Sorry, can't help myself.

I've flown quite a lot in the past 4 years, and I have plenty of respect for pilots and aircrew.

You could have added, in your analogy to a medical operation, that up to 860 lives depend on the successful operation of the plane - not just the poor schmuck on the table.

Kudos and my gratitude to pilots and all air transportation personnel who have kept me and my loved ones safe over the years.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anyone with an ounce of instruction in, and appreciation for, history -- anyone who has immersed him/herself in it far enough to have felt, even for a moment, what it was like to live in times when to travel fifty miles was a serious labor, when to travel across a continent was an almost unthinkable series of hardships -- would STFU about the inconveniences of flying in the jet age.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anyone with an ounce of instruction in, and appreciation for, history -- anyone who has immersed him/herself in it far enough to have felt, even for a moment, what it was like to live in times when to travel fifty miles was a serious labor, when to travel across a continent was an almost unthinkable series of hardships -- would STFU about the inconveniences of flying in the jet age.

The fact that travel is so much easier now than it was doesn't mean it isn't much harder than it could be. Heck, the telegraph was so much better than the Pony Express, why invent the telephone? The telphone was so much better and cheaper than the telegraph - why complain that AT&T had an unnecessary monopoly?

Flying has become a chore. I am always astounded by crossing the continent in so little time, and always astonished at a successful journey is marked by a sense of relief that nothing *actually* bad happened - the journey was something merely uneventful. How can we get to a place where flying is the epic experience it actually is?

meanwhile:

* The search for sharps: what a joke. Any reasonably strong person could strangle you with his shoelaces. Or suffocate you in a plastic bag. And let's not mention the number of times that airport security has managed to fail to find the nailclippers I left in my bag like a dork.

-- at the very least, the "be nice" training seems to have worked, the TSA people I've run across has been mighty friendly.

* Your retelling of the fall of the towers... I like to think of myself as being able to make sensible decisions in a post 9/11 work, but getting me thinking about where I was while we watched the towers fall triggered a flood of bad memories, and was greatly upsetting. The trauma is real, even if we don't often think of it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anyone with an ounce of instruction in, and appreciation for, history -- anyone who has immersed him/herself in it far enough to have felt, even for a moment, what it was like to live in times when to travel fifty miles was a serious labor, when to travel across a continent was an almost unthinkable series of hardships -- would STFU about the inconveniences of flying in the jet age.

Congratulations for knowing that the most idiotic statements are the ones that are quoted the most. Well anyway, I know that, so I will just ask your don't-know-s**t-about-history brain to answer this question - so what? I mean really, so what? Basically all you're saying is that things could be worse, so why complain?

OK, I know you couldn't answer in a thousand years, so here's the answer. Because people, especially Americans, have ALWAYS said, "there's got to be a better way." Do you really think that pioneers did not complain about wagon travel? Do you really think they just shrugged and said, "Too bad that wagon rolled over my youngest son, it could have rolled over TWO sons."

Do you even read history? I seriously doubt it. I do, and asshats like you make me crazy. Try reading a pioneer diary, or read letters written during historic events. They complained all the time. They yearned for better things, better lives, more land, more security. That's why they took the risks they did. Some felt the hardship was worth it, some did not.

I respect them for what they risked. I respect them because they went from horses, to wagons, to trains, to cars to planes in only about 100 years, because they were always looking for a better, faster way to get from A to B.

And you better believe they complained when their rail shipments were late, or their items were damaged, or the stagecoach got to town 7 days late. To them, there was always a better way to be found.

Most people are more than willing to take a step back if it serves a purpose and that also applies to air travel. It might even apply to other forms of travel if the price to pay is too high. Bigger, faster, better sometimes has to be tempered, but never totally squashed.

When the TSA first implemented their security measures, few complained about it. It was only when many of the screenings were gradually revealed to be empty exercises that frustration set in. Empty rituals and empty gestures are only for the mediocre and people who have already given up. They are Un-American.

Hi Patrick,

As usual I read your column tonight with anticipation. Whether or not you are speaking of flying, the infrastructure related with same or just life in general, your commentary remains superb if occasionally flawed. Tonight you blew a big one. (Didn’t mean that quite how it reads…) Practicing surgery and practicing the act of flying a commercial airliner are not the same, nor are they even remotely equivalent. Firstly- and you know this as well or better than I. Surgeons have undergone literally years, if not decades of training, all a Commercial Pilot legally needs is little more than 100 hours of flight time, an Instrument Certificate, and goodwill from all. Thence he can practice his love on all the women… Doctors on the other hand have a slightly steeper hill to climb. Obviously no pilot flying for a major is going to have such sparse credentials, but the fact remains that becoming a doctor is a whole lot harder than becoming a First Officer at a major. (I know too well that pilots of heavy metal have sacrificed a great deal, but it does not equate in any way to what a surgeon goes through in the 4 years of pre-med, the 3 years of medical school, the ??? years of residency, all without any semblance of a personal life.)

Point for point let’s consider the facts. Airplanes are by design dynamically stable. (At least the ones that carry passengers are…) Patients are not. Airplanes by design go pretty much where you point them. Patients do not. A 767 is a bit like a battleship- meaning that small precise inputs to the controls do not in fact yield much of anything. Slice .05mm to the left of where you meant to cut on a patient- oops!! I’m sorry ma’am but your husband died of unintended consequences. When you spool up the engines on your 767- you pretty much know that based upon historical imperative you are almost certainly going to arrive in one piece at your destination. In fact you are so certain of it that you don’t even consider the possibility of the opposite. (Although I secretly think that all pilots want to be Dennis Fitch on his knees- even as they protest same…) The surgeon on the other hand, when he makes that first cut, is embarking on a journey which he cannot anticipate or predict. He will in effect be responding and reacting to unexpected and unanticipated realities- and the patient may literally live or die based upon what he does.

What if I told you every time you passed V1: Someone is going to live or die today based solely upon what you do over the next six hours. Would that cause you to see that being a pilot is an incredible gift- and being a surgeon is an incredible burden??

I’m not trying to diminish the skills and the chutzpah that being a pilot demands, nor am I trying to extol being a surgeon. (I am a pilot after all…) But the fact remains that barring a large, unforeseeable, and otherwise catastrophic event- the plane will get where it was supposed to go pretty much all of the time. Surgical success on the other hand is hit or miss. And if you as the surgeon miss the target the patient dies. Surely sometimes you can chalk it up to bad luck, or an otherwise unexpected or unanticipated issue arising- one that required actions that were not possible. But sometimes a surgeon just makes a mistake and the patient dies.

Patrick- when was the last time you botched an approach and a passenger died?? Or you landed 500 feet long and a passenger was paralyzed for life?? Or you overshot your target altitude by a thousand feet because ATC was chattering at you and someone lost a limb??

I don’t know of many pilots that have made mistakes and watched people die as a result. (That aren’t of course already dead themselves…) That responsibility alone distinguishes being a surgeon from being a pilot- and exposes your posit as nothing more than a grandiose or otherwise pointless comparison.

I appreciate greatly your balancing of the inanities of our transportation system as it exists today- equally I appreciate your writing. Your piece last month about Dakar literally left me crying- both for your humanity and for your powers of both observation and commentary.

Keep up the good work!!

dce