HüSKER Dü WERE A TRIO from Minneapolis. Guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart sang and wrote the songs. Greg Norton played bass guitar and chipped in on vocals.

A punk band, you would have to call them, as throughout the early and mid-1980s they toured and recorded primarily within the ecosystem of the American hardcore punk scene. At heart, though, they were always something else. They fit in, you could say, without quite fitting in.

“Hüsker Dü seemingly defined the punk ethos,” wrote Terry Katzmann, one of the band’s longtime friends once put it, “without necessarily embracing or endorsing it.” Perfectly put.

The band could play louder and faster than anyone alive. When this got constraining, they’d bring in 60s-style pop hooks, psychedelia, heavy metal. Often at once, which to me is the kernel of what made them great. They were never powerful or something else. They were both, everything, all at the same time.

This blending of styles alienated many of the more orthodox fans within the punk scene. It also won the acclaim of many more, and it’s by no means a stretch to consider Hüsker Dü one of the most influential acts ever to emerge from the American underground.

Before its stormy demise in late 1987, the band would release six full-length albums, two EPs, and a catalog of singles and extras. But the pinnacle of all that output was Zen Arcade, first delivered to stores in July, 1984, by California-based SST records.

I remember the day I bought it. Newbury Comics — the one on Newbury Street — on a midweek afternoon, sunny and hot. I was eighteen years-old.

We knew there was an album coming coming out, but weren’t sure when, exactly, it would hit the racks. In these pre-Internet times, news of such things was always unclear and came sporadically, delivered by college radio or gleaned through your network of friends. Sometimes it was a paper flyer glued to a mailbox or tacked to a record shop bulletin board. Nobody was a bigger Hüsker Dü fan than I was, but this latest album, due in the stores at any moment — I didn’t even know the title.

Suddenly there it was, on a rack up front. It was called Zen Arcade, whatever the heck that meant. I picked it up and, hey, what’s this, it’s a double album! As a teenage punk rocker weaned on Black Flag and Minor Threat, with a rather one-dimensional appreciation for music, the very weight of the thing, together with the heady title and the washed-over, almost Impressionist cover art was intimidating. It seemed so arty and grown-up. It also made me curious. What was this strange record?

What it was, and what it remains almost forty years later, is the greatest indie-rock album of all time — if not, in my extraordinarily biased opinion, the greatest rock album, period.

“The most important and relevant double album to be released since the Beatles’ White Album,” bragged SST’s own press release. There was some confidence for you, to say the least, when you consider the world of underground music in 1984. This was not only an obscure band, but an entire musical domain that existed far below the mainstream waterline. Then as now, the idea of comparing a little-known indie band to the Beatles seemed at best pretentious and at worst totally absurd.

Was it?

Twenty-three songs is a lot of music, but this is one the rare two-record sets that isn’t bogged down by its own overreaching or conceit. The scourge of most double LPs, back when there was such a thing, is they went on for too long — padded with live cuts, covers, and extras (heck even London Calling has its throw-aways). There’s no filler in Zen Arcade. Each and every song, from the shortest (44 seconds) to the longest (14 minutes), belongs exactly in its place.

Yes, that includes “The Tooth Fairy and the Princess.” The longest-named song on the record is probably the most easily dismissed. But it’s a clever little tempest, littered with switchbacks and small melodic explosions.

The album is best savored not as a CD — and for heaven’s sake not as a download — but in the old, cardboard-and-vinyl package. That’s a quintessentially record-snobbish thing to say, but unavoidable in this case, where each of the four sides is a distinct chapter with its own temperature and architecture.

Greg Norton, Grant Hart, and Bob Mould, circa 1984.
Photo by Naomi Petersen.

Side one gets going without the slightest fuss, with the snap and kick of Bob Mould’s “Something I Learned Today,” eventually winding down with “Hare Krsna,” a booming, tambourine-backed instrumental (mostly).

The first time I heard “Hare Krsna,” sizzling over the stereo in a Boston area record shop not long after the album’s release, I remember the young clerk furrowing his brow, looking up toward the speakers and saying, “Somebody needs to write a dissertation about this song.” I couldn’t care less if they were plagiarizing a Bo Diddley riff; “Hare Krsna” is a mesmerizing, three-and-a-half minute cyclone of melodic chaos that still gives me the chills. Listen to Mould hitting the strings at time 0:44.

Side one alone is unforgettable. And there are three more to go. This is the ultimate workhorse album from the ultimate workhorse band, one so rich with sonic nooks and crannies that an in-depth listen leaves you not only battling tinnitus, but tired. So many changes from fast to slow, hard to soft, love to hate, all in perfect working sequence. And each side-break is a perfectly placed respite. I can’t think of a more brilliantly arranged opus than Zen Arcade. “The closest hardcore punk will ever get to an opera,” wrote David Fricke of Rolling Stone.

Indeed, this is a proverbial concept album — a musical story, in the spirit of the Who’s Tommy, allegedly describing the journey and tribulations of a young man. He leaves home, maybe joins a cult, maybe joins the Army…whatever. Alt-rock historians love reminding us about this, but you’re free to ignore it. Any lyrical backstory is incidental to the record’s impressiveness.

You’ll find a gamut of effects: acoustic guitar, chairs being thrown, waves breaking, whispers and chants. There’s even the breezy piano of “Monday Will Never be the Same.” (If Ken Burns ever directs a documentary about the history of alt-rock, the tinkling of “Monday” needs to be its backing theme.) Such eclectics are brave, maybe, for what was supposedly a punk album, but they never become maudlin or melodramatic. If you think today’s co-opted rockers are clever with the tempo card, shifting from tough to tender, check out Grant Hart’s “Never Talking to You Again,” a sing-along from side one done entirely in 12-string acoustic. “Heartfelt” is the word that jumps to mind, but it’s not the syrupy strum you’d hear nowadays. The song is biting and sharp — an attack. Ditto for “Standing By the Sea,” with Hart’s cathartic bellows set against bassist Greg Norton’s eerie thrum and the soothe of a crashing surf.

Back in ’84, the rock critic Robert Christgau chose Hart’s “Turn On the News,” from side four, as his “song of the year.” Christgau said many flattering things about Hüsker Dü, but that one was the gimmie pick, like saying the Concorde is your favorite airplane. It’s an easy song to like, but an even easier one to outgrow. If the album has a best song, it’s probably Bob Mould’s neo-pscychedelic “Chartered Trips,” the fourth cut off side one. (“Trips” is almost Mould’s single greatest work, topped only by his spectacular rendition of the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” released as a single just prior to Zen Arcade.)

Runner-up would be Hart’s “Pink Turns to Blue,” from side three. Officially the credits for this one list both Mould and Hart, but really this is Grant’s piece. He took all the hook and melody of his earlier masterpiece, “It’s Not Funny Anymore,” and sandblasted it into a haunting anthem of love, drugs, and death. The song is simply gorgeous — and a little bit terrifying. Score it ahead of “Chartered Trips” if you want. I’m not going to argue.

September, 1984, in the dressing room at the Channel.  
Boston Rock magazine.

“Pink Turns to Blue” follows “One Step at a Time,” a brief piano time-out that, as much as anything else, allows the listener to catch his or her breath. The pregnant pause between the last note of “One Step” and the opening chord of “Pink” is like those one or two seconds between a lightning bolt and a thunderclap, and is one of the record’s strongest moments. It reminds me of the similarly unforgettable transition into “Sweet Jane” on the Velvet Underground’s Loaded album.

Before going further, I’m aware how this favorite songs thing can turn tedious pretty quickly. Grant Hart himself once offered a disclaimer: “People will always embrace different songs for different reasons,” he told me. “A song that might seem terrible filler, serving only to move the story along, will be someone’s favorite on the album. Bob and I were both responsible for those kind of songs.” Of my beloved “Hare Krsna” Grant claims that he was merely “furthering the story without adding much musically.” Hart felt similarly about some of Mould’s thrashier and more “hardcore” material.

