/11 attacks to the Iraq War to nuclear proliferation. But it’s his air crash chronicles, which appeared in Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, and the New York Times, that to me are the most unforgettable. His accounts of EgyptAir 990, the 2006 midair collision over the Amazon, and the disappearance of MH370, among others, are the best examples of aviation journalism I’ve ever read.

William was a National Magazine Awards finalist eight times, and held a degree in cultural anthropology from Stanford. Not your typical reporter or your typical aviation nerd. He was on another level. In an era of “content creation” and slapdash news coverage, his meticulously researched stories and vivid narrative style will be sorely missed. Nobody did it better.

I never met William, but we exchanged emails and phone calls many times, and he was kind enough to contribute a blurb to my book.

His father was Wolfgang Langewiesche, author of the seminal art-of-flying primer, “Stick and Rudder,” which has been in print since 1944.

 

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UPDATE. July 14, 2025

The preliminary crash report on Air India flight 171 is out, and what it says is startling.

It contends that at the moment of takeoff, both fuel control switches “transitioned” from the RUN to CUTOFF positions, essentially killing both engines.

One of the pilots is then heard asking the other why he did this. The second pilot responds that he did not. (Which pilot was speaking to whom is not specified.)

A few seconds later the switches transitioned back into the RUN position. The engines began spooling up again, but there was nowhere near enough time for them to produce adequate power.

In other words, it seems that one of the pilots switched off the fuel intentionally.

Or did he? Notice the investigators’ use of the word “transitioned.” The report is not fully clear as to whether the data recorder was tracking the flow of fuel independent of the switch position, or if it shows the switches themselves were, in fact, physically moved by hand. If they weren’t, it remains possible that an electronic glitch in the plane’s digital engine control system could be the culprit.

But if the switches were moved to CUTOFF manually, the billion-dollar question is why? Were they moved by accident, or nefariously? Was it an act of absurd absent-mindedness, or one of willful mass murder, a la EgyptAir, Germanwings, and (almost certainly) MH370.

As preposterous as the idea of a pilot mistakenly shutting off the engines sounds, I’ll note that it’s happened before. Consensus, however, is trending toward premise number two.

At least to me, though, the dynamics of the crash don’t really fit the suicide theory. You’re saying that the pilot’s plan was to cut both engines and let the plane glide into the ground? That seems an awfully conservative scheme. There would be a lot of unknowns in such a scenario, and no guarantee that the ensuing impact would be as disastrous as it turned out to be.

Just to the left of the impact zone was an area with no buildings and fewer obstructions. Perhaps with just a little more altitude they could’ve reached it, resulting in a crash that was partly survivable. Calculating the exact impact point ahead of time would’ve been nearly impossible.

Further, the second pilot denied shutting off the engines when queried by the first one. Why?

Rumors are circulating that the captain was going through a divorce and had been treated for depression. Whether or not this turns out to be true, just keep in mind that although depression sometimes turns people suicidal, only in the rarest cases does it also turn them murderous.

One thing that should pique interest is the report’s inclusion of a Boeing service bulletin issued a few years ago. The concern was fuel control switches failing to properly lock. The bulletin pertained to 737s, but the same basic switch is used on the 787 as well. Is it possible the fuel switches on Air India 171 were defective, and were moved from RUN to CUTOFF by nudge or vibration?

 

UPDATE. July 9, 2025

The focus now is on the fuel control switches. These are a pair of manually positioned cockpit controls that effectively turn the engines on or off.

These switches lever-lock into place cannot move automatically. Whichever position investigators say they were in, a pilot had to put them there.

If an engine fails during flight, one of the steps in securing that engine is to shut off its fuel control. In the case of Air India, what’s being whispered is that an engine may have failed on takeoff, and one of the pilots then grabbed the wrong switch, thus rendering both engines inoperative only a few hundred feet over the ground.

