A look at commercial airlines discusses the jobs of pilots, mechanics, plane designers, traffic controllers, dispatchers, schedulers, weather forecasters, salesman, labor leaders, and others and recounts anecdotes about air travel. 30,000 first printing.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The trip the average passenger takes from, say, New York to Detroit is only one leg of the airplane's much longer journey. Reiss ( The Last Spy ) followed an entire outing of Delta Airlines ship 714, an 18-year-old Lockheed 1011 widebody jet, from the time it left Atlanta until it returned--a trip that covered 9 stops and 15,000 miles in 72 hours. Reiss, who sat in the cockpit most of the time, covers every facet of flying a commercial jetliner: the cool competence of pilots in several spine-tingling crisis situations; the stress of air traffic controllers; complications involving the FAA. Readers will learn the importance of the checklists (which are performed several times a flight) and why altimeters have to be constantly reset to the barometric pressure (so the pilot doesn't fly the plane into the ground). Other plane lore includes sex in the L-1011's elevators; the chimpanzee who got loose in a cargo hold, grabbed a tranquilizing gun and delayed the flight; and the possibility of ghosts on L-1011s, a view made famous in The Ghost of Flight 401 by John G. Fuller, which chronicled the 1972 crash of an Eastern Airlines L-1011 and the subsequent use of salvaged parts in other 1011s--many of which were bought by Delta. Anyone who loves to fly--or anyone who has to fly--should read this comprehensive book.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this report of what goes into the flight of a Delta jumbo jet, Reiss talks with the designers of the plane, crawls through the engines with mechanics, attends flight attendant school, spends hours in the cockpit with pilots, talks with the company president, and "flies" a jet in a simulator. He studies the history of aviation, looks into the programming of flight schedules, visits the air traffic controllers, and looks over the shoulders of weather forecasters, salespeople, labor leaders, and senior management as they orchestrate an enormous industrial symphony. Reiss, a former reporter for Rolling Stone, puts each piece of this elaborate puzzle in its proper place and describes in revealing detail everything the typical air traveler doesn't see. The planning, testing, and elaborate safety measures that make flying almost as safe as staying home are as interesting as the ghost stories, close-call stories, and sex-on-the-plane stories. Recommended. --Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating!,
By
This review is from: Frequent Flyer: One Plane, One Passenger, and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight (Hardcover)
A friend recommend this book to me because I fly Delta Airlines frequently. I picked it up in a bookstore and started reading it on an airplane. This is a fascinating story of Delta Airlines and a Lockheed L1011 aircraft. The author spends three days with the aircraft, flying where ever it does. Along the way, he meets pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, air traffic controllers, gate agents, baggage handlers, and passengers. You would think this would be a big yawn, but it is an engaging and well written book. If you can find a copy, this is a must read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book---Must Read,
By David Lee (Homer, GA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Frequent Flyer: One Plane, One Passenger, and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight (Hardcover)
Anyone who is interested in airlines, airplanes, airports, anything aviation should read this book. I work for Delta, the airline Bob Reiss wrote about, and I learned things I didn't even know. Also any buff of the L-1011 aircraft (the best first class I ever rode in) would love this. Get this book!!! Pay what you have to, but get this book.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Substantial Disappointment,
By A Customer
This review is from: Frequent Flyer: One Plane, One Passenger, and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight (Hardcover)
It is not Reiss' fault that events since "Frequent Flyer" appeared in 1994 have made flying a different experience than the one he describes, but even looked at in isolation the book was a disappointment.The first problem is that it is not written very well. Reiss seems unhappy using complete sentences, for example, which comes across as sloppy rather than conversational. He continually refers to people by their full name and title, which is tedious, and makes one suspect that he originally intended to publish the book as a series of articles. There is no real coherence to how chapters are selected and put together, and his need to keep Delta happy to preserve access to the cockpit clearly affects his partiality. It is true that Delta cannot have been happy about the discussion of the damaged wing strut, but I'd be willing to bet the chapter wasn't written until after Reiss had gotten what he needed from the front of the plane. In addition, the author's ability to fly in First Class when not actually in the cockpit means he got a substantially different perspective on flying than most Delta passengers. It would have been interesting to hear more about the experiences of flyers in middle economy seats. Other potentially interesting subjects are mentioned only peripherally or ignored altogether. Just a few that I would have wanted more information about include: What precisely occurs when crew members "bid" for routes? What do flight crews do during their evenings together in foreign cities? How is lost luggage tracked down? Are some of the stories we hear about safety-such as pilots not being allowed to eat the same food during a flight to mitigate the danger of food poisoning-actually true? What social structures exist among pilots, engineers and flight attendants, and do they differ among airlines? How exactly do airlines price their premium cabins? And as for sex on planes, I can guarantee that readers would have been more interested in sex between cabin staff and passengers rather than between cabin staff alone. Flying is a fascinating subject, but I don't feel as if I know substantially more about it than I did before reading the book.
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