Author: Patrick Smith

UNCONTAINED ENGINE FAILURE is the term you’ve been hearing, and it aptly describes what befell Southwest Airlines flight 1380 on on a flight from New York’s La Guardia Airport to Dallas on April 17th. Basically, a jet engine can fail one of two ways. The first and more innocuous way is that it simply shuts down and ceases producing thrust. This is more or less akin to switching off the ignition in your car. Of course, all commercial jetliners have at least two engines, and can fly just fine should this happen. In fact, per certification requirements, should an engine … Continue reading →

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IN AMERICA AND ACROSS MUCH OF THE WORLD, the security enhancements put in place following the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, have been drastic and of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational and pointless. The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Comprehensive explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is a welcome addition. It’s the second variety, unfortunately that has come to dominate the air travel experience. I’m talking about the frisking, X-raying, body scanning, and confiscating that goes on at thousands of concourse checkpoints across the globe — … Continue reading →

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Fancy digs on the A380. What could possibly ruin this?    Photo by the author. June 29, 2016 Instant Access to Current Spot Prices & Interactive Charts I CONTINUE to be astounded by the sheer number of people traveling around the world with babies, toddlers, and other preschool-age children. Even more astounding is how many of these kids are traveling in first or business class. These tickets cost thousands of dollars, yet it seems there’s no shortage of travelers well-heeled enough to be jetting around in the forward rows with two, three, even a half-dozen small children. How the demographics of … Continue reading →

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EARLIER THIS WEEK, Qatar Airways launched what is, for now, the longest nonstop service in the world. Flights QR920 and QR921 will operate daily each way between Doha, Qatar, and Auckland, New Zealand, using the Boeing 777-200LR — the ultra-long range variant of the 777. The route should prove popular with European and Gulf area tourists headed to New Zealand. The flights will take somewhere around seventeen hours each way, depending on winds. Because of these variations, it’s mileage, not time aloft, that’s the better measuring stick. The direct, great circle distance between Doha and Auckland is just under 7,850 … Continue reading →

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Photo by Patrick Smith. IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN: storm warnings, preemptive cancellations, the mist and spray of that strange heated fluid splattering off the fuselage. Airplanes and winter don’t always mix well. The flying part is easy. Sure, low visibilities, strong crosswinds, slick runways, potential icing — all of these things are challenges for pilots and cause air traffic backlogs, but as a rule, they aren’t anything that airplanes or their crews can’t handle. It’s not the in-the-air aspects of a snowstorm that cause chaos, it’s the on-the-ground aspects: Runways and taxiways need to be plowed and treated, … Continue reading →

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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE remember that Donald Trump once owned an airline. Say what you want of the man — there’s plenty to say — but the Trump Shuttle, which flew hourly between Boston, New York-LaGuardia, and Washington-National, from 1989 until 1992, was a dependable product that I, for one, have fond memories of. Trump had purchased the operation from the dying (or sabotaged; see Lorenzo, below) Eastern Air Lines, which had been running its own Shuttle on the busy BOS-LGA-DCA routes for nearly thirty years. Trump used Boeing 727s — a mix of -100 and -200 variants. The … Continue reading →

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I WAS AFRAID OF THIS. The minute I learned of the double bombing at the Brussels airport check-in lobby earlier today, I knew how the conversation would go. Sure enough, even before the morning was out, we were hearing calls for tighter security in airports. First, a little history. Although airplanes themselves are historically the choicest target, attacks inside terminals are nothing new. For instance: In 1972, the Japanese Red Army killed 26 people in the arrivals lounge at Israel’s Lod Airport (today’s Ben Gurion International). In 1985, the Abu Nidal group killed 20 in a pair of coordinated ticket … Continue reading →