To his point, not all of the album is easy to like and, depending on your ear and level of patience, the value of certain songs might not reveal itself for some time. For me it was twenty years before the first four songs from side two (Mould at his most furious) finally clicked. They’d always been so noisy and formless. Suddenly they weren’t. This was partly a context thing, maybe: the album, like wine, getting better not despite its age, but because of it. It took the overall shittiness of music in the 21st century to underscore the greatness of cuts like “Pride” and “The Biggest Lie” — mere footnotes in 1984. They’re awesome songs, at once explosive and subtle, but buried amidst so many other and perhaps better choices, that even the band’s most devoted fans tend to skip them over.

Similarly it was decades before I learned to appreciate “Broken Home, Broken Heart,” the second song on the album, for the gem that it is, tucked anonymously between “Something I Learned Today” and Hart’s “Never Talking to You Again,” with Norton’s bass stealing the show. And that a supposed punk rock album could jump from the fury of “Broken Home” to the acoustic beauty of “Never Talking”, without so much as a flinch, was a watershed in American music.

Though not entirely a surprise. Even at breakneck velocity there always was something ineffably refined and just, well, different about Hüsker Dü. If pressed to explain, one might break out 1982’s Everything Falls Apart EP. Amidst side one’s hypsersonic avalanche is Hart’s cover of Donovan’s 1966 hit, “Sunshine Superman.” Playful, perhaps, on the face of it, until you hear how un-ironic the remake is, without a note’s worth of smirk or parody. This wasn’t a joke.

Later, on his solo tours, Bob Mould would often play acoustic versions of some of the hardest and fastest Hüsker Dü songs — cuts like “In a Free Land” or “Celebrated Summer” — and the results were startlingly pretty. That’s just not going to work if you’re Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys or Bad Brains. Or Nirvana. Run even the noisiest Hüsker song through a centrifuge and something elegant reveals itself.

Concert flyer, Boston, 1984.   Author’s Collection.

With its blend of hippie love and hard rock thunder, Zen Arcade would, in a way, finish the job that the Velvet Underground and even the Beatles had tinkered with earlier. But while the blending of power/pop extremes was nothing new, the Hüskers pulled it off in a way that was never gimmicky (not until their lazy cover of “Love is All Around,” the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, in 1986), and, most remarkably, did so on such terrain –- the American hardcore punk scene –- where nobody expected it or even believed it possible.

“A strenuous refutation of hardcore orthodoxy,” as Michael Azerrad puts it in his book, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. “Zen Arcade was the final word on the [punk rock] genre, a scorching of musical earth. The album wasn’t only about Hüsker Dü coming of age — it was about an entire musical movement coming of age.”

Zen Arcade is the album Nirvana and its contemporaries only wish they could have made: intelligent, clamorous, and hashing out more torment and passion in four sides than all the grungers and headbangers since. All without a hint of heavy metal pretension: to think anyone could concoct a fourteen-minute bombast of guitar leads and layered distortion — “Reoccurring Dreams,” side four — and have it not come out self-indulgently.

All right, maybe it’s a little self-indulgent. But listen carefully enough and you’ll learn that “Dreams” can be parsed into six or seven subsections, each of them breaking through to the next, right in the nick of time. The song is long, but never wears out its welcome. It belongs there, in its entirety. An epic album deserves an epic close.

And when the 40-second whine at the end of “Dreams” is at last pinched off, the album burning to a close in a congealed, numbing squeal, the silence that follows is palpable, as dramatic as any of record’s loudest moments. Only then, as your senses regain their composure, is it apparent that your notions of punk rock are changed forever.

But not everybody, however — not even Grant Hart — has openly accepted such lavish praise. Chatting over email some years ago, Grant described Zen to me as “the album that fans tend to wear on their sleeves.” Did he mean people like me? Have I been too sentimentally fond of it for some reason?

“The impact of Zen Arcade on the Zeitgeist is hilarious to me,” Grant went on. “Hilarious in the almost alchemical-mechanical way it has been embraced by true music fans and hipster-flipsters alike. When somebody states that Zen is their favorite LP, I get the notion to ask why. As we move further from the time it was released, it seems I get more honest answers.”

My honest answer is that I like it the best because it sounds the best, and by the sum of its parts it is the best. And for the record, Zen Arcade is not my “favorite” Husker Dü LP. New Day Rising is my “favorite” Husker Dü LP. But that’s getting personal. When you look at it objectively, Zen is the better and more profound of the two.

Norton, Hart, Mould, circa 1983.
Photo by Daniel Corrigan.

Hüsker Dü were nothing if not prolific. A mere six months after Zen Arcade came New Day Rising, which woke the country from its winter freeze in January, 1985. These are two best albums of the 1980s, and they appeared within six months of each other!

Eight month’s after that came “Flip Your Wig,” the band’s last album before signing with a major label. Flip suffers from terrible production but is nonetheless memorable, highlighted by Hart’s pièce de résistance, “Keep Hanging On.” Prior to Zen, meanwhile, was Metal Circus, a brilliant seven-song EP from 1983. Together, these four records represent, easily, the most potent 1-2-3-4 punch in the annals of indie music. All released in the astonishing space of less than two years. That’s simply incredible.

In 1986 and 1987, having moved from SST to Warner Brothers, Hüsker Dü released two disappointing and anticlimactic albums,”Candy Apple Gray” and “Warehouse: Songs and Stories.” I’m unsure which of these two records annoys me more, but neither, really, has much place in this conversation. “Candy Apple Grey” does well at the start and finish — I’ve always loved the gothic guitar squall of the opener, “Crystal,” as well as the closer, “All This I’ve Done For You” — but the rest is flyover country, including Bob Mould’s abominable “Too Far Down,” which has to be the ugliest song he ever recorded.

With Warehouse, it’s as if they took Zen Arcade placed it on a table in front of them and said, “Okay how can we ruin this?” Like Zen Arcade, it’s a double LP. Unlike Zen Arcade, it’s bloated with filler. I’ll always love “Back From Somewhere” and “She’s a Woman (and Now He Is a Man),” but the plodding, uninspired likes of “Ice Cold Ice,” “You’re a Soldier,” and too many others, anchor this one at the bottom of the Hüsker canon.

Bob and Grant had their power struggles, but as a songwriting tandem their talents were wonderfully complementary — think Strummer and Jones, or McCartney and Lennon. This was much of what made the band so great. By the time “Warehouse” warbles to a close, clearly this synchronicity is unraveling. Hart, at least, holds his own on this record, while Mould’s songs are overextended and lazy. Depressing as it was, you could say that Hüsker Dü broke up exactly when it needed to.

Meanwhile, unless I’ve missed something, none of the big music magazines or websites gave Zen Arcade so much as a mention on its 20th, 15th, 30th or 40th birthdays. Some years ago Spin awarded it the number four spot on its ranking of the hundred best-ever “alternative” records, and Rolling Stone, in a manic best-of-the-80s list, once gave it lip service at number 33. But what since then? Instead we’ve have bands like Green Day winning Grammys.

For that matter, do younger music fans have any sense of what the 1980s truly were like? This was the richest and most innovative period in the whole history of independent music, but rarely is it acknowledged as such. As popular culture has it, serious rock music skipped the 80s entirely. When pundits do take the decade seriously, we tend to see the same names over and over. It’s both frustrating and unjustified that Hüsker Dü never developed the same posthumous cachet that others of their era did. Like the Replacements, for example, or Sonic Youth. Hüsker Dü could run circles around either of those two, but never became “cool” in quite the same way.

