I’m beyond weary on the subject of air traveler complaints. I started to feel a little grouchy after my story on baggage fees ran in The New York Times a few weeks ago. The story explained that all passengers are not created equal. Those traveling with heavy or multiple bags cost the airline more. It’s this simple; weight and space equals cost.



Meantime, Stacey Dougherty, editor of Where2gomag.com takes the position that airline customers “are not going to put up with being nickel and dimed and treated like cattle.” She is far from alone in viewing today’s air passengers as helpless victims. But the expectation of air travelers is simply out of touch with any sensible assessment of the economics of the industry.

Here is the dilemma. For the most part, travelers decide on an air carrier based on cost. But the largest expense categories for airlines are those most difficult to control; fuel and labor. They simply can’t fly a planeload of passengers for what they make on tickets alone. Baggage fees, onboard sale of food, drinks, movies and internet, premium seats and early boarding - passengers see these as add-ons but they are in fact, an alternative method of making what it costs to provide service.

To be sure, the present predicament is a product of airline deregulation but I’m not going to dive into this now-generations-old dispute. I will merely insist that the disconnect between passenger expectations and what airlines can deliver is on par with the gulf between Huffington Post and Fox News.

Passengers want comfortable, safe airplanes. They want good-humored flight attendants who are happy with their jobs because they are fairly compensated. They want experienced, rested, well-trained pilots who are focused on task. They want room for their knees and space for their carry-ons. They want frequent service to their destination and an empty seat next to them on the plane. They want to get where they are going without delays or restrictions. And they want to bring another 30-50 pounds of stuff at no additional charge.

Some of this is not unreasonable but much of this is fantasy. Because while airlines have been engaged in the very public blood sport of undercutting each others’ fares, out of the view of passengers, they are whacking away every expense, in areas too many to list here. Suffice to say, the effect of this cost cutting directly impacts passenger convenience, employee morale and air safety.

Passengers’ unrealistic expectations have been allowed to go uncorrected for too long creating a burbling groundswell of hostility into which politicians and policy makers have come rushing with quixotic fixes. The relationship between passengers and airlines is deeply strained and passenger-bill-of-rights legislation and tarmac laws are as unlikely to fix the problem as having a baby is likely to save a marriage.

It wasn’t more than ten days ago, volcanic ash virtually shut down air transport throughout Europe. That should serve as reminder of just how integral the airline industry is to the global economy.

Passengers trapped on the tarmac is a suitable symbol for the present plight of air travelers and airlines. We are stuck with our anger and with each other and we are going nowhere.

The solutions that will work take into account the needs of both passengers and airlines. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick to fix commercial aviation in the United States. But if you ask me, that is a trip worth taking.

Thai government will not tolerate Star Trek fans portraying insignificant disposable characters. Story here.

"It might happen!" warns Cameron.

Murdoch press reacts: The Sun leads with "Brave Dave Warns of Barmy Lib Dem/ Saddam Plot"; Sky News devotes four hours of coverage to whether David Cameron is "brave or very brave", while The Times goes with "Lib Dem Victory Could Lead to Saddam WMDs Targeting Weakened Britain".

"What have you done, Gordon?" - "Brown's Britain" 2010.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has had a special photographic portrait made of himself in which, looking directly into camera in an accusatory manner, his expression reveals both anger, bitterness and disappointment. The work, entitled "Brown's Britain" was delivered by courier to Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on Monday morning.


According to art critic Brian Sewell, the image is "utterly devastating; Hawking's expression captures both the disappointments and resentments that have been swelling in Brown's Britain for years. We deserved better, and Hawking isn't shy about letting Brown know the current feelings of the nation...truly magnificent!"

"I hope he gets the message," said Hawking in a statement released early Monday morning, adding "I think that my disapproving expression should give Prime Minister Brown some serious pause for thought as to where he is taking Britain." Number 10 has thus far declined to comment on the matter.

I’ve sent my share of criticism in the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration since writing my book Deadly Departure about the crash of TWA Flight 800. But in today’s New York Times, there’s a startling account of federally documented safety lapses at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, leading me to believe air travelers have it good compared to coal mine workers.

