cover image Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—and How to Reclaim Our Skies

Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—and How to Reclaim Our Skies

William J. McGee. Harper, $26.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-208837-6

Air travel, once glamorous, is now an ordeal for passengers, a financial drain for investors, and a nearly unsustainable business model for the dwindling number of U.S. airlines. McGee, a former flight operations manager turned journalist and consumer advocate, explains what’s wrong with commercial air travel in his debut book. The wonder is that it doesn’t run to thousands of pages. He quickly cites as a cause the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, which transformed airlines from public utilities run on a quasi-monopolistic basis to a free market business. McGee sides with critics who call for some reregulation to improve passenger experience and airline safety, and stabilize business operations. The dissection of major airlines’ use of regional carriers with lower safety standards for short flights, among other troubling practices, makes this an effective polemic. However, though he backs his assertions with statistics that show “airline accidents caused by maintenance factors have increased significantly in recent years,” McGee’s extensive research yields a jumble of confusing references to various accidents, a slew of names from many interviews, and an occasional slip into professional jargon, distracting from an otherwise compelling read. Agent: Rob Weisbach, Rob Weisbach Creative Management. (July)