The Flying Book

by David Blatner

  In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours—one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport.

  —Neil McElroy,

  former U.S. secretary of defense

  I once saw a flight attendant charging down the aisle looking so distressed I was sure we were all goners, but it turned out that somebody was trying to pay for a beer with a $50 bill.

  —Layne Ridley, WHITE KNUCKLES

  You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you’re grateful.

  —Paul Theroux, Novelist and travel writer

  Sometimes people become belligerent when they are told that they cannot use their cell phones during the flight, or when a flight attendant refuses to serve them alcohol (flight attendants cannot legally give alcohol to someone who is already obviously drunk). Passengers have slapped and even punched crew members; on one occasion, a passenger ended up breaking the neck of a gate agent. Fortunately, these instances are rare, but they are proof that air rage has become a reality.

  Here are a few ways to reduce your stress (and that of those around you) with a few precautions:

  Get to the airport far earlier than you need to. This way, you can breathe easy through bad traffic or long lines at the airport, and you can always read a book or explore the airport if you have extra time.

  Remember that some airlines will cancel your reservation if you don’t check in within ten or twenty minutes of the flight.

  Be as pleasant as you can to the airline staff, especially if you want them to be pleasant to you.

  Never physically interfere with a flight attendant; in the United States, it’s a federal crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

  Avoid alcohol before or during the flight.

  If you want to chat with the stranger next to you, be sensitive that he or she might not want to talk (grunting or offering monosyllabic answers to your questions is a good indicator). Or if your seatmate wants to talk and you don’t, just be honest and say, “I’m sorry, but I rarely get any quiet time, and I’m not much in the mood for talking.” (Or lie and say you work for a tax collection service like the IRS; that usually works.)

  If God had really intended men to fly, He’d make it easier to get to the airport.

  —Humorist George Winters

  (Courtesy of Airbus Industrie)

  That is the trouble with flying: We always have to return to airports. Think of how much fun flying would be if we didn’t have to return to airports.

  —Henry Mintzberg, WHY I HATE FLYING

  Ever since 1912, when Calbraith Perry Rogers was killed after a seagull flew into his airplane’s motor, aviators have been keenly aware that birds and airplanes in flight don’t mix. Today, as some bird populations such as the non-migratory Canada geese are on the rise, and there are more airplanes flying than ever, trying to keep the two apart is getting harder. The “bird strike” problem is greatest when airplanes are taking off and landing, so airports are using a wide variety of techniques to keep birds away, including nonlethal chemical repellents, audiotapes simulating birds in distress, trained falcons, “hot foot” (a sticky chemical that irritates birds’ feet), “Nixalite” (a roll of spikes that stops birds from landing), floating plastic balls that cover ponds, and even border collies trained to herd birds. On occasion, airports simply send someone out to shoot the birds.

  Behind the Scenes at the Airline

  The only aspect of aviation more amazing than the fact that jumbo jets can actually get off the ground is the intricate and interwoven system of logistics that makes it possible for the commercial airline system to move millions of people around the globe each day. Most passengers take for granted that airplanes will depart more or less on time and get them to their destination securely and comfortably—more or less. However, passengers see only a small handful of the tens of thousands of people who work at each major airport and airline—the crew schedulers, the meteorologists, the weight and balance staff, the caterers, the fuel crew, and more.

  In the next several chapters, we’ll take a quick look behind the scenes, exploring some of the systems that are working twenty-four hours a day to help fly you from place to place.

  Scheduled Departures

  Perhaps it’s of little comfort, but the next time your airplane lands thirty minutes late, remember the seventeenth-century clipper ships. No one ever expected them to deliver their loads of passengers and cargo on schedule; in fact, everyone rejoiced if a ship arrived in the right week or month—or even arrived at all. The point is that it’s relatively easy to keep airplanes flying, but it’s extremely difficult to keep them flying on schedule.

  One of the biggest challenges to a firm schedule is the weather. No airline will fly its aircraft (or passengers) in a thunderstorm or hurricane, so teams of meterologists work around the clock to spot and predict wind conditions, precipitation, and anything else that could cause a delay around the globe. A storm in the Arctic could seriously hamper flights between New York and Hong Kong that fly near the North Pole. Warmer-than-average ocean currents could shift the position of high-altitude jet streams and add an hour to a cross-country flight.

  Worst of all, a thunderstorm hovering over a major hub could cause disruptions around the world. Chicago’s O’Hare airport is the busiest airport in the world, with over 900,000 flights departing each year (Atlanta’s Hartsfield International is a close second); if it closes for six hours, flight schedules can be affected globally. After all, a jet leaving Chicago may be needed in Washington, D.C., so that it can take a flight to Los Angeles, and its captain can fly a different jet to Buenos Aires. Most airlines have a rule: Always inconvenience the fewest number of passengers. So if that flight to Los Angeles has 220 passengers, many of whom are making connecting flights to Australia and Asia, and there is another airplane flying from Washington, D.C., to Denver with only 50 people on it, the airline may cancel the Denver flight and use the airplane to fly to Los Angeles instead. That’s why you may later hear an announcement that your flight is delayed due to “weather,” even though it’s a beautiful day outside.