I suppose it’s due to an absence of what you might call sex appeal. To say that Hüsker Dü never cultivated any sort of image, in the usual manner of rock bands, is putting it mildly. For one, they never looked the part. These were big, sweaty, chain-smoking guys who, it often seemed, hadn’t shaved or showered in a while. Norton, trimmest and most dapper of the threesome, wore a handlebar mustache many years before such things were trendy among hipsters. It wasn’t cool; it was odd. And not until their eighth and final album did the band included a photo of itself on an album cover (the scratched-out images on Zen Arcade notwithstanding). It was a small, back-cover pic that almost feels like an afterthought, or something the record company made them do.

This modesty, for lack of a better description, was for some of us a part of what made Hüsker Dü so special. But it has hurt them, I think, in the long run. (As has the fact that only the band’s final two albums are available on iTunes. But that’s another story.)

The idea that the Replacements (much as I loved their debut album, which I consider the best garage-rock record of all time, and which includes a shout-out called “Somethin’to Dü”) were in any way a better or more influential band than Hüsker Dü is too absurd to entertain. Meanwhile the beatification of Sonic Youth, maybe the most overrated outfit of the last forty years, goes on and on. Not long ago Kim Gordon got a profile in the New Yorker. I’m still waiting for one of the writers there to devote a story to Bob Mould.

Or better yet, to Grant Hart. Twenty-five years, more or less, that’s how long it took me, to realize that it was Grant, not Bob, who was the more indispensable songwriter and who leaves the richer legacy. In the old days it was trendy to claim that Grant was the real genius behind Hüsker Dü. You’d be at a party and some asshole would say, “Those guys would be nothing without that drummer.” I’d always scoff that off. The mechanics of the band, for one, made it difficult to accept: Grant was the drummer, after all, and drummers are never the stars. Meanwhile there was Bob, right at the front of the stage with that iconic Flying-V. But those assholes were on to something.

That shouldn’t be an insult to Mould. Not any more than saying John Lennon was a better songwriter than Paul McCartney. Both were brilliant. But when I flip through the Hüsker canon, I can’t help giving Hart the edge. On New Day Rising, for instance, Mould gave us “I Apologize” and “Celebrated Summer.” But Hart gave us “Terms of Psychic Warfare” and “Books About UFOs,” two of the most electrifying songs of the 80s. “It’s Not Funny Anymore,” “Diane,” “Pink Turns to Blue,” the list goes on. Hart’s “She’s a Woman (And Now He is a Man”) from the often intolerable Warehouse album is, to me, a classic sleeper and the most under-appreciated Hüsker song of them all.

His solo work, too, was at least as robust as that of Mould. Songs like “The Main” and “The Last Days of Pompeii” are as good or better than anything Mould has given us post-Hüsker. But while Mould went on to some notoriety and commercial success, Hart labored in comparative obscurity. This was always irritating and unfair.

But Grant, maybe, was all right with this. “I have always based my movements on those of fugitives or criminals,” he once said to me. “The less attention you attract, the freer you remain! I wish to be an artist, not a celebrity.”

Hüsker Dü in 1986.   Photo by Daniel Corrigan.

Related Story:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE (SECOND) GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME

POSTSCRIPT, ASTERISKS AND MISCELLANY…

Grant Hart died in September, 2017. A few years ago, filmmaker Gorman Bechard released a movie about him. “Every Everything” is 93 minutes of Grant — and only Grant — proving himself to be one of the more oddly captivating storytellers you’ll ever have the pleasure of listening to.

Bechard had previously interviewed Grant for “Color Me Obsessed,” his film about The Replacements, and was taken with him. “Grant is one of the most influential musicians ever,” said Bechard at the time. “Beyond that, he’s as smart and funny as anyone on the planet.”

You may not be familiar with Hart, but he was among the most important songwriters of our time, and “Every Everything” is a brave and absolutely necessary tribute to one of the unsung heroes of modern music. Click the picture for more info…

— The one song I would probably have pruned from Zen Arcade is “Dreams Reoccurring,” the noisy little instrumental from side one. You’ve got the fourteen-minute version later on; do we really need this miniature version too? And the fact that “Indecision Time” isn’t so great either… it creates kind of a dead spot on the first side. In its place I’d have put “Some Kind of Fun,” one of the outtakes.

— The greatest concert I ever attended was an impromptu Husker show at a place called Harvey Wheeler Hall, in Concord, Massachusetts, on December 30th, 1984. It was a last-minute gig arranged by David Savoy, a Concord native who also was the band’s manager at the time (and whose suicide a few years later was partly responsible for its breakup). There was no stage; the band set up on the floor of what, in my memory, was a simple classroom. There were fewer than a hundred people there, and we stood or sat cross-legged. The set ended when Grant cut his finger on a cracked drumstick during a cover of the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” My best friend at the time, Mark McKay (who later became the drummer for the post-hardcore band Slapshot), gave him a band-aid. When it was over we went backstage, as it were, and chatted a while with the band.

— A few years ago, Paul Hilcoff, the curator of the painfully exhaustive Hüsker Dü fan site, mailed me a compact disc recording of that entire concert. I had no idea there was one. What a startling feeling it is to discover, many years on, that a recording exists of one of your most cherished memories. Except, the CD still sits on my bookshelf, as yet unlistened-to. One of these days I’ll summon up the courage to actually play it. Listening to that recording, provided I’ve got the emotional muster, will be the closest I ever get to time travel.

— I once played Frisbee with Bob Mould. June 21, 1984, it was, prior to a show in Easthampton Massachusetts. There were four of us playing: me, Bob, a local Boston fanzine writer named Al Quint, and the aforementioned McKay.

— I once got to meet and shake hands with Bob Mould’s parents. It was that same summer of ’84, in Rhode Island. Mom and dad were touring the country, stopping in on the band’s performances. Bob himself introduced me to them.

— Greg Norton once sat patiently backstage while I peppered him with inane questions for a fanzine article I was writing.

— It was Grant, though, who was always the friendliest and most approachable of the three. I remember a night, between sets down at The Living Room in Providence, chatting with him in the parking lot. He was snacking on slices of cheese, when a stray dog came ambling over. Grant shared his cheese with the dog, holding up small bits of it, ever higher, making the dog jump for them.

— That was the same show in which Mould, rushing toward the stage for an encore, smashed his head against a ceiling rafter so hard that you could hear it from the parking lot. I have a feeling he remembers that.

 

GREATEST HITS, MOULD:

1. Eight Miles High (single)
2. Chartered Trips (Zen Arcade)
3. I Apologize (New Day Rising)
4. Gravity (Everything Falls Apart)
5. Crystal (Candy Apple Grey)
6. Real World (Metal Circus)
7. Makes No Sense at All (Flip Your Wig)
8. Celebrated Summer (New Day Rising)
9. Perfect Example (New Day Rising)
10. All This I’ve Done For You (Candy Apple Grey)

GREATEST HITS, HART:

1. Keep Hanging On (Flip Your Wig)
2. Terms of Psychic Warfare (New Day Rising)
3. Pink Turns to Blue (Zen Arcade)
4. Books About UFOs (New Day Rising)
5. It’s Not Funny Anymore (Metal Circus)
6. She’s a Woman [And Now he is a Man] (Warehouse: Songs and Stories)
7. Standing by the Sea (Zen Arcade)
8. Diane (Metal Circus)
9. The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill (New Day Rising)
10. Sunshine Superman (Everything Falls Apart)

 

Now if you’ve stayed with me this far, chances are you’re a pretty big Hüsker fan who won’t mind if I push things an obsessive step further. For you I present the following addendum. You’ve been warned:

I was looking at some photos of Hüsker Dü in their heyday, circa ’84 or ’85. These guys were, to put it one way, well-fed. Greg always kept himself trim and dapper, but Bob and Grant weren’t going hungry.

It’s only fair, then, that we should revisit the Hüsker discography, making note of various song titles as they should have appeared. That is, with a gastronomical theme…

There’s little on Land Speed Record or Everything Falls Apart to cook with, so let’s start with Metal Circus. Here, Bob sets the table with “MEAL WORLD,” then takes his place in the “LUNCHLINE.” Grant tells us “I’M NOT HUNGRY ANYMORE,” but later opts for some delicious “STEAK DIANE.”

