What Alec Baldwin doesn’t know about air travel

Alec Baldwin refused to shut off his cellphone and got kicked off an American Airlines flight last week, and while Baldwin is now playing the incident for laughs on “Saturday Night Live,” it still raises serious questions. The Baldwin brouhaha comes on the heels of a splashy New York Times story about the supposed harmlessness of electronic devices. The gist of public perception — certainly the perception of Mr. Baldwin — fueled and refueled by articles like this, is that the prohibition against… (www.salon.com) 更多...

The World's Longest Flight, in Coach

Over the Pacific Ocean It's 2 a.m. aboard Qantas Airways Flight 7 from Sydney to Dallas. The sun is rising. Time for a quick stretch, then a couple of episodes of "30 Rock." Are we there yet? Five hours remain on the 15-hour trip, the longest flight in the world with a coach cabin. It's an eternity when shoehorned into space with a mere 16 inches of hip width inside the armrests. Nonetheless, long-haul nonstop flights like this one are increasingly popular among business… (online.wsj.com) 更多...

Automotive History: The Pinto’s Brief Life As An Airplane

One of the most recurring human follies is the seemingly endless attempts to cross the car with an airplane. Why? The two have such profoundly different purposes and requirements, and there’s so little that they actually share. Can’t dreamy-eyed engineers get past the idea that a passenger cabin and a set of wheels is not really enough to share effectively. Perhaps the most amusing looking but tragic examples is the AVE Mizar, an ill-fated (did I give too much away?) attempt to make the Pinto… (www.curbsideclassic.com) 更多...

The things I carry

The scourges of modern-day air travel. I can think of a few: TSA, delayed flights, garbage in your seat pocket. Screaming kids and misdirected luggage. “CNN Airport News.” Or, how about the blizzard of cardboard placards that hotel chains insist on littering their rooms with? I spend a quarter of my life in hotel rooms, and I resent having to spend the first five minutes of every stay gathering up an armful of this diabolical detritus and heaving it into a corner where it belongs. Attention,… (life.salon.com) 更多...