The biggest problem with this idea is that engine failures aren’t handled this way. All pilots are trained to wait until a safe altitude — usually at least a thousand feet — before commencing any steps to secure or troubleshoot a malfunctioned engine. You don’t start moving critical controls until there’s adequate time and altitude. Additionally, any time a fuel control switch is lifted out of the RUN position, both pilots must verbally confirm the correct one is being manipulated.

Is it possible a pilot could’ve have reacted in a panic and done exactly the wrong and catastrophic thing? Yes, and it’ll be quite troubling if it turns out one fuel control switch was found in RUN, with the other in CUTOFF.

And what if they were both found in CUTOFF? Well, putting aside the a possibility that the plane was crashed on purpose, this would make some sense. One of the steps addressing a dual engine failure — rare as such things are — is to cycle both fuel control switches. That is, move them from RUN to CUTOFF, then back again.

If something in the plane’s electronics went haywire and caused the engines to lose power simultaneously, we can imagine a desperate crew, with only seconds to spare, attempting the re-start process, with both fuel controls repositioned to CUTOFF and not enough time to get them on again.

Nothing in the preliminary report will be definitive, but if the switches were found in different positions from one another, this hints at pilot error. If both were found in CUTOFF, this hints at a dual failure and a last-ditch re-start effort.

 

UPDATE. June 24, 2025

It’s looking more and more likely that flight 171’s ram air turbine (RAT) was indeed deployed just prior to the crash. If so, this more or less confirms a loss of power in both engines.

Why it lost power is another issue altogether, and a potentially calamitous one for Boeing.

See below for more.

June 15, 2025

AIR INDIA flight 171 plunged into a neighborhood seconds after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon, killing more than 270 people. The exact death toll is uncertain, as the search for bodies continues. One passenger survived.

My rule this soon after an air disaster is to avoid conjecture. Crash investigations can run for months before causes are nailed down, and first-glance theories, however convincing they seem in the moment, often turn out to be wrong.

That being said, evidence suggests the Boeing 787 suffered either a loss of thrust in both engines, or an inadvertent retraction of the plane’s flaps and slats before reaching sufficient speed.

The plane climbed to only about 400 feet above the ground (the 650 feet being reported by the media is the altitude above sea level), leaving the pilots no time to troubleshoot or turn back. All they could do was glide straight ahead. The flight path was stable, but the jet slammed into buildings at over 150 miles-per-hour, exploding into a fireball.

The loss of thrust theory is evidenced a few different ways. Most notably, one of the pilots, in a mayday call to air traffic control, reported power loss to air traffic control. In addition, some of the video footage appears to show deployment of the 787’s ram air turbine (RAT), a device that extends from the fuselage automatically, triggered by the loss of both engines, to provide flight control power. The “bang” heard by the surviving passenger could have been the RAT dropping into place, and the buzzing noise in one of the videos could be the sound of the device doing its thing (it’s essentially a propeller driven by the oncoming air). The footage is grainy and unclear, however.

Engine failures are rare. A loss of both engines is exceptionally rare. A bird strike, a la Captain Sullenberger, would be one possible culprit, but so far nothing points to this. Other possibilities include a malfunction of the 787’s electronic engine controls, fuel contamination, or ingestion of runway debris. There’s also the chance, however far-fetched, that a pilot shut the engines down, either out of carelessness, or, in a worst-worst-worst case situation, deliberately.

Getting back to those grainy videos, it’s hard to see much detail, but the wings look strikingly “clean,” which is to say the flaps appear retracted. Flaps, which extend from the trailing edge of the wing, together with slats, which extend from the front, provide critical lift at low speeds. Jetliners almost always take off with these devices extended (the particular setting varies with weight and runway length). The pilots then retract them incrementally as speed increases. Perhaps in this case they were brought up inadvertently — or by way of some bizarre malfunction — immediately after takeoff, resulting in a loss of lift without enough altitude for recovery.

Then we have the landing gear. It was not retracted after liftoff, as normally would be the case. Curiously, this hints at either of the two scenarios just discussed. In the first one, we imagine the pilots, distracted by engine warnings and a sudden loss of power at the worst possible time, simply neglecting to raise it. In the other, a pilot mistakenly retracts the flaps rather than landing gear. The probability of such a mistake is absurdly low, but it’s bigger than zero.