Zen Arcade is a veritable buffet line of fatty faves: Bob cooks up some “CHARRED TIPS.” Later he orders some “PRIME” down at the “NEWEST EATERY.” He’s got a sweet tooth for “THE BIGGEST PIE.” Alas, it’s a “BROKEN COOKIE, BROKEN HEART.” Grant warns that he’s “NEVER COOKING FOR YOU AGAIN,” yet later we find him “STANDING BY THE STOVE,” dreaming of that moment when “BEEF TURNS TO STEW” (“…waiters placing, gently placing, napkins round her plate.”) This is a very long album, and indigestion sets in by the end of side four, closing with the epic, flatulent jam, “REOCCURRING BEANS.”

Prior to Zen Arcade, you might remember, came the Huskers’ famous 7-inch single — its cover of the Byrds’ — or is it Birds’ — classic, “EGGS PILED HIGH.”

On New Day Rising, Grant tells us about “THE GIRL WHO WORKS AT THE BAR & GRILL,” followed on side two by the sugary “BOOKS ABOUT OREOS.” Bob serves up a “CELEBRATED SUPPER.”

Flip Your Wig is, let’s just say, a little thin, though Grant gives us a cooking lesson with “FLEXIBLE FRYER.”

On Candy Apple Pie… er, Gray … again its Grant with the big appetite. His two meaty singles are, “DON’T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’RE HUNGRY,” and “HUNGRY SOMEHOW.”

The band’s final course is the delectable double LP: Steakhouse: Songs and Stories. Bob sings of “THESE IMPORTED BEERS,” before going gourmet on the plaintive “BED OF SNAILS.” Alas, he has “NO (DINNER) RESERVATIONS.” Grant snacks on some “CHARITY, CHASTITY, PEANUTS AND COKE,” and reminds us that “YOU CAN COOK AT HOME.”

 

The post Zen Arcade at 42 appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

This week, Qantas Airways announced it will begin its long-awaited London-Sydney nonstops late next year. With an expected time aloft of around 22 hours, this will be, by a wide margin, the longest flight in the world — indeed, the longest scheduled nonstop in history.

This is the culmination of a decades-long quest — of challenges so vast that Qantas even gave its quest a name: Project Sunrise. (Personally I would’ve gone with Project Horizon, but nobody asked.) After a series delays and setbacks, the airline now feels confident enough to give us a launch month: October 2027.

The route will be flown using a fleet of specially modified, ultra-long range (ULR) Airbus A350s, the first of which is undergoing a series of test flights as we speak.

The “Kangaroo route” as it was called as early as the 1930s, once took twelve days and required more than a dozen stops. By the 1960s, with the advent of jets like the 707, three or four stops was the norm. In the 1990s, with the introduction of the Boeing 747-400, a single stop became the standard. Even after all that progress, the idea of a nonstop still seemed a dream, well, too far.

The newest generation of aircraft, including the A350, changed that thinking, and here we are.

A New York-Sydney nonstop, slightly shorter in distance, is planned following launch of the London flights.

Qantas says fares will run about 20 percent higher than those charged for its current one-stops along the same routes, citing a “massive demand” for direct service.

Cabins will feature a premium-heavy configuration of only 238 seats. The lower density layout stands to reason. As I’ve pointed out before, the real challenges of long-haul flying are perhaps no longer technological so much as human. That is, how do you keep passengers comfortable, or even sane, on a journey stretching ten-thousand miles? We’re basically at the limits of what people can endure, at least in economy class.

So, what’s left?

Does the success of Project Sunrise end the range game? Is this aviation’s ultimate triumph over distance? After all, London to Sydney is about as far as it gets, and it’s hard to come up with another pair of cities that couldn’t be connected nonstop.

Looking at the map, however, we do see a last unconquered frontier: Asia to South America. No airline has ever flown a nonstop between these two continents, and the biggest reason is distance.

The mileage between Tokyo and Sao Paulo — arguably the most likely market — is actually longer than London-Sydney. As are routes like Beijing-Sao Paulo and Shanghai-Buenos Aires.

Tokyo-Lima, another potential pairing, is about equal to the mileage between New York and Singapore, which as of 2026 is the longest flight in the world. It’s doable, but not by much.

Could the A350 ULR, or Boeing’s newest 777, close those gaps? Possibly, but technical hurdles are only part of what makes a route viable. You need enough passenger demand, at particular fares, to warrant the expenses of running such a flight. Just because a plane can fly nonstop from Tokyo to Sao Paulo, or from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, doesn’t mean it’s a smart idea.

For now, unless the Chinese become too envious and rush into something, Qantas and Project Sunrise will hold the crown.

Photo by Sam Carter, courtesy of Unsplash.

The post Project Sunrise appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

UPDATE June 7, 2026

Only a day after sharing my hunches, below, about the plight of United flight 169 at Newark, the NTSB released its preliminary report.

It appears the captain, who was at the controls, did “duck under,” employing the technique I describe below. This alone shouldn’t have been dangerous, but in the process he sank lower than he meant to. At the last moments, the first officer seemed to realize things were askew, but felt there wasn’t time enough to call for a go-around.

You can READ THE FULL REPORT HERE.

June 3, 2026

You’ve all seen the video of that United 767 hitting the light pole, which in turn hit a delivery truck, as it landed in Newark back on May 3rd. The footage from inside the careening truck is startling.

How it happened, exactly, is still being investigated. But I’ve been asked to speculate, and so I will:

Runway 29 at Newark is short. Long enough, under most conditions, to accommodate a 767, but short enough to require extra concentration from the crew. The runway’s threshold is also unusually close to the highway, lessening the margin for error.

One way or another, flight 169 drifted below the descent path and impacted the utility standard at the edge of the highway.

It’s possible they were “ducking under,” as we call it. That is, in the final seconds of the landing, intentionally sneaking just a touch below the normal path — to take advantage of as much pavement as possible and avoid landing long. This is customarily done by visual reference, using a runway’s VASI or PAPI lights (depending which it has). Set just to the side of the runway, these project an alignment of colors (red, green, or white) that pilots use to determine if they’re high, low, or exactly on glide.

This technique, though well-known, isn’t always encouraged, and in some cases it’s prohibited by the airline. We always pull up the performance data prior to landing, which tells us how much runway is required. It accounts for wind, surface conditions, and so on. If you’ve crunched the numbers correctly, there shouldn’t be a need for improvising.

In its flight manuals, United had a short-runway policy that, while it didn’t encourage ducking under per se, it recommended that pilots adjust their touchdown aiming point to one closer to the threshold.

Even if they were ducking under, they still shouldn’t have hit the pole. Somehow they ended up lower than they intended.

Or, for whatever reasons, it was entirely inadvertent. Sometimes an approach gets unstable and you fall a bit low. This isn’t terribly uncommon. If you’re unable to correct in time, you’re supposed to break off the landing and go around.

There is no ILS approach to runway 29 — a system that sends out a vertical guidance signal, called a “glide slope,” that pilots track to the runway. Instead there are what we call “non-precision” and/or “visual” approaches. These come in different flavors, and while they’re routine, and still plenty precise, they’re more complicated. The descent path is handled differently, and slipping low is perhaps more likely than it would be with an ILS. And winds were gusty at the time, adding to the difficulty.

Were they ducking under? Did they sink too and neglect to go around? Did they even realize what was happening? Was there time?

I don’t know. Any of that is possible. Or something else.

These are just guesses and conjecture, and I’m not implying that anyone was negligent or reckless. Eventually we’ll have more info.

I landed on runway 29 many times, but it was years ago when I flew regional turboprops. What’s short for a 767 isn’t so short for a 19-seater.