The story, written by Dan Barry, Ian Urbina and Clifford Krauss reports that workers at Upper Big Branch, the site of the worst mine disaster in 40 years, “said they did not dare question the company’s safety practices, even when asked to perform a dubious task.” On April 5^th, 29 miners were killed in an explosion at the mine.

Years ago, an aeronautical engineer told me that in contrast to commercial aviation which is subject to intense federal scrutiny, mines are practically unregulated. I was reminded of that over the past weeks reading about the Upper Big Branch disaster. I can’t imagine any airline being allowed to operate with violations like those cited by the Mine Safety and Health Administration and detailed in the Times story.

These days the buzz term in transportation safety is “just culture” - establishing a non-punitive approach to reporting and investigating errors and behaviors. Just culture recognizes that accidents are largely the result of blameless mistakes.

Even now, I’m working on a story about how demonizing pilots like those on Northwest Flight 188 who overflew their destination, and the Colgan Air pilots who mishandled a stall and crashed in Buffalo last winter fails to get at the root causes of pilot error. Recognizing that every accident is the result of a number of contributing factors is critical.

The public fascination with aviation disasters keeps pressure on the F.A.A. to constantly refine an already high level of safety.

That’s clearly not the case in mine safety and I can only surmise that’s because the there-but-by-the-grace-of-God-factor is missing. Everyone can imagine themselves in an airliner screeching toward disaster. Few will ever be anywhere near a coal mine.

Nevertheless, mine workers deserve the same level of federal protection. That the Upper Big Branch mine was on a collision course with disaster is obvious.

Which leads me to suggest that those in charge of assuring the safety of mine workers take another lesson from aviation - when behavior is egregious consider criminal prosecution of the corporate decision makers.

The precedent was set with the aviation maintenance company, SabreTech following the May 1996 in-flight fire that caused the crash of ValuJet flight 592. One hundred and ten people were killed.

After investigators determined that SabreTech illegally shipped oxygen canisters in the cargo hold of the DC-9, federal prosecutors charged executives of the company with murder and manslaughter. SabreTech ultimately plea bargained and agreed to pay compensation to the National Air Disaster Alliance, an air safety advocacy group.

Bringing criminal charges following an aviation accident is practiced in some countries, uncommon in the United States and frowned upon by the International Civil Aviation Organization and safety specialists. That the practice remains controversial is a good thing because it encourages judicious use of this exceedingly heavy club.

But from everything I’ve read the bosses at the Upper Big Branch mine have shown a reckless disregard for the safety of workers. They wouldn’t be allowed to get away with it at thirty-thousand feet. It is just as criminal below ground.

This photograph was sent to me tonight, by my friend Joe Wheeler in Perth, Australia. Since there was little to smile about in international aviation over the past week I thought I'd pass along this light relief.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R) is trying to kill financial reform by slowing down the process - story here.

A runaway mini-sub temporarily halted progress on the French government’s search of the Atlantic for the black boxes from Air France Flight 447. The remote operated underwater vessel, the Remus, is part of a team of recovery watercraft hired by the French as they investigate last June's crash of an Airbus 330.


Last Friday, the Remus mini-sub surfaced and moved 62 miles before it could be recovered and returned to the search site.

The French aircraft accident investigation bureau the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses is twelve days into its latest effort to find the flight data and cockpit voice recorder from the jetliner that disappeared mysteriously on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris June 1, 2009. Two hundred and twenty eight people were killed.

The BEA reported today that the team of two work ships, the 260 foot crane equipped Seabed Worker and the 230-foot supply and load-line vessel the Anne Candies, three remote-operated subs and a sonar tow has accomplished a search of 1800 square miles of the Atlantic.

In addition to the delay resulting from the runaway sub, the agency reported rain and stormy weather but good search conditions.

At the time the jetliner fell into the ocean, it was traveling at an altitude of 35,000 feet and was too far from land to use radio communications. A satellite system on the aircraft designed to report certain maintenance and aircraft information to dispatchers on the ground, sent several error messages.

Investigators seeking to discover what went wrong, have little to go on beyond these communications and some of the wreckage that has been found. Their eagerness to find the flight data recorder that documents the plane’s flight information and cockpit voice recorder detailing the crew conversations can be seen by the amount of time and money that has gone into the search of the Atlantic. Before this latest effort, an estimated $40 million had been spent by the governments of France, Brazil and the United States.

