Letters to the Editor
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Pilots over 60
I thought you were going to discuss the FAA ruling about pilots being allowed to fly past the age of 60 and what that will mean for younger pilots still climbing the seniority ladder. With that Continental pilot dying mid-flight a couple weeks back, do you support increasing the age of pilots? Do you think a pension at 60 is one of the perks of the job or discrimation that should be eliminated?
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Who cares about this stuff?
Enough with the design articles, and the awkward, jokey disavowals of all things gay.
This column truly sings when Smith focuses on the average reader's desire/experience of flying. Namely: cool places, cool trivia, crashes & safety, and to a lesser degree "service" experiences. The aesthetic considerations of airports is also interesting, given we all spend time there pre/post flight, but cockpits? Come on, could you get a little more esoteric? What's next? A discussion of the hairnets worn by workers at the companies who supply the meals on flights? The best shoes for baggages handlers? Sheesh.
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Great column, Patrick.
I guess it qualifies as greybeard rambling, but I can remember my several jumpseat rides as family of airline pilots...
Way back in the 60's, my Dad was a captain on a northeast regional carrier, and I got to ride in the cockpit of a BAC-111 for a day. I still remember landing and taking off from Washington National...a hairy approach even then, and worse today, as I hear. I must have been all of 9 years old.
Later on, when I was in college, my brother was flying for an airline which will remain nameless, and I got to fly jumpseat in a 727 on a flight headed from BOS to MIA - a charter to pick up the New England Patriots after a game. I distinctly remember listening to the game on the radio on the way down, and I definitely remember that the Pats lost - the players looked none too happy when they boarded.
I may have written about this before in this space, and if so I apologize, but the most impressive jumpseat I ever got to ride in was on the flight deck of an Air Force C5-B. That thing is so large that when the plane rotated you had the sense that it was doing about 20 MPH.
PS: Did I see you, the Pilot, being interviewed on some Discovery Channel program in the last few weeks?
Again - excellent column.
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Oh, Jeez
Just when you thought the bottom-scraping could go no deeper...
Patrick, honestly.
Who the f-ing hell CARES about your taste in music, sexual proclivities and borderline homophobia, or aircraft bloody interiors?
Okay, the shot of Beirut from the MD-11 was cool. Yet certainly you could have offered it in a more relevant context.
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Short Sleeves and Airline Pilots
Hey why do we always see airline pilots wearing short sleeve shirts?
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esoteric
Patrick, use your massive exposure on the front page of salon for something that only the administrators of airlines.net could care about!
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O pilot, my pilot,
Forget the carping of these tiny minds, and carry on regardless. You are 110% heterosexual like Jesus's General, and above all that garbage.
Carry on, sir.
From a 200% heterosexual Vietnam Vet [67-68] with four ex-wives [68-78]. Then I went Bukowski, and finally gave it up as boring many years later. Better fun things to do.
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Keep up with these articles!
Patrick, don't listen to the complainers. I, for one, enjoy these types of articles. I like seeing the side of the air travel industry that no one ever sees. I would also like to hear about hairnets on food service workers, too, if Salon offered someone in that field a column. I enjoy learning about the "secret world" behind the scenes.
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I enjoyed it
I really liked this article and the one last week. I find this stuff very interesting. And yes, I am a big ol' homo! :-)
But seriously how do I book one of those bunks?
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Can someone tell me......?
Who, exactly, asked the pilot anything??? After a brief period of relevance, these pieces have become a sad, tiresome, and wasteful remnant of post 9/11 society, like those commemorative coins featuring a a stand-up sculture of the Twin Towers. From the mysterious "anonymous" beginnings, to the brave unveiling of the author's true identity (who was asking?), this has been little more than a exercise in vanity. My teenage son blogs, too; he just doesn't delude himself that his thoughts on the latest Taking Back Sunday CD are as important as the 2008 presidential candidates, the horrendous quagmire in Iraq, or informed, well-written essays on our current culture, as screwed up as it is.
May we please stop wasting space on this?
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I don't get it
I don't understand why so many people write letters on Salon complaining that an article isn't about some "important" topic and that it's wasting space. Last time I checked this was a website, not a hard copy newspaper. There's virtually unlimited space here. If you're not interested in a particular article, don't read it! It's fairly simple.
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Great column
I've loved this column and the last one, too. I wish I could book those beds.
Clearly The Pilot has readers who enjoy all different subjects - and so the column flows along between subjects over time. Makes sense to me.
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Bunkies..
..funny stuff! At our airline, bunkies are sometimes referred to as 'half man, half mattress'
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Joysticks
This may be no big deal to pilots, but it seems like it would be a challenging feat of dexterity to go from flying a plane with a wheel and yoke to flying one with a right-hand joystick (as the person in the righthand seat must do) to flying one with a left-hand joystick (as the person in the lefthand seat must do). Does this cause problems for the pilots?
I don't fly real airplines, so I can't testify personally to the difficulty of such things, but I do know that switching the functions of the thumbsticks on my Xbox controller makes it nearly impossible to play a game that I already know well.
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Thanks, Pilot, for another interesting article.
Patrick,
I'm sure as a writer you've heard plenty of criticism and many complaints and you are therefore used to it. So I probably do not need to chime in and say how much I, and indeed many other people, enjoy your column and its wide breadth of articles and insights. But I will, anyway.
One of the reason I enjoy reading Salon is columns, articles and writers that teach me something new; getting not only a different viewpoint and perspective, but a peek into something I would otherwise not know about at all, is why I am here. Next time I fly a longer flight I'll peek down the staircase and have an idea of what it might look like. I enjoy general knowledge...the amount of random questions I can answer is largely due to reading things I find interesting. Do we need to have another reason to read? Does it have to be of utmost geopolitical importance for it to grace the pages of salon? Hell, no!
I read Patrick Smith, King Kaufman and Garrison Keillor; their topics may at times invoke important opinions on important topics of the day, but don't you people (and by "you people" I am pointing at the complainers) ever do anything just because it is fun? Is someone forcing you to read these columns? Do you read every word of every article in the newspaper every day just because it is printed?
Patrick, I'm not sure how you could work it into a column, but please write two pages on free will next week. Maybe it would help some folks.
And then continue on with your column, one of my favorite reads each week.
Coleman