Meanwhile, Instagram is full of reels showing purported “close calls” at the edge of 29, insinuating that the runway is unsafe and that planes are routinely almost crashing. These scary-seeming videos are mostly just tricks of angle and perspective. And as I noted earlier, the runway’s threshold is close to the highway, meaning that jets on a perfectly normal glide path can appear “low” when in fact they’re right where they should be.

The aircraft at Newark was a 767-400, largest variant of the 767 family. United and Delta are the only two carriers in the world that fly these models. United inherited its -400s from Continental Airlines when it merged with that carrier in 2010.

The -400 was a bespoke collaboration between Delta and Boeing. Delta wanted a widebody to replace its aging L-1011s, for use mainly in high-density domestic markets. Speaking of short runways, the -400 was once a regular visitor at La Guardia.

The jet was later shifted onto international routes. Flight 169 was coming from Venice.

Related Story:

ODE TO THE 767

Photos courtesy of Mark Rubenstein.

The post The Lowdown. appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

Of the other kids in school, my classmates and friends at Abraham Lincoln elementary in Revere, most had never been on an airplane. This was the late 70s, when the cost of tickets put air travel out of reach for much of middle class America.

Of the kids who had been on planes, myself among them, a surprisingly large number of us had vacationed on Bermuda — that hook-shaped island in the Atlantic, about two hours flying time from Boston.

People assume Bermuda is a lot further south than it actually is. It sits roughly on the same latitude as Atlanta, and only 650 miles off the coast of the Carolinas. The island’s proximity, together with its mild weather, pink sand beaches and picturesque stucco cottages, drew tens of thousands of New Englanders every year.

The Caribbean was a much further away and a lot more expensive. Hawaii was out of the question. Florida was the obvious go-to, but Bermuda had an exotic-ness to it that Orlando or Tampa didn’t. It was a little bit of Europe — in an unintimidating, fussily British sort of way — without the long flight and pricey airfare.

All the local travel agencies hyped Bermuda, and the Sunday paper was full of easy and affordable package deals.

We signed on for one of those packages in the early spring of 1979, when I was in seventh grade. My parents, my sister, my grandmother and one of my uncles all made the trip. None of us had ever been outside the United States.

American Airlines flew a daily DC-10 on the route from Boston. Not to be outdone, Delta flew a similarly sized L-1011.

Our flight was on American. At the time, the airline’s DC-10s had a cockpit camera that allowed you to watch the pilots during takeoff and landing. Projected onto the bulkhead screens, the black-and-white visuals were blurry and unsteady, but for a 13 year-old airplane nerd like me, it was thrilling to watch. I remember the captain, who for sure is long dead by now, turning his head to the side and saying to us all, “Here’s a handsome profile shot for ya.”

I’m not sure what, in retrospect, is more remarkable, the cockpit camera (unthinkable today) or the fact that two different airlines were operating 260-seat widebodies on a two-hour hop.

It’s not like that anymore.

Over time, Bermuda lost its crown as New Englanders’ premier sun spot.

A couple of things happened. First, the cost of flying fell and the choice of destinations grew. The vacation market fragmented, with more carriers going to more and more places — at affordable fares.

Bermuda hotel prices, meanwhile, began to skyrocket, aiming for wealthier clientele rather than middle-class holidaymakers that had been its mainstay. Sure it’s a short flight, but for most people that no longer matters if accommodations cost a fortune. It became cheaper to go elsewhere, even if further away.

Those DC-10s and L-1011s gave way to narrowbody planes. Northwest Airlines ran a 727 for a while. Delta used a 767-200, then downsized to an Airbus A319 before suspending the route during COVID and never bringing it back. Today your options are JetBlue or a tiny upstart called BermudAir, both using small jets.

The cruise ships still make their runs, usually in the spring and fall, but otherwise the island’s regional allure is long gone.

Below, on the Bermuda airport apron, is our DC-10 as it prepared for departure back in ’79. In the photo up top you can see my mother (in pink), my sister (yellow), and my grandmother (gray), climbing the airstairs for the flight home.

PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

Related Stories:
THE TRIBULATIONS OF THE DC-10
DOWN AND OUT AT THE EL SAN JUAN

The post Boston and Bermuda appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

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.

— De Gaulle Green

Is there a name for these things? Green wall? Living wall? Whatever they’re called, the S4 satellite concourse (part of terminal 2) at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris has several of them, looming over the gates like verdant billboards. A little nature and greenery where you least expect it, imparting a calming and tranquil vibe.

The same concourse offers this terrace garden, down past gate M48.

— 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 below. 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?

 

— GATESIDE GRAFFITI

Terminal Four at Kennedy Airport isn’t the most passenger-friendly building, but it has its spots, including the famous Calder mobile dangling from the departure hall ceiling (see below). Now, in the B concourse close to gate 25, you can enjoy this interactive wall mural. It was put in place last summer, presumably as a sort of post-pandemic morale booster for travelers.

It looks like most people just scribble their autograph, but some leave the names of whatever far-flung destinations they’re headed to — or wish they were headed to. You might get your clothes dirty, but grab a giant pencil and jump in there. Give us a “Bayonne, New Jersey,” or a “Smolensk.”

 

— INDY KIND

Indianapolis International is the rare gem among U.S. airports. It’s spacious, clean, and splashed with natural light. Best of all, and unlike almost every other airport in the country, it’s remarkably quiet. According to Airports Council International, IND is the Best Airport in North America, and the readers of Conde Nast Traveler have dittoed that sentiment multiple times.

Tucked into the A concourse, between gates 14 and 16, is the KIND Gallery. Created in partnership with the city’s Arts Council, it showcases the works of Hoosier artists. The gallery is neither large nor — depending on your tastes in art — particularly breathtaking. But it’s exactly what it should be: an engaging and relaxing little sneak-away spot. My favorite of the current installation is “Cloud Study 1-4,” a four-frame series of cloudscapes by an artist named Kipp Normand.

What do we do at airports? We kill time. And here’s a way to do it that’s a little more fulfilling than staring at your phone or browsing the magazine kiosk.

And about that name, “KIND.” Chances are you’re familiar with the three-letter identifiers for airports, Indy’s being IND. What you probably didn’t know, however, is that airports also have four-letter identifiers. These are assigned by ICAO and used for navigation and other technical purposes. Airports in the United States simply add the letter “K” to the existing three-letter code. KLAX, for example. Or KBOS or KSFO or KMCO. Or, in this case, KIND.

 

— KENNEDY CALDER

The next time you’re on the check-in level of terminal 4 at Kennedy Airport, look up. Suspended from the ceiling near the western end of the building is a sculpture constructed of balanced aluminum arms and trapezoidal panels. This is “.125,” the famous mobile made by Alexander Calder in 1957, back when JFK was still known as Idlewild Airport.

At 45 feet long, it’s supposedly the fourth-largest mobile in the world. For years it hung in the arrivals hall of the old Terminal 4, better known as the IAB (International Arrivals Building). Later it was moved to the departure level when the terminal was rebuilt. “People think monuments should come out of the ground, never out of the ceiling,” said Calder. “But mobiles can be monumental too.” The name “.125” comes from the gauge of its aluminum elements. What it evokes is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder. One can detect a certain flight motif, though to me it looks more like a fish.

This wasn’t Calder’s only aviation-related project. In the 1970s he hand-painted two airplanes for Braniff Airways, including a Boeing 727 for the Bicentennial.

 

— UNDERGROUND ATLANTA

The Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport has its negatives, to be sure. The low ceilings, beeping electric carts and endless public address announcements make the place noisy and claustrophobic. Many of the windows are inexplicably covered over, and the airport’s skinny escalators were apparently designed before the invention of luggage. On the other hand, ATL’s simple layout — essentially six rectangular concourses sequenced one after the other — makes for fast and easy connections. It’s one of the most efficient places anywhere to change planes.

