"Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight," our pilots still intone. But who are they kidding?In Full Upright and Locked Position, former FAA chief counsel and senior aviation policy official Mark Gerchick unravels the unseen forces and little-known facts that have reshaped our air travel experience since September 11, 2001.With wry humor and unique insight, Gerchick takes us past the jargon, technicalities, and all-is-well platitudes to expose the new normal of air t...

A New York Times bestsellerFor millions of people, travel by air is a confounding, uncomfortable, and even fearful experience. Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the web's popular Ask the Pilot feature, separates the fact from fallacy and tells you everything you need to know...How planes fly, and a revealing look at the men and women who fly themStraight talk on turbulence, pilot training, and safetyThe real story on conge...

The smash-hit bestseller about the world's worst air crashes and the disaster detectives who pick through the wreckage to find out why they happened - now fully revised and updated, with 30% new material.From the early tragedies of the Comet and the DC10 to the modern-day horror of the Concorde catastrophe in Paris and the mysterious loss of an Air France Airbus over the Atlantic, Faith painstakingly recreates the accidents, explains what went wrong and discusses how they can be pre...

Emergency is a collection of true stories about events where disaster seems imminent. Yet each situation is concluded without loss of life thanks to the skill of the pilots and their crews, whose bravery and resourcefulness have earned them well-deserved commendations. Written by a British Airways First Officer, Stanley Stewart, who has spoken at first hand with the pilots and crews involved in all the incidents recorded here, the book offers a unique insight into what really happened: not...

As with the Air France Flight 447 tragedy, much of the time air crashes are a confluence of events; a cascade of bad luck, bad decisions, inappropriate airline company policy, the failure of aviation regulators, and sometimes insufficient training, or various combinations of all five.But why?Seconds to Disaster will demonstrate that part of that bad luck is often aided by the airline industry's own endless and aggressive pursuit of bottom-line profit. It contributes to a cre...

Originally published by Wm. Morrow in 1995, SKYGODS is the story of Pan American World Airways from its meteoric ascent to its plunge to extinction. Pan Am blazed the way across the world's oceans with its magnificent Clipper ships, launched the first international jet service, was the first to fly the behemoth 747, was the lead customer for America's SST and the Concorde, and was even taking reservations for the first commercial flights to the moon.SKYGODS is the true story of an A...

Since its first flight on 15 December 2009, the Boeing 787 'Dreamliner' has been the most sophisticated airliner in the world. It uses many advanced new technologies to offer unprecedented levels of performance with minimal impact on the environment. Flying the Boeing 787 gives a pilot's eye view of what it is like to fly this remarkable machine. It takes the reader on a trip from Tokyo to Los Angeles as the flight crew see it, from pre-flight planning, through all the phases of the flight...

Three thousand feet above the Zambian bush, the DHC2 Beaver had only ten minutes' fuel remaining. Night was drawing in; ground features were indiscernible. I could not raise anyone on the radio. Would this be the end? John Flexman knew he wanted to be a pilot from moment he saw an RAF flypast as a boy of eight. At sixteen he joined the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, getting his 'wings' in 1961 at the age of 18. From there on he never looked back. His flying career took him around the wor...

Since its first flight on 27 April 2005, the Airbus A380 has been the largest passenger airliner in the world. Instantly recognizable with its full-length upper deck, it represents the pinnacle of modern airliner design.

Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs.Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, th...

Take a look at life from behind the beverage cart.“They asked me to be groomed, be kind, and show up on time; it was too much pressure.”“It was like being a waitress, only I was hurtling through space and wound up in Paris.”“I thought it would be funny to climb into the overhead bin. How did I know the President of the United States would be on the flight that day?”Where flight attendant Marsha Marks goes, funny things happen, and she tells th...

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroops. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the Navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped.To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first t...