  When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the airplane, you’re ready to take off.

  —Pilot’s saying

  To avoid differences in time zones, everyone in the airline industry uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or “Zulu” time (so called because “Zulu” designates the letter z, which represents zero). UTC used to be called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) because it is based on the time in Greenwich, England—also the location of the prime meridian (zero degrees longitude).

  The same thing happens on a smaller scale when an aircraft has mechanical difficulties or if a passenger has a medical emergency and the aircraft has to reroute. Sometimes a long delay will push a landing time past an airport’s night curfew, and the flight has to be rerouted or canceled. Airlines can’t afford to keep extra $50-million airplanes around to fill in the gaps created by an unexpected delay, so even seemingly minor disruptions can cause ripples throughout the system.

  Another, perhaps more infuriating reason for delays is that airlines regularly schedule more aircraft departures than some airports can actually safely accommodate. In many cases, airplanes leave the gate on time only to stand in a long line of other airplanes waiting for a runway because on-time departure technically means a plane leaving the gate on time, not necessarily taking off when it’s supposed to.

  Of course, it’s always maddening to hear that your flight has been canceled, especially if the reason seems mysterious. The gate agents may announce a delay or cancellation due to mechanical problems (because that’s what the airline told them), but this doesn’t necessarily mean the problem was on that particular aircraft. There’s little doubt that some gate agents (or their superiors) lie to passengers to keep complaints down. After all, no passenger wants to hear, “The airli
ne has decided it’s more economical to cancel your flight than to inconvenience these other people.” More often than not, however, everyone is telling the truth—or at least, as much of the truth as they know.

  In the year 2000, the busiest airports in the world (in terms of airline departures) were in the cities of Atlanta (the home of Delta Airlines), Chicago O’Hare Airport (home of United Airlines), and Dallas/Fort Worth (home of American Airlines). The world’s busiest cargo hubs? In Memphis, Tennessee (home of Federal Express), and Hong Kong.

  In 1936, 1.1 million passengers flew on airplanes in the United States. By 1958, almost 49 million Americans were flying each year. In 1970, the number had increased to 170 million; and in 2001, a whopping 622 million American passengers flew. (Since there are only about 275 million people in the United States, some folks flew more than once!)

  To keep things flowing smoothly, every two hours in the United States, representatives from the major airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have a conference telephone call to discuss how things are going and what the airlines should expect in the next few hours: weather concerns, delays, over-scheduling, and so on.

  People Movers

  Another giant challenge to maintaining an on-time schedule is the logistical nightmare of having the right crew on the right flights at the right time. Step into the central operations room of any large airline, and you’ll find almost 100 people whose job it is to track the thousands of flight and ground crew employees. A rerouted flight may bump a pilot up against her maximum legal flight-hour limits, making it impossible for her to fly another leg of a trip. A flight attendant who calls in sick needs to be replaced in order for the flight to take off. A mechanical difficulty could strand pilots and attendants for hours in one city when they’re needed on flights elsewhere.

  Flight crews (pilots and flight attendants) typically don’t remain on the same airplane, or even remain together as a team, for more than one or two legs of a flight. Instead, they are individually routed from airport to airport, either working on a flight or flying as a passenger, often called jump-seating or dead-heading. (Jump-seating also describes flying on your own or another airline for free or next-to-free, one of the perks of working in this industry. Dead-heading also describes flying an airplane from one city to another with no one but a few crew members aboard in order to pick up passengers or have mechanical repairs, sometimes called ferrying.)

  The shortest flight in the world is British Airways’ twice-daily Flight 872 between Westray and Papa Westray, Scotland, which takes just two minutes.

  The world’s longest flight is currently United Airlines’ nonstop Flight 821 between New York and Hong Kong (via the North Pole), which spans 8,439 miles in fifteen hours, forty minutes.

  Flight crew supervisors have to track a large number of factors, like the number of hours each person has worked in a day or a month, the kind of aircraft each pilot is rated to fly (you can’t put a Boeing 747 pilot in an Airbus 319), and where each person lives in relation to his or her flight. For instance, many pilots live in a different city than their domicile(the city from which their flights typically originate), so a pilot might have to take a ninety-minute flight just to show up for work in the morning.

  Similarly, other supervisors are working around the clock tracking ground crew members, ensuring that airline representatives show up at the proper gate an hour before each flight, that agents are ready to help people make tight connections, and that the staff is ready to help guide an arriving aircraft in, unload baggage, fill the plane with fuel, and so on.

  It’s no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport” appear.