The neatest thing about it, though, is the underground connector tunnel. This is where you go to catch the inter-terminal train, but the better choice is to walk it. (If, like me, you purchased a Garmin Vivofit and have become obsessed with step-counting, note that it takes sixteen minutes and 1800 steps to cover the tunnel’s full walkable length.)

Along the way you’ll pass a series of art and photography installations. Between concourses B and C, is an excellent, museum-quality multimedia exhibit on the history Georgia’s capital. You could easily spend a half-hour here. My favorite section, though, is the forest canopy ceiling in the tunnel between concourses A and B. This installation, made of multicolor, laser-cut aluminum panels is the work of artist Steve Waldeck. Described as a “450-foot multisensory walk through a simulated Georgia forest,” it features an audio backdrop of dozens of native birds and insects.

What a welcome change it is, listening to the calls of sandhill cranes and blue herons instead of some idiotic TSA directive. It takes only two or three minutes to pass beneath the length of it, but these are about the most relaxing (if a bit psychedelic) two or three minutes to be found at an airport.

 

— The 9/11 MEMORIAL AT BOSTON-LOGAN

The idea of building a memorial to the 2001 terror attacks, at the very airport from which two of the four hijacked planes departed from, ran a fine line between commemorative and tasteless. It needed to be done just right. What they came up with is superb, and ought to serve as a model for such memorials everywhere.

Reached along an ascending pathway that twists upward amidst grass and trees, the main structure is a sort of open-topped glass chapel, inside of which are two vertical slabs, one for each of the two aircraft that struck the World Trade Center — and mimicking the shapes, one can’t help noticing, of the twin towers themselves — engraved with the names of the passengers and crew. There’s one for American’s flight 11, the Boeing 767 that struck the north tower, and the other for United 175, which hit the south tower a few minutes later. The glass and steelwork allow the entire space to be flooded with silvery light, creating an atmosphere that’s quiet and contemplative without feeling maudlin or sentimentalized.

There are no flags or any of the crudely “patriotic” touches one might expect (and dread). It’s everything it should be: beautifully constructed, understated, and respectful.

Officially it’s called the “Place of Remembrance,” and it was built by the Boston-based firm of Moskow Linn Architects, as part of a public competition. The final design was chosen by airline workers, airport representatives, and family members of the victims. The engraved names are separated into columns of crew and passengers, and the names of off-duty United employees on the flight 175 plate include a small “tulip” logo of United Airlines. This might seem a strange touch, but this memorial was built primarily for the community of people who work at Logan Airport. Among the passengers and crew killed on the two jets were more than a dozen Logan-based employees.

But anyone is welcome, of course, and I only wish the memorial were more easily accessible. If you’re at BOS and have some time, it’s worth seeking out. It sits on a knoll just to the southern side of the central parking garage, at the foot of the walkway tunnel that connects the garage with terminal A. Find the tunnel and follow the signs.

 

— SFO DRAGONFLIES

Airport art installations of one form or another are awfully trendy these days. Paintings, sculptures and mobiles are popping up all over the place. And good for that. Among the best is artist Joyce Hsu’s “Namoo House” sculpture at San Francisco International.

It’s a huge, wall-mounted display of aluminum and stainless steel insects that, in the artist’s words, suggests the way the airport “fuses science, nature, and imagination, to become the transit home for all passengers” — whatever that might mean.

To me, the metalwork moths and six-foot dragonflies represent both natural and human-made flying machines. And they remind me of the erector-set toys that I played with as a kid. Go to gate A3 in SFO’s international terminal, near the Emirates and JetBlue gates.

 

— RALEIGH-DURHAM’S TERMINAL 2

“Ah for the days when aviation was a gentleman’s pursuit, back before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham.” That’s from Sideshow Bob, in an old episode of the Simpsons (back when that show was still watchable), and we love the way he gives the words “Raleigh-Durham” an extra nudge of derision.

I guess Bob hasn’t seen RDU’s Terminal 2. Home to Delta, American, jetBlue and United, this is possibly the most attractive airport building in America. Opened in 2008, it was the first major terminal with a wood truss skeleton. The design earned architect Curtis Fentress, whose firm also designed Denver International and Korea’s impeccable Incheon Airport, the American Institute of Architects’ Thomas Jefferson Award. “A blend of the region’s economy, heritage and landscape,” is how Fentress describes it. “Terminal 2’s rolling roofline reflects the Piedmont Hills, while the daylit interior provides the latest in common-use technology. Long-span wood trusses create column-free spaces that offer efficiency and flexibility, from ticketing to security.”

All true. And unlike most airport facilities in this country, it’s quiet. Boarding calls and other public address announcements are kept to a minimum. This, together with the building’s architectural style and flair, almost makes you think you’re in Europe.

 

— THE QUIET AREA AT MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL

On the whole, the Minneapolis airport is about as architecturally unexciting as a parking garage. It’s an older complex with low ceilings and endless corridors that reminds me of the ’60s-era grammar school that I once attended. And like most American airports, it has a noise pollution problem. But unlike most American airports, it has a place to escape the racket: an upper-level “quiet area” overlooking the central atrium of the Lindbergh (Delta Air Lines) Terminal. It’s difficult to find, but worth the effort if you’ve got a lengthy layover and need a place to relax. Look for the signs close to where F concourse meets the central lobby.

The long, rectangular veranda has pairs of vinyl chairs set around tables. There are power outlets at each table and visitors can log in to MSP’s complimentary Wi-Fi. Delta provides pillows and blankets so that stranded passengers can nap. It’s a bland space without much ambiance, lacking the funky chairs, sofas, and other quirky accoutrements that you might find in Europe or Asia (Incheon Airport’s quiet zones are the coolest anywhere). But it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s comfortable, detached and peaceful. It’s a shame that more airports don’t set aside spots like this.

 

— THE La GUARDIA GARDEN

I’ve written at length about the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia Airport in New York City. This historic art-deco building, in the far southwest corner of LGA, is one of the most special places in all of commercial aviation — the launching point for the Pan Am flying boats that made the first-ever transatlantic and round-the-world flights. Inside the cathedral-like rotunda is the 240-foot “Flight” mural by James Brooks. What few people know about, however, is the cozy garden just outside. Facing the building, it’s to the right of the old Art Deco doorway, set back from the street.

It’s a quiet, tree-shaded hideaway amidst, grass, flowers and shrubs. Grab a sandwich from the Yankee Clipper and enjoy it on one of the wooden benches. To get there, take the A Loop inter-terminal bus to the Marine Air Terminal. The spot is best appreciated in the warmer months, of course. Like the Marine Air rotunda it is outside of the TSA checkpoint, so you’ll need to re-clear security if you’re catching a flight.

 

Related Stories:

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE U.S. AIRPORT
PLANE, PRANKS, AND PRAISE: ODE TO AN AIRPORT

The post Welcome to “Hidden Airport” appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

May 2, 2026

Early this morning, and not unexpectedly, the long-beleagured Spirit Airlines closed its doors, retiring to that big tarmac in the sky. The company had been in and out of bankruptcy, and never really regained their footing after the COVID pandemic.

This leaves Frontier, or maybe Allegiant Air, to take on the brunt of snarky social media posts and late-night TV jokes.

Spirit, with its bare-bones service and ultra cheap fares, was easy to make fun of. They were also the nation’s seventh-largest airline (and presumably its largest purchaser of yellow paint), with a fleet of 130 aircraft and 17,000 employees, virtually all of whom are now jobless.

If I’m counting right, this is the most significant U.S. airline liquidation since the demise of Pan Am 35 years ago. And the first in quite some time.

Dozens of U.S. airlines, including some of the biggest, have disappeared since the industry was deregulated in 1979. This has happened a couple of different ways, one more disruptive and catastrophic than the other.

The first was through mergers or acquisitions. TWA, for example, was bought by American. Republic, Northwest, Continental, PSA, Piedmont, Western, all were subsumed into another entity. The list is long. The names went away, but most of the jobs were saved, planes repainted.

