I Wish I Were A Pilot

Rhyming text and illustrations portray piloting various forms of transportation including hot air balloons and bicycles.

Rhyming text and illustrations portray piloting various forms of transportation including hot air balloons and bicycles.

Though we routinely take to the air, for many of us flying remains a mystery. Few of us understand the how and why of jetting from New York to London in six hours. How does a plane stay in the air? Can turbulence bring it down? What is windshear? How good are the security checks? Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and author of Salon.com's popular column, "Ask the Pilot," unravels the secrets and tells you all there is to know about the strange and fascinating world of commercial flight. He offers: A nuts and bolts explanation of how planes fly Insights into safety and security Straight talk about turbulence, air traffic control, windshear, and crashes The history, color, and controversy of the world's airlines The awe and oddity of being a pilot The poetry and drama of airplanes, airports, and traveling abroad In a series of frank, often funny explanations and essays, Smith speaks eloquently to our fears and curiosities, incorporating anecdotes, memoir, and a life's passion for flight. He tackles our toughest concerns, debunks conspiracy theories and myths, and in a rarely heard voice dares to return a dash of romance and glamour to air travel.

"As a young Afghan woman who dreamed of becoming an air force pilot, Niloofar Rahmani confronted far more than technical challenges; she faced the opprobrium of an entire society." —Pamela Constable, author of Playing with Fire and former Kabul and Islamabad bureau chief for the Washington Post The true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan's first female air force pilot—as seen on Anderson Cooper and ABC News In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Rahmani entered Afghanistan's military academy. Rahmani had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness—essential qualities for a pilot. She performed the first solo flight of her class—ahead of all her male classmates—and in 2013 became Afghanistan's first female fixed-wing air force pilot. The US State Department honored Rahmani with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to meet Michelle Obama and fly with the US Navy's Blue Angels. But when she returned to Kabul, the danger to her and her family had increased significantly. Rahmani and her family are portraits of the resiliency of refugees and the accomplishments they can reach when afforded with opportunities

Do you want a long, satisfying career in the sky? Good, because that's what I want for you, and why I wrote this book. Let me give you wisdom that only fifty years in the cockpit can offer. POSTFLIGHT has tips and information I wish I had when I started flying fifty years ago. If your dream is to fly, then POSTFLIGHT: An Old Pilot's Logbook was written for you. I'll ask only this: Be the best pilot you can be, and someday open your own logbook for a young pilot like yourself. -An old pilot

They were nicknamed Snow Eagle, Flying Knight, Bush Angel, Punch, Doc and Wop. They worked in open cockpits and flew through cold, snow and fog without the benefit of radios, maps or weather reports. They flew over the Barrens, frozen lakes, boreal forests and mountain ranges by dead reckoning and line of sight. They landed on makeshift runways, glaciers, muskeg, tundra and glassy lakes. Comrades of the wilderness, they were Canada's early bush pilots. L.D. Cross brings us the incredible stories of the brave and enterprising pilots who rolled back the boundaries of western and northern Canada, delivering mail, medicine, miners and all the supplies needed by frontier settlements. Flying such planes as Curtiss, Bellanca, de Havilland, Fairchild, Junkers, Norseman, Stinson and Vickers, they were the off-roaders of aviation, venturing where no others dared to go. Climb into the cockpit with these pioneering pilots for an exciting trip into Canadian aviation history.

By the time she's two years old, Violet Van Winkle can fix nearly any appliance in the house. And by eight she's building an elaborate flying machines from scratch, mind-boggling contraptions such as the Tubbubbler, the Bicycopter, and the Wing-a-ma-jig. The kids at school tease her, but they have no idea what she's capable of. Maybe she could earn their respect by winning the blue ribbon in the upcoming Air Show. Or maybe something even better will happen, something involving her bestever invention, a Boy Scout troop in peril, and even the mayor himself! A classic underdog story full of humor and sweetness and retro pizzazz, Violet the Pilot is both endearing and adorable. It'll fly right into your heart.

**Sunday Times Bestseller** **Book of the Week on Radio 4** 'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical’ Mark Haddon 'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject: a description of what it’s like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensitive human being. This is a man who is at once a technical expert – he flies 747s across continents – and a poet of the skies. This couldn’t be more highly recommended.' Alain de Botton Think back to when you first flew. When you first left the Earth, and travelled high and fast above its turning arc. When you looked down on a new world, captured simply and perfectly through a window fringed with ice. When you descended towards a city, and arrived from the sky as effortlessly as daybreak. In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers, armchair and otherwise, all too easily take for granted: the transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love. ‘A beautiful, contemplative book... What Skyfaring gives is something we need: elevation; another perspective... Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian **A 2015 Book of the Year – The Economist, The New York Times, GQ and more**