Inside the Sky : A Meditation on Flight

Rating:
Summary: Inside the Dangerous Sky
Review: With the subtitle "Meditations on Flight," this promised to be a thoughtful look at the wonder of flight, or something along those lines. As a reader of Atlantic Monthly for many years, I knew that William Langewiesche had been writing articles for them about aviation. I remembered one article especially, Slam and Jam, about air traffic control, that I read when it first appeared in the magazine in 1997. I was an air traffic controller at the time and read the entire piece with great interest, remarking to colleagues that I thought it was quite a well-balanced look at the conflict between union and management. My colleagues disagreed.

Six years later, and four years after I left air traffic control, I reread the article which appears as one of the seven chapters in Inside the Sky. This time around, the article didn't seem quite as even-handed to me. While Langewiesche doesn't seem to find either management or the union admirable, he really does a number on the controllers, belittling the work they do.

I could go on about Slam and Jam, but I really don't imagine that anyone outside the business of commercial flight would be interested in it in any case. If I hadn't had a professional interest in the subject, I doubt I would have read the article at all.

There are two chapters devoted to air crashes. Even as someone who has more than an average interest in aviation, I do not care to dwell on air crashes and other disasters. I read them when they first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and did not feel compelled to read them again. It seems that Langewiesche has made a second career (after a career as a pilot) of examining crashes and other disasters, which is a shame. Important as it is to understand the causes of air crashes, so that they may be avoided in the future, I wonder how necessary it is to wallow in disaster page after page for, let's face it, entertainment.

One chapter that lives up to the promise of the subtitle and that I found worth rereading was The Turn, about the physics of flight from a passenger's point of view. This is the sort of article that makes me remember how much I enjoy flying (as a passenger) and how I hate it when the flight attendant asks me to lower the shade so that others may enjoy the movie. The show outside is much better.

Rating:
Summary: Inside the Dangerous Sky
Review: With the subtitle "Meditations on Flight," this promised to be a thoughtful look at the wonder of flight, or something along those lines. As a reader of Atlantic Monthly for many years, I knew that William Langewiesche had been writing articles for them about aviation. I remembered one article especially, Slam and Jam, about air traffic control, that I read when it first appeared in the magazine in 1997. I was an air traffic controller at the time and read the entire piece with great interest, remarking to colleagues that I thought it was quite a well-balanced look at the conflict between union and management. My colleagues disagreed.

Six years later, and four years after I left air traffic control, I reread the article which appears as one of the seven chapters in Inside the Sky. This time around, the article didn't seem quite as even-handed to me. While Langewiesche doesn't seem to find either management or the union admirable, he really does a number on the controllers, belittling the work they do.

I could go on about Slam and Jam, but I really don't imagine that anyone outside the business of commercial flight would be interested in it in any case. If I hadn't had a professional interest in the subject, I doubt I would have read the article at all.

There are two chapters devoted to air crashes. Even as someone who has more than an average interest in aviation, I do not care to dwell on air crashes and other disasters. I read them when they first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and did not feel compelled to read them again. It seems that Langewiesche has made a second career (after a career as a pilot) of examining crashes and other disasters, which is a shame. Important as it is to understand the causes of air crashes, so that they may be avoided in the future, I wonder how necessary it is to wallow in disaster page after page for, let's face it, entertainment.

One chapter that lives up to the promise of the subtitle and that I found worth rereading was The Turn, about the physics of flight from a passenger's point of view. This is the sort of article that makes me remember how much I enjoy flying (as a passenger) and how I hate it when the flight attendant asks me to lower the shade so that others may enjoy the movie. The show outside is much better.