In total passenger miles, air travel has never been more popular. But as any frequent flyer knows, air travel problems are growing even faster long lines, lost luggage, overbooking, flight delays, and serious safety issues. And instead of doing something about it, the traveling public seems simply to be sitting down, buckling in, and allowing itself to be treated like sheep.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There are solutions to our air travel problems, real solutions that can make real differences. And they don t require 15 years to implement.

With decades of experience in civil aviation and policy, Drs. George Donohue and Russell Shaver are well qualified to assess the problems in the system and to offer responsible, workable solutions. Dr. Donohue, the current Director of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research and a Professor of Systems Engineering at George Mason University (GMU), has extensive high-level experience at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Shaver, formerly a senior RAND Corporation research analyst and now a visiting research fellow at GMU, served as chief scientist for policy analysis at the MITRE Center for Advanced Aviation System Development.

The stories they tell are compelling. They are high-profile horror stories passengers stranded for hours on the tarmac, flights canceled for bad weather when there s not a drop of rain anywhere near the flight path, and an overall sense of apathy and obstructionism among those responsible for managing the industry. Interestingly, these problems are not the inevitable result of the size or complexity of the U.S. system. Air transportation in Europe, with almost identical air traffic control systems and safety standards, is far better. Amsterdam moves 30% more passengers than Newark, but the average flight delay is an order of magnitude lower. In addition, a European Passenger s Bill of Rights giving distressed passengers the right to substantial and immediate compensation has been a powerful incentive for non-U.S. airlines to maintain their schedules.

The Causes

So just how did we get where we are in the U.S. system today? Donohue and Shaver cite multiple reasons for the chaos we now face. These causes include airline deregulation, multiple governmental agencies with no central oversight or responsibility, multiple corporate entities with conflicting agendas, and a technologically outdated air traffic control system. Even more importantly, there seems to be a complete absence of advocacy for the customer the passengers. The authors also explain that our air travel problems, if left unaddressed, are on a direct course to greatly impact the overall U.S. economy and harm our global competitiveness. In 2006 alone, the delays and cancellations cost U.S. travelers an estimated $3.2 billion. And in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. tourism industry is estimated to have lost $98 billion in revenue due to our air travel mess.

The Cures

Fortunately, Donohue and Shaver don t leave us in this state of chaos. Their provocative analysis not only identifies the causes and extent of the problems, but also provides us with a course heading that will put us on the path to recovery. The solutions they propose include holding the government decision-makers responsible, expanding the capacity of airports and airplanes, modernizing the air traffic control system, and implementing what the authors call the 30% solution to significantly reduce congestion.

In short, this book should be read by every airline passenger traveling in or through the United States. As a country,

Author: George L., Ph.D. Donohue, Russell D., III, Ph.D. Shaver
Hardcover:  240 pages
Company: Amer Inst of Aeronautics &  (2008-05-09)
ISBN: 1563479494
List Price: $29.95
Amazon Price: $26.96
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Salon.com's most popular columnist tells why airline travel is still the safest way to get from here to there-and lots of other flight facts.

Even frequent fliers, probably don't have a clue how their plane gets from New York to Los Angeles in 5 hours. And many people probably think flying is more dangerous now than ever-even though it's still the safest means of transportation.

In Ask the Pilot, Patrick Smith-a commercial airline pilot and author of Salon.com's popular column-explains in frank and very funny language what fears are grounded in reality and which ones are airborne urban myths. He stacks up the facts, anecdotes, and advice to every flying question imaginable: * Just how safe it is to fly?
* What is the safest airline?
* Do airlines reduce cabin oxygen flow to save fuel and keep passengers docile?
* Can turbulence cause a crash?
* What's windshear - and can it really rip the wings off a plane?
* How does a plane get off the ground?
* Why does the plane sometimes bump, jig, and turn at a high angle during climbout?
* Has anyone ever survived a water landing by donning a vest or using a raft?
* Why are tray tables stowed before landing?

Frequent flier or neurotic aerophobe, this is the one book that will wise people up - and calm fliers down.

Author: Patrick Smith
Paperback:  288 pages
Company: Riverhead Trade  (2004-06-01) (2004-06-01)
ISBN: 1594480044
List Price: $14.00
Amazon Price: $2.99
Used Price: $1.35

The events of September 11 have seemingly been covered, analyzed, and discussed from every angle imaginable. So the subject matter alone of Jim DeFede's The Day the World Came to Town makes it noteworthy. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 38 commercial airliners carrying over 6,000 passengers were forced, as a precautionary measure, to land in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. Due to the ongoing closure of U.S. airspace, the passengers spent four days in this isolated town of 10,000 before being allowed to continue on their way. In that time, Gander's residents rallied together to extend a kind of hospitality that seems too expansive for the word hospitality. Townspeople not only opened schools and legion halls for use as emergency shelters, they invited the passengers into their homes for showers, meals, and warm beds while local businesses simply gave toiletries and clothing to passengers stuck without luggage. Despite the grim consequences that led to the situation, DeFede finds humor: two flight attendants are offered a car for sightseeing by a local woman who happened to be driving by; the stranded chairman of Hugo Boss finds himself shopping for men's underwear at the local Wal-Mart. But the real message of the book is how, even in times of great turmoil and conflict, people can and must look to one another for comfort, help, and hope. --John Moe

Author: Jim Defede
Paperback:  256 pages
Company: Harper Paperbacks  (2003-09-01) (2003-08-14)
ISBN: 0060559713
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $6.44
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An illustrated guide, in both book and CD-ROM, of landscapes seen from commercial airplane windows across the United States.