On the other hand, the 787’s aerodynamics are uniquely sculpted, and when the flaps are extended the wings take on a camber, a smoothly downward curve, front-to-back, that makes the flaps less conspicuous than they are on other airplanes. Looking at videos of 787s taking off under normal circumstances, loads of which can be viewed online, those wings, too, look very clean. And photos from the crash site show a wing with flaps and slats that appear to be extended, at least partly.

The stronger evidence points towards power loss. My hunch is that something went wrong with the jet’s digital-electronic engine management system.

Whatever it was, the data and voice recorders will tell us shortly. That would be the how. Figuring out the why might take more time. For Boeing’s sake, let’s hope it’s not a design flaw buried in the plane’s high-tech architecture.

This is the worst crash since the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, more than a decade ago. As of June 20th the body count is 274 people, including dozens killed on the ground.

The media keep reminding us how terrible the last twelve months have been for aviation, with at least four high-profile accidents. It hasn’t been a good run, but as I underscored in a recent post, historical perspective and context are important. Even including the past year’s spate, we see far fewer plane crashes than we used to. Heck, in 1985 there was a serious accident every 13 days, on average (including the bombing of an Air India 747 that killed 329 people). Multiple deadly disasters were once the norm, year after year. This is no longer the case, despite the number of commercial flights more than doubling since the 1980s.

 

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Photo courtesy of Unsplash.

May 10, 2025

AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS of flying the Boeing 757 and 767 — plus several earlier years on an assortment of other types — I’ve switched over to the Airbus.

The transition wasn’t easy, entailing more than a month of study and simulators, with a series of tests and evaluations along the way. For those of you who buy into the old “jetliners just fly themselves” mantra, five weeks of A330 training might change your mind.

You may already know that Boeing and Airbus operate quite differently, each with its own platform of control, automation, and flight management. You’ll be expecting me to expound on the challenges of learning to use a side-stick control rather than a yoke, for instance, and understanding the Airbus’s unique “flight control laws,” and so on.  As it happens, I don’t have much to say on those things. Stick versus wheel… sure, it’s different, but the adjustment is quick.

What you might be surprised to hear me say, however, is that I find the Airbus a less sophisticated machine than the Boeings I’d been flying, even though its baseline technology is newer (late 1980s versus early 1980s). Conventional wisdom holds the Airbus in higher technological esteem, but to me the pilot-machine interface is a more cumbersome and work-intensive one. Tasks that took one or two button-pushes in the Boeing might take five in the Airbus. Is there a Frenchman Rube Goldberg?

And there were several moments during training that where I caught myself asking, “What do you mean it can’t…?” Certain things about it are peculiarly old-fashioned. At one point I starting calling it “the Soviet Boeing.”

This by no means makes the plane less safe. The things I’m talking about are stylistic, idiosyncratic. There’s a grace that’s missing. If Boeing is Apple, Airbus is most certainly Microsoft. They both get the job done safely, but Boeing does it more elegantly.

Among the A330’s attributes, none is more impressive than its ability to take off and land at remarkably low speeds. It owes this to a huge and beautifully sculpted wing (its span is over 200 feet) that is able to excel both at high-speed efficiency and low-speed docility. At typical weights, the jet is off the ground by 150 knots and touching down at 135 or so. For a plane of its size that’s amazing.

Neither is it bad looking. I’m always bemoaning the bland aesthetics modern jetliners, but I have to say, the A330 is a sexy exception, the -900 variant especially.

But truth be told, so much of what enamors pilots to their planes is creature comfort. And on that count, I’ll take the Airbus over the 757/767 any day. The cockpit is roomy and quiet. There’s a downstairs bunk room to rest in on long-haul flights, and instead of a clunky control wheel in front of me, I’ve got a table to write on. 

I expect I’ll grow to like it.

One thing I haven’t done, to the consternation of some of my friends, is make the upgrade from first officer to captain. I remain a lowly copilot, for now.

