Airline Confidential

This is a piece of unashamed self-promotion... My friend Chris Tiffney and I written this book and we'd quite like to sell some more copies! Having said that it's had a reprint so things are looking good.

All of you know people who need a book to read on a plane - this one's perfect. Some of you work in the airline industry. Some of you may be going on holiday. Others just need a laugh....

From the foreword....“ If God had meant man to fly he’d have given us tickets.”

During the last twenty-five years or so the air travel business has seen another revolution. More fuel-efficient engines have radically altered the cost of flying and airlines have changed. The unionized, fat dumb and happy approach of the 1960s and ‘70s has been replaced by the lean and mean attitude of the new entrant carriers – like Southwest in the USA or Ryanair and easyJet in Europe. Not that the switch from the old style industry to the new way has made things any the less interesting. There’s been no noticeable downturn in applications for the mile high club, or reduction in people behaving badly on planes.

Psychologists would no doubt be able to explain, in terms that the likes of us would find difficult to understand, why it is that people and aircraft frequently don’t mix. Undoubtedly it’s got something to do with the fact that most of us are nervous about flying – to varying degrees. No matter how the statistics shape up the average person can’t help thinking, “How is it those things stay up there?” As often as not people who are traveling are tense about time. Will the flight be late, or will it get me to the next airport to make my connection? Will I make that important business meeting? All this is a recipe for conflict. At check-in people are not at their most charming, especially if told that their flight is overbooked or that it’s late - for any one of a hundred seemingly bizarre reasons. This can often result in the strange phenomenon of perfectly reasonable people uttering the immortal line. “Do you know who I am?”

We've also started a blog called, rather cunningly, Airline Confidential. Even before reading some more about the book you may have an uncontrollable urge to buy it and you can do so from Amazon as well as your neighbourhood book shop (possibly!)