Others, however, have shut down outright, ceasing operations completely. Pan Am, Eastern, and Braniff are the most significant names on this sadder roster. Air Florida, Frontier (the original one), American Trans Air, Midway, Comair. And others. Spirit joins them. (If we head offshore, we can count Swissair, Sabena, Varig, etc., among the casualties.)

(It feels that Spirit is receiving a bigger media funeral than any of those above did. This is symptomatic of our time, I suppose, in a way I can’t quite explain. Whatever the reasons, I don’t remember Pan Am or Eastern getting so much coverage when they went under. Those airlines were giants; Spirit a comparatively lowly LCC.)

The remaining airlines (and creditors) will pick through Spirit’s bones. Carriers like JetBlue will expand capacity in certain markets, hire some former Spirit workers. Still, thousands will remain unemployed. Airline shutdowns are seismic, their effects rippling through the economy.

Notice posted on the Spirit Airlines Instagram account.

I lived through an airline shutdown, albeit one you’ve never heard of. It wasn’t fun.

From 1990 to 1994 I flew for a Maine-based regional airline called Northeast Express. We were a feeder for Northwest, funneling passengers into their Boston hub from as far north as Prince Edward Island and as far south as Norfolk.

Trouble was, we weren’t the tightest ship or the most reliable of partners, and in the summer of ’94 Northwest pulled its code-share agreement, knocking us into immediate bankruptcy.

We hobbled along for a few weeks under the protections of Chapter 11 until closing doors forever one sunny afternoon in July. I’d gone in to fly that day and was waiting for the plane to arrive when word came that all remaining flights were canceled. I remember exactly where I was standing: in the ops room, looking through the cutout into the cubicle where the ramp coordinators shouted into their radios.

“That’s all she wrote,” announced one of them.

I felt weirdly abandoned, alone, floating in some onerous (and degrading) new reality that I wanted no part of. All the day-to-day structure that a job gives you, not to mention a salary, had vanished in a moment. Ten minutes earlier I was an airline captain. What was I now?

What are we supposed to do? I wondered. I may even have said it out loud.

Go home, was the answer.

Outside on the tarmac, the baggage loaders were dropping suitcases where they stood, turning and walking away, the motors in their tugs still humming.

My final two paychecks bounced. I never got a dime for the last thirty or so days that I worked.

Of the 17,000 or so Spirit workers losing their jobs, about two thousand are pilots. Some of them will find new flying jobs; others won’t.

Much of the current hiring is taking place at the regional carriers. I can’t imagine too many Spirit pilots will line up for these positions — though I’m sure some will. The major airlines will likely offer “preferential” interview slots, but the numbers aren’t huge.

A fair number of Spirit pilots will seek lines of work elsewhere. The more senior of them will balk at having to start over from scratch, even at United, Delta or American. Remember, in the airline biz there’s no transfer of tenure. Every Spirit pilot will begin again at the bottom of whichever airline’s seniority list he or she takes a job with. They will begin again at first-year pay. No exceptions.

Airplane photos courtesy of Michael Saporito.

The post Spirit in the Sky appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

April 30, 2026

It’s 1990 and I’m in a yellow taxi. Manhattan at night.

The car speeds and I turn. Behind us the lights of Park Avenue rush away in a narrowing, incandescent ribbon. In the receding distance is Grand Central Terminal, above which rises a monolithic skyscraper. There’s something brazen about the tower, the way it sits perpendicular to the grid. At the top it says PAN AM.

The sight thrills me. I’m twenty-three years-old, unworldly and naive, a kid from an ugly Boston suburb who hasn’t seen or done much. But I’m an airline buff, and here I am in Manhattan with the Pan Am Building framed in the rear windshield. The moment gives me a rush of satisfaction. It feels so exciting, so sophisticated, so New York.

Thinking back to that night, nobody was less New York than me. But the view of that building gave me an energy.

Pan Am had been founded in Florida, but as it grew into a de-facto national carrier and one of the world’s most recognized brands, its identity became enmeshed with that of New York City. Nothing made this more clear than its 59-story skyscraper in Midtown. Pan Am was New York. New York was Pan Am.

The Pan Am Building wasn’t the prettiest of the city’s towers (barely a block away soars the Art Deco splendor of the Chrysler Building). Built in the International Style, it embodied a rational, workmanlike confidence. It was handsome, no-nonsense. One of its architects was Walter Gropius, the modernist pioneer and founder of the Bauhaus.

And then it was something different.

I remember the day Pan Am went Chapter 7 and ceased operations. December, 1991. I was in a hotel room in Burlington, Vermont, when it came on the news.

The logo stayed at the top for a while, but the Pan Am Building became the MetLife Building.

The skyscraper itself remains, unchanged save for the signage. But gone is the romance and much of the New York-ness that made it special. Pan Am was history’s most storied airline and the nation’s commercial ambassador. MetLife’s thing is what, I hardly even know. Insurance?

A few days ago, almost four decades after my giddy taxi ride, I was walking down Park Avenue towards Grand Central. The MetLife logo loomed above me. Nothing is sacred, I thought.

Then I looked at my shoes. And I’m glad I did, because embedded there in the sidewalk was the plaque you see up top. I took its picture. I then walked a few steps further and took a photo of the actual tower.

Things are always changing, whether you want them to or not.

A helicopter crashed up there once, on the rooftop helipad. In 1977. New York Airways. Debris fell all the way to the ground and killed a pedestrian.

Bauhaus. Form follows function and all that. It was also the name of a band. Among the members of Bauhaus the band was David J., who later became a cohort and collaborator with Pat Fish, a.k.a. the Jazz Butcher, a rock musician of the 80s and 90s of whom I became a devotee of the highest order.

Buildings, music, flying machines. They flow and intermingle. One thing leads to another. “Airlines are everywhere,” is a go-to saying of mine. Here you see how that works.

Later, I noticed something. Look at the clock on the statuary facade of Grand Central. In both of my pictures it displays almost the same time.

Photos by the author.

The post Don’t Look Up appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine.

on the evening of April 26th, reactor four exploded, sending plumes of radiation across Europe in what is still, by far, history’s worst nuclear accident. Prevailing winds saved the capital, Kiev, from disaster, carrying the fallout in the opposite direction, north into Belarus. From there it diffused across northern Europe.

I visited Kiev three or four times, some years ago, when my airline was still flying there. The city surprised me. It’s green and hilly, with parks and museums and onion-dome churches. Nothing of the dour, Soviet-looking city I expected. Our layover hotel was the Premier Palace, an expensive place done up in chandeliers and marble. It was the kind of hotel in which you always felt under-dressed. But it had an edge to it — that unmistakable vibe of post-Soviet decadence. There was a strip club on the sixth floor.

Of the day trips available in and around Kiev, none was more extraordinary than the chance to tour Chernobyl, only two hours away by car. I took one of these tours in October of 2007. At the time, a full-day excursion cost about $250. It included transportation to and from the site, plus all the admission formalities — and a radiation scan on your way out.

A 30-kilometer “Exclusion Zone” surrounds the site, accessible only to researchers, temporary workers, and a small number of villagers — most of them senior citizens — that the Ukrainian government allows to live there. And, at least until the war with Russia got going, to tourists.

A guide accompanied us the entire time, but we were more or less free to wander. We had the site almost to ourselves, walking through apartment blocks, kindergarten classrooms, a high school, a hotel.

The photographs below are from that day. I have not captioned them. They more or less speak for themselves.

Most of them were taken in Pripyat, the abandoned city inside the Exclusion Zone that was once home to 50,000 people. The entire population of Pripyat was forced to flee, leaving everything behind. It exists as a sort of Soviet time capsule, a bustling city in suspended animation, complete with hammers, sickles, and no shortage of radioactive detritus that was once the stuff of regular, everyday lives: kids’ toys, a ferris wheel, a classroom chalkboard. It’s these everyday items that leave the most lasting impressions — a perversion of normalcy that drives home the magnitude of the tragedy.