This by design. Staying in the right seat offers me extremely high seniority — single digits within my category and base — allowing me to pick and choose my trips, vacation weeks, days off, and so on. And the biggest bonus of all, it allows me to be based at home, no longer slogging to and from New York each time I have to work. As captain I’d be commuting still, and working much harder. Pay-wise, I can almost make up the difference by pulling a monthly overtime trip.

 

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Upper photo by the author.
Cockpit photo courtesy of Andres Dallimonti and Unsplash.

November 5, 2019

I’ve pretty much had it with the safety demo arms race: the noise, the gimmickry, the hoary attempts at humor.

The competition has been tight in this mad contest, with various carriers attempting to out-cute one another, setting their briefings to music, using animation, adding celebrity cameos, and so on. Some months ago, Virgin America brought us this unforgettable, five-minute fever-dream. We also had this, courtesy of Taiwan’s Eva Air. Could anything be worse?

Oh, yes. In what has to be the most excruciating of all the many efforts, comes the latest from Qatar Airways. Yes, we know, the world loves football. Which in no way excuses the skin-crawling awfulness of this production. It’s lifeless, aimless, and very, very long. We have a winner.

There’s no denying that airline safety briefings are dull. However, setting all of this ornamental gibberish to music or humor, while it might generate a little publicity and a bit of social media buzz, does not make it more compelling. It also undermines the purpose of the briefing in the first place. If safety is really the point, the briefing should be taken seriously. Here, you’re watching it for fun — wow, like, that’s so edgy and interesting and cool — rather than to learn something that could save your life. The informational aspects of it, many of which are important, are buried in the noise.

Here’s a better idea: shrink it. The reason people don’t pay attention to the safety demos is because they are too damn long — a kind of legal fine print come to life. They do contain some important and useful info, but it’s so layered in babble that people tune out and ignore the entire thing. With a pair of shears and some common sense, most of this ornamental gibberish could be trimmed away to create a lucid oration that passengers might actually listen to, and remember something that could save their lives.

Hit the bullet points and be done with it. No pre-flight demo, be it a video or the old-fashioned “live” version, should be more than about ninety seconds long.

And, of all the blather that is crammed into the typical briefing, one of the most potentially valuable pieces of instruction is frequently glossed over or is missing entirely: a warning that passengers leave their carry-on items behind during emergency evacuation. In the past few years, we’ve seen several runway evacuations during which passengers came down the escape slides with their roll-aboard bags and other heavy items. I cannot overemphasize how dangerous this is. This should be a bold-print, high-emphasis item in any briefing. Instead we get complicated, twenty-step directions on how to use a lifejacket — as if anybody might remember them. I could also mention that while neither is likely, a runway evacuation is a lot more likely than a water landing.

Flying is a noisy enough experience as it is, and airline passengers are already instructed, talked to, and yelled at enough, from the barrage of public address announcements in the terminals to the various on-board spiels. We don’t also need five minutes of singing and ridiculous performance art. I’m all for airlines thinking outside the box and getting creative. We need more of that, frankly. Just not like this.

 

March 24, 2025

APROPOS OF nothing, aside from the nagging frustrations of getting older, it dawns on me that, at one point or another during the course of my beleaguered career, I’ve worked at three of commercial aviation’s most historically significant airline terminals.

And I don’t mean just passing through. I was based in these buildings.

In the early and mid-2000s I worked New York’s JFK Airport out of what, at the time, was known ignominiously as “terminal 3.” In its heydays, though, this was the Worldport, the home hub of Pan American World Airways.

The Worldport was never beautiful, architecturally, but it was one the most distinctive airport buildings ever constructed — a Jet Age fantasy topped with a dramatic elliptical rooftop that loomed over JFK like a giant flying saucer. Kings and queens, sheiks and ambassadors, statesmen and spies all had walked its corridors. And me, of course, headed off to Paris or Sao Paulo or Dakar.