The crash has prompted calls for the use of new technology to keep airplanes in communication with the ground even on flights operating over remote areas. As I reported in an article in The New York Times, last month, European air safety agencies sent a letter to the International Civil Aviation Organization asking that the international body mandate that commercial airliners regularly send basic flight information such as heading, altitude, speed and location to a receiving station off the airplane.

In an interview last month with AirDat, a company that equips airliners with satellite systems to transmit meteorological information, Jay Ladd the chief executive told me the kind of information useful for investigators of the Air France disaster could be obtained using weather reporting systems already deployed.

“If we had our typical sensor on the plane, as it encountered turbulence, we’d be getting a rapid stream of information and we’d know where the plane was, we’d have an exact position and altitude for that plane when it last recorded data.”

Ladd’s company is not the only one looking at ways to incorporate on airplanes, the kind of high tech solutions already in use by teenagers twittering about their every activity.

Mr. Ladd told me, “We would like to be pro active and start tracking airplanes, even without ICAO intervention.”

David Paqua posts an update on his flight from Danbury Municipal Airport to Sun 'n Fun in Florida in his homebuilt Acro Sport...including clarifying that Blackberry trouble!



OK, so my phone didn't charge. More specifically my plug-in charger stopped working and the phone ran down. Apparently not turning the phone off in flight does not affect the flight instruments it causes the phone to continually search, sending out "here I am" messages to the nearest cell tower the entire flight. This really eats up battery life. Anyway, morning fog in Charleston on Tuesday kept me cozy with the line crew until 9 a.m. They were a likable lot.

I lifted off into the bright sun while the low lying areas were still covered in ground fog and it was very pretty. Two hours to Gainesville with 155 mph indicated on the GPS. Wow! Better to have a slow plane with a tailwind than a fast plane with a headwind. The trouble with that, though is that landing into 24 knot winds not aligned with the runway. I didn't want to leave a bad impression with Gainesville tower so I "carried" the landing a little and touched down the first one third of runway 11 but with the headwind I still turned off the first taxiway. The tower was was impressed and cleared me direct to the GA ramp with a "nice job" comment!

The final leg to Plant City, Florida I flew at 1,500 feet due to cloud cover that came in from nowhere and what a bumpy ride, at one point a particularly nasty bump knocked my headset off! I had to follow a Light Sport in the pattern at Plant City and it was a good 20 m.p.h. slower than me. But this guy was all over the place. He ended up overflying the airport and at that point I broke it off, called the tower and set up for another approach.

So the trip ends, 4 fuel stops 1 nice evening in Charleston and an airplane-infested week begins. I'm ready to relax!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Well this isn't David Paqua's Blackberry, but I'm guessing his was resting in a similar spot on Tuesday.


After a day with no news on his progress from Charleston, South Carolina to Sun 'n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, I got the following text message Wednesday morning;

"Phone charger not working Monday. Phone died bought a new one Tuesday."

So its not clear to me whether its the phone or the charger that was dead, but, no phone, no texts, no photos and this explains the absence of blogging from me on day two of David's adventure.

When I hear more, you will, too.

Sun 'n Fun opened Tuesday. The 36th annual Fly-in is expected to draw more than one hundred thousand spectators, who come to see the airshows (F-16 Thunderbirds will perform on April 17 and 18th, OMG!) static displays, vendors selling everything one could possibly relate to aviation - for example, got an email from these folks last week - and an appearance by the under-appreciated Miracle on the Hudson CO-pilot Jeff Skiles. (Read what I've written about that here and here.)

So it sounds like a lot of fun, but we're just going to have to wait for details from our intrepid pilot/reporter. David P., Where ARE you?

From David Paqua's Blackberry: "Nice and warm here. I'm watching a 767 do touch and go's. A lot of fuss and bother."

Yep, its 73 degrees and clear at Kinston Regional Jetport in North Carolina where David appears to have stopped to fuel up the Acro Sport. Well have to wait for details on the 767 activity. I have no idea...

David's GPS shows him on the ground at 12:30. Must be time for lunch. Follow his trip south to Sun 'n Fun by clicking here.

