cover image Frequent Flier: One Plane, One Passenger, and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight

Frequent Flier: One Plane, One Passenger, and the Spectacular Feat of Commercial Flight

Bob Reiss. Simon & Schuster, $22.5 (318pp) ISBN 978-0-671-77650-3

The trip the average passenger takes from, say, New York to Detroit is only one leg of the airplane's much longer journey. Reiss ( The Last Spy ) followed an entire outing of Delta Airlines ship 714, an 18-year-old Lockheed 1011 widebody jet, from the time it left Atlanta until it returned--a trip that covered 9 stops and 15,000 miles in 72 hours. Reiss, who sat in the cockpit most of the time, covers every facet of flying a commercial jetliner: the cool competence of pilots in several spine-tingling crisis situations; the stress of air traffic controllers; complications involving the FAA. Readers will learn the importance of the checklists (which are performed several times a flight) and why altimeters have to be constantly reset to the barometric pressure (so the pilot doesn't fly the plane into the ground). Other plane lore includes sex in the L-1011's elevators; the chimpanzee who got loose in a cargo hold, grabbed a tranquilizing gun and delayed the flight; and the possibility of ghosts on L-1011s, a view made famous in The Ghost of Flight 401 by John G. Fuller, which chronicled the 1972 crash of an Eastern Airlines L-1011 and the subsequent use of salvaged parts in other 1011s--many of which were bought by Delta. Anyone who loves to fly--or anyone who has to fly--should read this comprehensive book. (Feb.)