Cockpit Confidential

Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections

By: Patrick Smith

Narrated by: Charlie Thurston

Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

For millions of people, travel by air is a confounding, uncomfortable, and even fearful experience. Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of the web's popular "Ask the Pilot" feature, separates fact from fallacy and tells you everything you need to know:

• How planes fly, and a revealing look at the men and women who fly them
• Straight talk on turbulence, pilot training, and safety
• The real story on congestion, delays, and the dysfunction of the modern airport
• The myths and misconceptions of cabin air and cockpit automation
• Terrorism in perspective, and a provocative look at security
• Airfares, seating woes, and the pitfalls of airline customer service

Cockpit Confidential covers not only the nuts and bolts of flying but also the grand theater of air travel, from airport architecture to inflight service to the excitement of travel abroad. It's a thoughtful, funny, at times deeply personal look into the strange and misunderstood world of commercial flying.

©2013 Patrick Smith (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Smith paints an unflinching portrait of modern air travel with several fresh and unexpected insights." ( Publishers Weekly)

A good premise

Like rubbing a cheese grater across a sunburn, in which you gradually extract a few flakes of gold. And resembling more a collection of notes for a book, than an actual polished final product.

Must Read

Great read for folks interested In commercial aviation. Great Job Patrick. Looking forward to edition #2.

Just go read the blog

There is not much in this book that is not already available in his blog or the recent Freakonomics Podcast interview. I am sure that the interview will send people here. Not much new.

aviation for non aviation people

brilliant balance between interesting, technical and entertaining content in the form of easy to follow question and answers as it would've been asked (and probably have been) to the author over his career as an airline pilot.

great listen very informative

after flying back and forth from Iraq several times I became quite educated on long distance flying. this gave me some good background information on flying.

My new favorite book

This book was really impressive. As an aviation professional, student and fan I can say this book occupies my no.1 favorite aviation book. This book goes into explaining every detail from a need to know basis for a regular person who is probably not as familiar with aviation. If you know nothing of aviation this book will end having feel smarter about the subject. It’s interesting how the author takes the time to explain briefly aviation history and mention accidents have long been forgotten by the general public. The book ends with a vocabulary to get familiar with common words heard at the airport/plane. I will definitely be coming back to listen to it. I have not heard an aviation book as chronologically complete as this one.

Great book

Very informative. Learned a lot about flying and airplanes. As a frequent flyer i really appreciate the book.

Very informative, negative perspective.

Objective Information in this book is great. The opinions of the author come from a very negative point of view. Very much a glass half empty perspective.

For the skeptical flyer!

I fly enough to appreciate that air travel is not always predictable or convenient. I also work for a large tier 1 supplier in the industry and know first hand that there is no industry that takes safety more seriously.
This book gives the listener an insiders view of airplane and airline operations in a very accessible style. The performance is quite engaging and clearly spoken.
For a skeptical non-flyer, I would highly recommend this audio book the for the next 8 hour drive...that you could have flown.

The Entire Picture of Airline Travel

Interesting insight into just about everything dealing with air travel. If you want to increase your knowledge of the 5W's regarding flying and maybe learn to be a better passenger and less of an inconsiderate dick, this is a good read for you.