UK PM Gordon Brown has revealed that he is sending former footballer Jimmy Greaves to Poland to "help the country's people with their terrible loss".


Also en route to Poland is former Monty Python star Michael Palin; his presenting duties in the documentary TV series Pole to Pole are believed to have motivated Brown to add him to the list of special emissaries heading to the region. "It's a symbol of solidarity," said Brown "Poland can now grieve with Greaves, while Michael Palin will underline the sense of pain felt from Pole to Pole.

And he's off!

My friend David Paqua has completed the first leg of his trip to the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In in his homebuilt Acro Sport. He landed for fuel in Maryland minutes ago. David left on this solo, cross country flight from Danbury Municipal Airport just after 7:00 a.m. Monday. His route took him west over Briarcliff Manor and he turned the plane south over the Hudson.

David will join tens of thousands of aviation aficionados at the Lakeland, Florida event which begins tonight. I wrote about this trip, and the years David spent building his little bi-wing in a previous posting which you can read here.

David's message sent via his Blackberry reads: "What a great ride down the Hudson River this morning! Smooth and clear. Just landed at Ocean City MD for fuel. On to Norfolk!"

David is the owner of Franklin Glass in Stamford, Connecticut. You can follow David's progress live through his GPS tracker site.

This weekend, my friend David Paqua will take off from Danbury Municipal Airport on a great adventure, flying his little two-seat biplane from Connecticut to Lakeland, Florida for the annual Sun 'n Fun Fly In.
This is not just any cross-country flight and David's Acro Sport is not just any airplane.When I think about it, David's not just any pilot either. He's my friend and I'm very proud of him.


I first met David, oh, 7-8 years ago, at Franklin Glass in Stamford when I needed a storm window repaired. Franklin Glass is about the friendliest shop on the planet, which is testament enough, but I really became a fan of the place, when I learned that way up on the second floor, the owner was spending his evenings and weekends, building an airplane. Over the years, yes...years, David would invite me up from time to time to see his progress. He's a meticulous craftsman, (which explains the above mentioned years) and the finished airplane, painted in a vintage black and white design, is a stunner.

So its no wonder that David, a regular attendee at the Sun 'n Fun, wants to show the airplane off this year. This will be the longest trip he's taken in it, the longest flight he's made alone. But David has graciously agreed to bring us along, by supplying my blog with real time route maps, photographs, and if he's got time, some of the details of his flight and activities along the way.
We'll be wheels up on April 12th,
come along for the ride.

In an earlier blog posting, I wondered what new revelations might emerge about American Eagle pilot Timothy Martins, the cover boy who may have embellished his life story in a profile about him in the Air Line Pilots Association magazine's April edition.
You may recall that in the story, written by technical editor Jan Steenblik, and pulled off the digital newsstand within days of its publication, Martins was said to have been a paramedic, New York city fire fighter, Air National Guard fighter pilot, and graduate of Dowling College School of Aviation.
Officials with each of these organizations deny that Martins fought their fires, flew their planes or graduated from their school. The denials, while interesting don't explain how these fictions wound up in print. I'm getting nowhere with ALPA. Spokeswoman Linda Shotwell tells me no one at the union has anything to say about the matter.


But back to Martins, two commenters on my blog claim that the young man is a Federal Flight Deck Officer, meaning he has undergone a federal background check and is authorized to carry a firearm onto the airplane.

Could that be true?

I can't say, though that's the kind of tidbit worth checking out, so I got right on it. A call to the Transportation Security Administration gets this response from spokesman Nelson Minerly. "The identities of FFDO's are confidential. That's a matter of policy."
Flight deck officers I'm told, are not supposed to identify themselves as such publicly. But what does that really mean?


Even Minerly admits when the person sitting next to you in the cockpit pulls a gun from a lockbox and straps it onto their belt, FFDO status is no longer secret. A number of airline pilots tell me flight attendants are also informed when one of the pilots is packing. And how seriously does the TSA really take this secrecy if the agency is providing special bags to move the weapon through the airplane and the airport. "Those fancy satchels are easy to spot" a former pilot told me this afternoon. If all these folks are in the know, just how hush-hush can this information really be?