This is a guide to what an airline passenger sees from his seat while flying over the United States. Through its ingenious construction and a map of preferred flight paths, it's easy to find those pages that correspond to whatever flight a passenger happens to be on, and then to identify features that can be seen from the air. The book marries geology, natural history, and human history for a glorious portrait of the continent, from the Atlantic City Boardwalk to Mount St. Helens.

Each two-page spread features an aerial photo with captions identifying features passengers will see and an essay interpreting the features. Each chapter is a Flight Corridor, with pages sequenced to follow a trip from takeoff to landing. Because many flight paths overlap, the fifteen corridors cover the forty most heavily traveled flight segments in the continental United States, plus many others. In many regions of the country, readers will have a new page to read about every twenty minutes. The entire book is also on the included CD-ROM, which can easily be used on a laptop in the air.

Author: Daniel Mathews, James S. Jackson
Paperback:  400 pages
Company: Houghton Mifflin  (2007-12-14)
ISBN: 0618706038
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $5.75
Used Price: $0.68

Sometimes the planes don-t fly on time.

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter-s wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O-Hare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. A man both sinned against and sinning, Bennie writes in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heart-on-sleeve emotion, and wide-ranging erudition, underlined by a consistent groundnote of regret for the actions of a lifetime -- and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right. A margarita blend of outrage, wicked humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term -airport novel- and announces the emergence of major new talent in American fiction.

Author: Jonathan Miles
Kindle Edition:  192 pages Kindle Book
Company: Houghton Mifflin  (2008-06-05) (2008-06-05)
List Price: $17.60
Amazon Price: $9.99

Author: Jim Malusa
Paperback:  336 pages
Company: Sierra Club/Counterpoint  (2008-04-28)
ISBN: 157805141X
List Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $10.84
Used Price: $11.07

Into Thin Air is a riveting first-hand account of a catastrophic expedition up Mount Everest. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.

Author: Jon Krakauer
Paperback:  368 pages
Company: Anchor  (1999-10-19) (1999-10-19)
ISBN: 0385494785
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $4.99
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Elizabeth Gilbert on Dear American Airlines
Elizabeth Gilbert's first three books, Pilgrims, Stern Men, and the National Book Award nominee The Last American Man, received awards and acclaim, but her fourth, Eat, Pray, Love, a chronicle of her spiritual search and redemption following a difficult divorce, has put her on the bedside tables of millions of readers across the world. Her next book, Weddings and Evictions, a memoir about her unexpected journey into second marriage, will be published in 2009.

I'm one of those readers who can't get enough of Martin Amis novels, since Amis--a savage misanthrope who sometimes writes, it seems, with a drill bit--is a guilty pleasure of mine from way back. So it's no wonder that I fell so hard for the bitter, hilarious, dark, twisted, and wonderfully written delights of Dear American Airlines--the most Amis-like novel I've ever read. Jonathan Miles is a first-time novelist (and--full disclosure--friend of mine) whose journalism I've long admired for its clear, humane prose. I never suspected that he had a book like this in him, and--frankly--now that I do know, I'm a little worried for his mental state (even as I'm totally impressed with his writing.)

The novel relays the tale of Bennie Ford, a man who is marinating like a cocktail olive in the sour middle-aged juices of his own mistakes, but who has decided to redeem himself completely by attending the wedding of his estranged daughter. Now, as some of us have learned from painful personal experience, it's not always easy to redeem a lifetime of screw-ups in one weekend, but that doesn't deter Bennie from heading to the airport to fly off to what he has decided is the most important event in his life. (The fact that he doesn't seem to notice that the wedding should actually be the most important event in his DAUGHTER'S life, not his, is an early clue of his particular breed of hilarious narcissism.) But at the airport is where his troubles begin, as American Airlines cancels his flight and thus--as far as he is concerned--destroys his life. What follows is a complaint letter raised to the level of high narrative art. I have never before encountered a novel written in the form of a complaint letter, and we can safely assume there will never be another such after this one, just because Miles has created an inimitable story here--one which, despite all the dark wit of its narrator--leaves room in the sad margins for real heartbreak, real feeling, real life. (This is something Amis himself wasn't able to do until many years into his career.) This is the most entertaining first novel I've read in a long while, as well as a searing cautionary tale. Bring it to the airport with you next time you fly somewhere to change your life...

Author: Jonathan Miles
Hardcover:  192 pages
Company: Houghton Mifflin Co  (2008-06-05)
ISBN: 0547054017
List Price: $22.00
Amazon Price: $12.25
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Author: Tony Mitton, Ant Parker
Paperback:  24 pages
Company: Kingfisher  (2005-09-15) (2005-09-15)
ISBN: 0753459159
List Price: $3.95
Amazon Price: $1.17
Used Price: $1.33

Just in time for summer travel, this paperback edition of THE NOISY AIRPLANE RIDE offers a rhyming tour of the variety of sounds a child might hear before, during, and after takeoff.

Author: Mike Downs
Paperback:  32 pages
Company: Tricycle Press  (2005-05-31)
ISBN: 1582461570
List Price: $6.95
Amazon Price: $0.99
Used Price: $0.01