  —Douglas Adams,

  THE LONG DARK TEA-TIME OF THE SOUL

  Airplane Food

  The next time you look down and grimace at whatever meal a flight attendant has placed before you, take a moment and consider your food’s astonishing history. While a few airlines still run their own kitchens, most airlines contract out to one of two companies—Dobbs (which is part of the Gate Gourmet conglomerate) or LSG Sky Chefs—each of which runs hundreds of kitchens around the globe. These “kitchens” are actually enormous manufacturing plants, with hundreds of workers on assembly lines putting out thousands of trays of food each day. The larger kitchens can produce more than 8 million meals each year.

  In fact, in a single year just one of these large catering kitchens reported using some 2.7 million eggs, 22 tons of smoked salmon, 75 tons of carrots, 274,000 packets of strawberry jam, and 183,000 heads of lettuce. Chefs combine their raw materials into entrées which are individually wrapped, quick-frozen at temperatures below -238°F (-150°C), and then placed in enormous multistory refrigerated warehouses. Each day, the proper number of meals, called pop-outs, can then be pulled, thawed, and loaded into containers along with trays, glasses, flatware, napkins, salads, rolls, desserts, and whatever else the airline has paid for. Each meal must look as identical as possible, as passengers tend to compare their meals to their neighbors’.

  Getting the right meals to the right flight at the right time is a feat that requires near-military precision and is made even trickier by the increasing number of special meals that passengers order. Today, airlines offer more meal choices than ever: vegetarian (dairy or nondairy), low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-salt, gluten-free, diabetic, hot or cold seafood, fruit plate, Asian, children’s, Kosher, Hindu, Muslim, and more. Some airlines have special McDonald’s meals for kids, others offer warm chocolate chip cookies; American Airlines offers Weight Watchers’ meals on some flights, and Alaska Airlines added Alaskan wild berry jams and reindeer sausages to some breakfasts. Almost all special meals must be ordered twenty-four hours in advance.

  The more I fly, the more I’m convinced that the true wonder of modern aviation is the transformation of tasteless particles into something known as airplane food.

  —Bob Blumer, THE SURREAL GOURMET

  Catering companies must be extremely careful about not only security (after all, these items will be loaded onto an airplane) but also food safety—the meals must be kept cool and be transferred onto the airplane as quickly as possible. Those in-flight food trolleys are often loaded with dry ice to keep their contents cool throughout the flight.

  One kitchen may make meals for a number of different airlines, and each airline has its own menus, dishes, flatware, and tray style. A single Boeing 747 typically requires the catering company to load more than 40,000 individual items for an international flight. That means each kitchen must juggle hundreds of thousands of pieces of cutlery, glasses, trays, and other reusable items each day.

  It’s hard to imagine these economies of scale. U.S.-based airlines spent over $3.4 billion on in-flight service in 2000. Southwest Airlines—perhaps the king of the “no frills” airlines—spent almost $15 million serving over 95 million bags of peanuts and drinks. Even so, that translates to less than twenty-five cents per passenger; according to USA Today, Delta Airlines spent about $3 per passenger on food in 1999, United Airlines spent about $4.75, and American Airlines spent over $6 for each of its tens of millions of passengers.

  If an airline can save a penny by altering its menu, it can reduce its yearly expenses by hundreds of thousands of dollars. One airline reportedly saved $150,000 per year simply by removing one of two glasses on its dinner trays. You can see why airlines often drop features like hot towels or glassware in tougher financial times. Many airlines have cut meal services altogether on flights shorter than three or four hours.

  Few airlines serve peanuts on flights anymore because they can be deadly to passengers who are allergic. In 1998, the U.S. government began requiring that airlines set aside three peanut-free rows on a flight when one of the passengers has a peanut allergy. (The passenger must provide advance notice of this health problem and written confirmation from a doctor.)

  Airports are like little cities: They have their own restaurants, little hospitals, police and firefighting
forces, and civil servants (for immigration, customs, and so on). Often, the water runoff from large food catering factories is so great that the airport needs its own sewage-processing system.

  Of course, every item that gets loaded onto an airplane has to be unloaded, sorted, cleaned, recycled, or disposed of (usually by incineration). Statistics on waste are hard to come by, but in 1993 one very large catering company estimated that over 40 percent of its in-flight meals were uneaten or partially eaten. It also recorded disposing of 24 tons of stale bread, 5.7 tons of used frying oil, and 2.5 tons of Styrofoam. Los Angeles International Airport, which dumps about 8,000 tons of wasted food each year, is exploring a novel program in which the scraps get composted, producing methane gas that is pumped to a power generation plant.

  Ultimately, it’s simply not possible to create gourmet food when cooking for multitudes. Therefore, if you want to enjoy your food on a flight (or perhaps be fed at all, if your flight is short), remember to stop by a deli on the way to the airport. Even if you bring a few granola bars and some fruit, your meal will be healthier and more fulfilling than anything the airlines could serve you (except perhaps in business or first class).

  The Trouble with Toilets

  Passengers love to hate airplane lavatories: You stand in a long line in order to step into a small, cramped room, which lights up only after you close the door and lock it. The toilets themselves look like prison bathrooms, and they typically make a lot of noise when flushed.