OK, so I have no idea if my blog commenters know first hand that Martins is flying armed or if its just coming through the rumor mill. Or if this detail is as fictionalized as the profile of Martins that got this ball rolling. Until I get something more substantial, there's not much more I can do with this nub of a story.


But here's one point worth considering.
In April 1994, Fed Ex flight engineer Auburn Calloway who believed he was about to be fired for lying about his fight record, was deadheading on a company DC-10 when, shortly after takeoff he took a hammer out of a guitar case and tried to clobber to death the three men at the controls.


Air safety consultant and former NTSB board member Dick Healing reminded me of the episode, which was turned into a National Geographic TV documentary, in a phone conversation last week. This is the event that leapt into Healing's mind as we talked about the strange case of Timothy Martins.

"When people lie in order to get some level of credit, they are not trustworthy and really should not be in the cockpit," Healing told me.


It strikes me nothing more than silly that the TSA should make such a fuss over keeping the names of FFDOs secret, when opportunities abound for finding out just who is in the program. But regardless of whether I find out if Martins is flying while armed, I certainly hope that the Transportation Security Administration and American Eagle get the story nailed down and quickly.

The Pope Must Die is still not available on DVD. Could this be the perfect time to release it?

Professionalism is a concept much-discussed of late in the world of aviation. My news story and blog post, about the American Eagle pilot whose profile in Air Line Pilot magazine turned out to contain a number of fabrications, has ALPA, the union of airline pilots reeling.

It’s not just pilots who show lapses of judgment. In February, an air traffic controller was suspended after allowing his children to issue clearances to commercial pilots flying in New York airspace.

But focusing too much on such events can contribute to a distorted perception of aviation. The story of Doug White and the half-dozen air traffic controllers who last Easter helped White and his family through a harrowing event provides a counter-balance.

After attending the funeral of his brother in Marco Island, Florida, White, his wife and two daughters boarded a twin-engine King Air for the trip home to northeastern Louisiana on Easter Sunday 2009. Joe Cabuk a professional pilot was in the left seat at the controls. White sat on the right. And even though White was the owner of the airplane, he could not fly it. White had obtained his private pilot’s license in 1990 and promptly stopped flying. The King Air had been an investment and he often rented the plane to an air charter service.

The flight home started uneventfully, until something made White turn to look at Cabuk. "His chin was on his chest," White told me in a phone call earlier this week. "He was retired military. He sat very erect, hand on each thigh. That’s the way he sat, that’s the way he flew and that’s the way he died."

Less than 30 seconds later, White was on the radio to the controllers at Ft. Meyers.

"I got to declare an emergency. My pilot's unconscious, I need help up here."

In the ATC tape, there is a frantic edge in White’s voice. He needs help, he says. He needs to get level. He needs to “get this thing on the ground.” And as air traffic controllers struggled to deal with this unexpected challenge on an already busy day in the skies over south Florida, White stumbled on the idea that ultimately brought about his safe landing.

“I need a King Air pilot to talk to.”

Which is how, one thousand miles away in Danbury, Connecticut, Kari Sorenson got a phone call from his old friend Dan Favio, an air traffic controller at Ft. Myers airport.

“Once we got past the initial, ‘Hey buddy,’ I thought, ‘Are you serious?’ Sorenson told me this week. Sorenson and I have met a few times at the Danbury Municipal airport where he spends a lot of time. He’s the friend of a friend. Our more tragic link is through the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 an event I documented in my book, Deadly Departure. Sorenson’s step-dad died in that accident and Sorenson’s father - who was also a pilot - died in an airplane crash in 1981.

When the call came in from Favio, Sorenson was not optimistic. “This guy has a five percent change of living,” was Sorenson’s assessment.

There’s no tension in this story anymore, since everyone knows how it turned out. But there is an timeless feel-good factor generated when people pull out the stops to avert a tragedy.

Air traffic controllers Jessica Anaya and Nathan Henkels, in Miami and Carey Meadows and Brian Norton in Ft. Myers worked quickly to move airplanes out of the way.

Controller and private pilot Lisa Grimm jumped on the radio in the first minutes to convince White with remarkable calmness to turn off the auto pilot and take control of the airplane which was climbing at 2,000 feet per minute.

