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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL

Patrick Smith

Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections

For 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 them
Straight talk on turbulence, pilot training, and safety
The real story on congestion, delays, and the dysfunction of the modern airport
The myths and misconceptions of cabin air and cockpit automation
Terrorism in perspective, and a provocative look at security
Airfares, seating woes, and the pitfalls of airline customer service
The colors and cultures of the airlines we love to hate

Cockpit Confidential covers not only the nuts and bolts of flying, but also the grand theater of air travel, from airport architecture to inflight service to the excitement of travel abroad. It's a thoughtful, funny, at times deeply personal look into the strange and misunderstood world of commercial flying.
It's the ideal book for frequent flyers, nervous passengers, and global travelers. Refreshed and vastly expanded from the original Ask the Pilot, with approximately 75 percent new material.


Patrick Smith is an airline pilot for a major airline. He has appeared on over 200 radio and television outlets, including PBS, the Discovery Channel, CNN, the BBC and National Public Radio. His work is regularly cited in print publications worldwide, fromPeople,Time, andMen's Healthmagazines to theNew York Times, Washington Post, USA TodayandLe Monde. In his spare time he has visited more than 70 countries and always asks for a window seat. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Available products
Book

Published 2023-05-30 by Sourcebooks

Book

Published 2023-10-12 by Sourcebooks

Comments

Patrick Smith is extraordinarily knowledgeable about modern aviation and communicates beautifully in English, not in pilot-ese. The ideal seatmate, a companion, writer, and explorer.

If you're a white-knuckle flyer, this informative, comprehensive book on air travel is for you...Smith paints an unflinching portrait of modern air travel with several fresh and unexpected insights.

Smith’s graceful writing and clear explanations will make your next flight more of an interesting experience than a chore to be endured.

Cockpit Confidential, is even better than his first Ask the Pilot. Smith, in case you didn't discover him during his years as a Salon contributor, doesn't just know everything about air travel, he possesses a rare knack for explaining it in lucid and witty prose - .. As such, he offers a refreshing antidote to the often overheated and misinformed reporting on aviation safety... one of the best books on air travel.

I wish I could fold Patrick Smith and put him in my suitcase.

Arabic: Arabic Scientific Publishers ; Complex Chinese: Atman Books ; Simplified Chinese: Gingko ; Czech: Grada ; French: Hachette ; Polish: Muza ; Russian: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber ; Vietnam: Rose Books

A brilliant writer, Patrick Smith provides a laugh-a-page tour of a misunderstood industry -- a journey into the world of aviation, stripped of the mumbo-jumbo and filled with humor and insight.

Nobody covers the airline experience like Patrick Smith. He brings balance and clarity to a subject all too often over-hyped. And, he's a damned good writer.

Brilliant is the word that applies. A book to be savored and passed to friends.