Just be grateful the hair is gone. If it stays on the luggage long enough, it starts to develop dandruff, and then you get - oh, no! - Flakes on a Plane.

It's time to stop complaining and look for things to be thankful for. Terrorists, for instance, can be thankful to airport security for herding large numbers of airline passengers into a small confined space so that a single suicide bomber can take out hundreds of them without ever getting onto an airplane.

Great article, and it even makes me nostalgic for the all-nighters, when I passed many an endless hour balancing the fuel to the nearest ounce. I have a few thousand hours in that seat, and was only happy to leave the airplane because it meant I wasn't an engineer any more. Also, IMHO, the stretch 8 is one of the prettiest aircraft ever.

Because of its age, the DC-8 has a lot of add-ons that were put there in response to a particular accident. The GPWS, for instance, and that little box bolted to the left side of your panel, and I forget the rest.

Do you still get to control the outflow valve manually when you turn on the other two recirc fans? That used to be the highlight of my trip. Thanks for a great read.

You should explain that "souls on board" is a term of art (as they say in other professions) intended to cover everyone on the aircraft. It avoids questions like "Does that include the crew?", or "Does that include laps?" when you tell ATC how many there are on board. They just want to know how many bodies to look for in the wreckage.

It also assumes, without the usual discussion, that pilots have souls. I always found that comforting.

Giving TSA people new uniforms and badges has got to be the best example yet of putting lipstick on a pig.

But cheer up! TSA is apparently now drawing its screeners from a better class of applicants. For instance, when I went through recently, the first guy checked my boarding pass, handed it back, and said, "Do you want fries with that?" Then I went over to the metal detector and the guy there said, "Welcome to WalMart."

Keep up the good work, Patrick. Someday you will reach someone who can figure out how to get accountability back from this government.

After dealing with the mouth-breathers at TSA, the sullen ticket agents, and the snarling Gorgons in flight attendant uniforms, I don't really notice the airport much. I just want out.

Patrick, you should know that all the good sex among flight crews ended just before you came to work. This is true no matter when you came to work. I started in 1966, and was reliably informed that the good times stopped somewhere around the end of '65. Good stories were still around, but that was it. I bet Eddie Rickenbacker and Juan Trippe thought they just missed it, too.

Maybe it's just me, but I always thought it was easier to make a smooth landing in a crosswind. That way you get to do one wheel at a time without cheating.

I can confirm what you say about different schedule preferences, and if we were flying the same seat you would have no competition from me for the international flying. I always thought it would be ideal to end a career by flying the 737 through multi-leg days, and if it hadn't been for the pay differential, I would have.

I forget the year, but some AA captain got into trouble with those cockpit videos by using a big hand from a gorilla costume to manipulate the throttles on camera. I thought it was hilarious, but apparently AA did not.

..and I think attentive and competent legislators should be a part of that price.

And good luck with that.