“I don’t really want to disconnect the auto pilot,” White said, explaining his initial reluctance to give up on the security the autopilot seemed to provide. But Grimm convinced him it was the only way to stop the airplane from continuing to climb and so he did.

“Me and the good Lord are hand flyin’ this,” he said over the radio.

“I’m talking to Lisa. She’s got me settled down, she’s my lifeline.”

There was only so much Grimm - who had only been a controller for four months – could do. She was unfamiliar with the King Air. It was up to Sorenson to instruct White on how to fly the airplane and to do so, the controllers had to devise a four-stop system like a child’s game of telephone.

Questions from White on the airplane were relayed to controller Brian Norton in Ft. Myers who relayed them to Favio who was on his personal cell phone with Sorenson in Connecticut. Answers came back along the same circuitous path.

“I told him to fly it like a single engine,” Sorenson remembers. “He took those few words and focused in on what he knew, altitude, airspeed and throttles to maintain the airspeed. So we got him over the fear.”

In a National Air Traffic Controllers Association awards ceremony last month, White was tearful as he presented plaques to the controllers who worked his flight. So emotional was the moment that White could not even read the inscription so Lisa Grimm took the microphone and choking back her own tears, read his lengthy essay of appreciation.

But White also gives credit to the Divine, remembering that as he was out over the Gulf of Mexico controllers directed him to turn back to land but he was unable to make out the horizon so he resisted. Only after he began to comply did the horizon reappear.

“I can see land and now I can see up and down and left and right,” he remembered. “I was not instrument-rated. I came under a cloud layer, with no wind. In Ft. Myers, that’s unheard of.

There was no wind, no weather. That morning there was a storm. The next morning there was storm. But as I was flying, there was no weather.”

Finally, White saw the runway, a blessed 12,000 feet long. But the drama wasn’t over yet.

“He was doing very well with altitude and airspeed,” Sorenson remembered of this time. So he was surprised that without asking, White put down the airplane landing gear. “He had never flown a retractable gear and he put it down prematurely so that it caused a master caution light to go off, a configuration warning which is a light and a horn. He came on the radio very concerned as to what that was.”

“They were all yellow and red, blinking and flashing,” White later told a television reporter of the number of alerts that were ringing through the cockpit as he flew. “I just ignored them. I didn’t know what they were anyway.”

As the plane approached the runway, Sorenson had to give up, it was out of his hands.

“Dan counted down, 500 feet, 400, 300, 200, there was nothing I could say or do. It’s amazing how helpless you feel at that time.”

“I was determined to hit on the first piece of concrete I could find,” White was thinking as he prepared to put the airplane down. “I pulled the throttles and stood on the brakes. It was one of the best landings I did in my life.”

From where Favio was in the tower he could not see what happened. “Dan says, ‘Okay he’s down, I think he’s down, I’ll call you back,’” Sorenson recalled. The phone that had kept the experienced professional connected to the reluctant pilot then went dead. At the airport in Ft. Myers, they were celebrating; but with the phone broken, Favio didn't have Sorenson’s number. He couldn't call him back. Sorenson did not hear the details of what happened until the following day.

“God Almighty used the talent he gave each and every one of you to save me and my family from a certain fiery death,” reads a part of the inscription on the plaques White made for the controllers and Sorenson. “I want you to always know that to me you are as much a professional as any expensive suit on Wall Street, or any doctor or lawyer or president in the world.”

It would appear that the people involved have taken White’s praise to heart. Certainly, Sorenson has. At the time he was guiding White to an uneventful landing, Sorenson himself was suspended from flying having lost his medical clearance due to depression from a difficult divorce. It has since been reinstated.

“Every traumatic event changes your life in one way or another,” he told me, “when you’re victorious in the outcome, it s certainly memorable.”

About White, who says, “I’m the same person now I was before that happened.” I must confess, I find that statement a mystery. This past year White says he has gone on to earn an instrument rating, a commercial pilot’s license and a multi-engine commercial instrument rating. He spent 150 hours flying left seat in that same King Air all of which he accomplished in the year he almost didn't get to live.

The entire 30 minute ATC radar and radio recordings can be viewed here.

The NATCA awards presentations can be viewed here