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THE PILOT SHORTAGE is here, and it’s been making headlines. Network news channels have been carrying the story, as have dozens of print and online sources. Last month, Republic Airways, a large U.S. regional carrier that flies on behalf of American and Delta, filed for bankruptcy protection. It blamed the filing, in part, on a dearth of qualified pilots. Other carriers have been canceling flights and mothballing aircraft because they can’t find enough pilots to man their cockpits. Yes, the shortage is real. It’s critical, however, to make clear which sector of the airline industry we’re talking about. We need … Continue reading →

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I’M OLD ENOUGH to remember when people dressed up to fly. I remember my dad putting on a tie before we left for the airport. And that was on a trip to Florida, of all places, as recently as the early 1980s. One of the reasons, though, that people once took flying so seriously, is that so few of them had the means to partake in it. Not all that long ago, only a fraction of the population could afford to fly on a regular basis. When I was in junior high, in the late ’70s, maybe a third of … Continue reading →

NOT THIS AGAIN. Yet another incident with passengers taking their carry-on bags during an evacuation. This time it happened in Las Vegas, after a British Airways 777 caught fire during its takeoff roll. I cannot overemphasize how appallingly unsafe this is. Luggage slows people down and severely impedes their access to the aisles and exits, and it turns the escape slides into a deadly slalom. This time it’s particularly striking, because while most evacuations are precautionary, this one was a full-blown emergency. The airplane was on fire. If that isn’t reason enough to leave your things and get the fuck … Continue reading →

They’ve got a list going over at The Atlantic: What Was the Most Significant Airplane Flight in History? Flight of the Enola Gay, that’s a heavy one. And from my friend Christine Negroni: “In 1914, Abram Pheil became the very first passenger on the very first passenger flight, a 23-minute trip from St. Petersburg, Florida to Tampa. Like the 12-second flight of the Wright Brothers eleven years earlier, his brief time in the air has had an enormous impact on the world.” It’s hard to argue with her. But some of the other entries, I don’t know. D.B. Cooper? United … Continue reading →

THIRTY YEARS AGO this week, TWA flight 847 was hijacked on a flight from Athens to Rome. The plane was commandeered by militiamen from Hezbolla and Islamic Jihad, armed with grenades and pistols. The purloined 727 then embarked on an incredible, 17-day odyssey to Lebanon, Algeria, and back again. Save for the September 11th attacks, the story of flight 847 stands as the single-most dramatic and unforgettable airliner hijacking in history. Yet most of us have forgotten about it. Younger people have likely never heard of it. Which is why I’m bringing up the anniversary: for the sake of perspective. … Continue reading →

NOT TO DETRACT FROM the raw horror and tragic-ness of the Germanwings disaster, but the crash has spawned a sideshow of ill-informed and just plain aggravating conversations, across the whole spectrum of the media, that somebody needs to address. Whether it’s on the human factors side of things (i.e. pilots and mental health), or on the technical part of flying, much of the talk is misleading. As if air travel weren’t misunderstood enough already; certain pundits and correspondents out there are making it worse. For starters, the crash has touched off a good deal of talk about automation and a … Continue reading →

FORGIVE ME for repeating myself. In earlier posts, as well as in my book, I’ve emphasized the myriad ways in which U.S. airports pale in comparison to those overseas. I hate driving a topic into the ground, but my experiences over the past few days force me to revisit this: The other day, traveling on vacation, I flew on Cathay Pacific to Amsterdam, with a connection in Hong Kong. The connection process in HKG went like this: I stepped off the first plane into a quiet, spacious, immaculately clean concourse, and walked to my connecting gate about six minutes away. … Continue reading →

January 11, 2015 THIS AGAIN: a passenger snaps a picture of what seems to be duct tape affixed to some portion of an airplane, uploads it to Facebook or wherever, and suddenly it’s a scandal. The picture above, showing tape over the flap fairing of a 737, was sent to me by a panicked reader a few years ago. This week it’s a picture from the Philippines, where a Cebu Pacific Airbus A320 was photographed with a taped-over panel near its port side wing root. What you’re actually seeing is a heavy-duty aluminum bonding tape known as “speed tape.” It’s … Continue reading →