Even before I worked at the Worldport, I more or less knew my way around it, having flown Pan Am several times as a kid. My first-ever visit had been in the spring of 1979, when I was in seventh grade. Me and a friend embarked on a secret trip to JFK — a sort of junior pilot’s planespotting pilgrimage, in which we’d spent the entire Saturday afternoon up on roof, watching and photographing the jets. We’d used our birthday money to buy round-trip tickets from Boston. We brought packed lunches, binoculars, and an old Kodak 110 camera. Our parents had no idea.

By the 2000s, long after Pan Am’s glory days, it was dilapidated and falling to pieces — a grimy warren of dimly lit passageways and peeling paint. Strategically placed buckets and sheets of canvas collected the rainwater that poured through ceiling cracks. The great flying saucer was still there, but its crumbling masonry evoked little beyond a crying need to be torn down.

Which, in 2013, it was…

Also in the early 2000s, prior to my time in terminal 3, I operated some flights from the Marine Air Terminal over at La Guardia.

The M.A.T. is William Delano’s Art Deco jewel in La Guardia’s southwest corner, right on the water. Opened in 1940, it was originally the embarkation point for Pan Am’s flying boats. Inside the rotunda is the famous “Flight” painting by James Brooks.

Unlike terminal 3, it remains standing, kept from destruction by the good sense of Gotham preservationists. The building’s newer extension is used today by Spirit Airlines, which is maybe an example of the worst kind of irony. Most passengers pass through the newer section without ever seeing the original atrium or the Brooks mural, but you can detour through if you want.

Commissioned in 1952, the mural traces the history of aviation from mythical to (then) modern, Icarus to Pan Am Clipper. The style is a less-than-shy nod at Socialist realism, and at the height of ’50s McCarthyism, in a controversy not unlike the one surrounding Diego Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center, it was obliterated with gray paint. Not until 1977 was it restored.

There’s even a cozy garden and picnic spot just outside, to the right of the gleaming Art Deco doors as you face them, where you can relax beneath the blue and gold frieze of flying fish.

And, swinging back to JFK, in 1996 I flew out of Eero Saarinen’s landmark TWA terminal.

This is the most famous of the three terminals, and probably the only one that deserves to be called iconic (fewer words are more overused these days, but here’s one time it belongs).

“All one thing,” is how Saarinen, a Finn whose other projects included the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the terminal at Washington-Dulles, once said of it. It’s a fluid, unified sculpture of a space, at once futuristic and organic; a carved-out atrium reminiscent of the caves of Turkish Cappadocia, overhung by three cantilevered ceilings that rise from a central spine like huge wings.

In 1996, though, when I was working there as a captain for TWA Express, it had long since fallen into disrepair. Clutches of sparrows lived in the rafters, I remember, bouncing across the floors in a hunt for crumbs. The walls were discolored and the carpeting gave off an ammonia stink. It was a wretched place in swift need of a wrecking ball.

What happened, instead, was a miraculous reinvention. After sitting empty for several years, it was turned it into a hotel. Or, more accurately, it was renovated and a hotel was added on.

The TWA terminal is now the TWA Hotel, with the original section serving as a check-in lobby and, though it’s not described as such, a museum. It’s been kitch-ified a touch, but overall the preservation efforts were beautifully executed. If you can afford the rates, come stay the night. If you can’t, stop in and wander around for an hour.

So there it is. My New York City “terminal triangle.”

I have six more years before the government makes me hang up my wings. These are things I think about.

I think, too, about how our airports have changed — devolved, maybe, is the better word — in the decades since Eero Saarinen or the Marine Air Terminal. With only scattered exceptions, they’ve become unspeakably generic, lacking of any real architectural vision or grandeur.

Right next to the TWA terminal at JFK used to stand the National Airlines “Sundrome,” a glass-and-steel beauty designed by I.M. Pei. Think about it: Saarinen and Pei, at the same airport, a few hundred feet from each other. The Sundrome was demolished about ten years ago, and on that hallowed ground today sits the hulking nothingness of jetBlue’s “terminal 5.”

Functionality and efficiency are now the only measure. Like so much of the air travel experience, it ain’t what it used to be.

 

ALL PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

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