When the reactor blew, Soviet helicopters dumped sand and clay over the exposed core. Later the building was encased in thousands of tons of concrete — a structure that become known as “the sarcophagus.” In the picture above, our guide aims his dosimeter at the sarcophagus. The reading you see on the machine is about sixty times normal background radiation. We were allowed to remain here only for about ten minutes.

I should note that reactor four no longer looks like this. In 2016, authorities completed the installation of a mammoth protective dome, concealing the remains within a 25,000-ton shell, made of steel, that looks like a cross between a football stadium and an airship hangar. What you see today is a much more sterile, less jarring aesthetic.

The post Letter From Chernobyl appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

I’m not sure how much of a bragging point it might be, but my knowledge of the world’s airlines is, I have to admit, fairly encyclopedic. Name an airline and chances are I can give you a brief synopsis of its routes, its history, and so forth. Inversely, pick any region of the world, and I can quickly name the carriers, big or small, that operate there.

Or so I thought. Maybe I’m not so good at this anymore.

I was in Palawan, a couple of weeks ago, in the Philippines, looking to book a flight from Busuanga back to Cebu. I ended up buying a ticket on something called Sunlight Air, which I’d never in my life heard of until Kayak.com told me about it.

Wikipedia calls Sunlight a “boutique airline.” When I hear that I think small, independent and friendly, with a dash of style. I don’t know about the style part, but the rest of it makes sense: Sunlight flies only a foursome of ATR turboprops. The price was right, the flight left on time, and the cabin crew were disarmingly cheerful.

I was wary at first, but maybe this mystery airline thing isn’t so bad.

And getting to ride in the ATR was a fun little throwback for me. You don’t see many turboprops any more, versatile as they are, now that RJs have taken over the world. I have about 400 hours of first officer time in the ATR, from my (brief) tenure at American Eagle back in the mid-1990s.

My infatuation with commercial aviation has made me knowledgeable about other things as well. As a kid I would pore over timetables and route maps of the world’s airlines, and through that process became a minor expert in geography. I can name the capital of almost any country in the world. Give me a city, a river, or a mountain, and I can tell you where it is.

Normally. I must need a refresher course or something, because that day in the Philippines wasn’t the first time I found myself stumped.

The other time was in Bangkok, headed to Paro, in Bhutan. The airline was Drukair, Bhutan’s government-run carrier. No surprise there, Drukair had been on my to-fly list for some time. What I didn’t know, however, is where the plane was actually going.

The flight to Paro would be making a stop. I was aware of this when I bought the ticket, but hadn’t thought much about where that stop might be. An atlas would suggest Calcutta, or maybe Dhaka?

But as I walked up to the check-in counter at the Bangkok airport, there on the marquee was a name — a place — that made no sense to me. “Gauhati,” it said.

I stared, wondering vaguely what that word might mean, or how to say it.

What it meant was a city in northeastern India. I’d later learn that Gauhati (also spelled Guwahati), is home to almost a million people.

And so it happened that, for the first and only time in my life, I boarded a jetliner headed to a city I had never heard of before showing up at the airport.

Travel is all about discovery, they say. I can vouch for that. It can teach you, too, that you’re not as worldly and smart as you think you are.

Photos by the author.

The post Never Heard of It appeared first on AskThePilot.com.

April 1, 2026

It’s the fall of 1981. Specifically it’s October — or, “Rocktober” in the lingo of the big local rock station, WCOZ, a monthlong event highlighting a different band each day.

Today is “Cars Day,” and I’ve set my alarm extra early. I’m yet to own a stereo, so next to the radio I’ve placed a cheap old cassette player, my finger ready on the RECORD button. The instant I hear the opening of a Cars song, I’ll press.

I’ll do this multiple times, and by the end of the day I’ll have a muffled analog catalog of my favorite tunes, all with the first two seconds missing.

Long before Husker Du and the Jazz Butcher, my big musical infatuation was the Cars, the Boston-based quintet fronted by co-singers Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr. I can’t recall when or why, exactly, I got hooked on their music, but the Cars were my soundtrack through my first two years of high school.

According to the desks at St. John’s Prep, vandalized by bored tenth-graders like me, the most popular bands in the world were Rush and maybe Van Halen. I’d leave Cars graffiti, adding a little prog-rock flourish to the artwork. I’d draw a checkered flag, like the one on the Panorama album.

I mention all of this because of a new book, “The Cars: Let the Stories be Told”, authored by Bill Janovitz, himself a musician from Boston.

The title borrows from “Let the Good Times Roll,” the unforgettable kickoff cut from the group’s eponymous debut, released in 1978.

The author had to be from Boston. Nothing else would be right, or fair. And if one person in the world was gonna read his book, if only for old times’ sake, well that would have to be me.

I seldom read music biographies from start to finish. Often they’re too too bogged down, hyper-detailed and meandering (Chris Salewicz’s bio of Joe Strummer runs for 650 pages). So I pick around for the good parts. This one, though, I took in cover-to-cover, straight through.

It’s exhaustive, comprehensive, painstakingly researched… all the things good music journalism should be. It’s unpolished in parts, but luckily for us Janovitz is a decent writer as much as a thorough historian, bringing us not just a chronicle, but one that’s fun to read.

Sadly neither Ric Ocasek nor Ben Orr are still with us. The surviving three bandmembers, however, are generous and gracious with their contributions.

The author reintroduced me to a band that, as a young teenager, I thought I’d known so well. Turns out there was plenty I missed. Some of it basic, but much of it those nuance-y sort of details that, as youngster, were bound to go over my head. I knew what I liked, but my knowledge and understanding of music was, let’s be honest, pretty unsophisticated.

I’d never appreciated the brilliance of Elliot Easton’s song-within-a-song guitar solos, for example, or the fire of his rockabilly-style leads in the song “My Best Friend’s Girl.” I’d never noticed those bass licks at the beginning of “Bye Bye Love.” And I had no clue that when Ben Orr repeats the word “time” during that verse in “Just What I Needed,” it’s a nod to the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray.”

Of course it is, but at fifteen it skipped right past me. All these things did. Heck, I was into my 20s before I knew, or cared, that David Robinson had been the drummer in the Modern Lovers.

As I read, I found myself highlighting pages, then throwing on my headphones, listening and re-listening to this or that highlight that Janovitz points out. In doing so, I rediscovered my love for the Cars.

Their first two albums, anyway: the self-titled debut and its follow-up, Candy-O. That aforementioned Panorama, while its checkered flag motif looked cool on a desk, never did much for me, and neither did anything afterward. If the author fails at one thing, perhaps, it’s helping me realize, all these years later, that the Cars’ hadn’t, in fact, jumped the shark. But save for a song or two, I can’t agree.

That first pair of records, though, is unmatchable. There will never be music like that again.

To what decade this music belongs is open to argument. The second album, Candy-O — the one with the famous pin-up girl by Alberto Vargas — was released in 1979. But to consider it a 70s record (or to call the Cars a “70s band”) would be ridiculous. Stylistically it was way ahead of their time. If 80s music ever needed a formal introduction, let it be the opening 25 second of the song “Let’s Go.”

The dropoff following Candy-O is part of the reason my obsession with the group waned. By late 1982 I’d left the Cars behind, drifting away from mainstream music altogether.

Funny, a bit later on, during my punk rock years, I would often see Ric Ocasek, mantis-like and unmistakable, perusing the record bins in Newbury Comics. He was still a giant to me, but I was too shy ever to say hello.

This book, and the memories it brings back, makes me wish I had.

Related Stories:

ZEN ARCADE, FOUR DECADES ON
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE (SECOND) GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME
KEEPING THE CURTAINS CLOSED

The post Let the Stories Be Told appeared first on AskThePilot.com.