Books about Airlines from Amazon.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on Dear American Airlines
Elizabeth Gilbert's first three books, Pilgrims, Stern Men, and the National Book Award nominee The Last American Man, received awards and acclaim, but her fourth, Eat, Pray, Love, a chronicle of her spiritual search and redemption following a difficult divorce, has put her on the bedside tables of millions of readers across the world. Her next book, Weddings and Evictions, a memoir about her unexpected journey into second marriage, will be published in 2009.

I'm one of those readers who can't get enough of Martin Amis novels, since Amis--a savage misanthrope who sometimes writes, it seems, with a drill bit--is a guilty pleasure of mine from way back. So it's no wonder that I fell so hard for the bitter, hilarious, dark, twisted, and wonderfully written delights of Dear American Airlines--the most Amis-like novel I've ever read. Jonathan Miles is a first-time novelist (and--full disclosure--friend of mine) whose journalism I've long admired for its clear, humane prose. I never suspected that he had a book like this in him, and--frankly--now that I do know, I'm a little worried for his mental state (even as I'm totally impressed with his writing.)

The novel relays the tale of Bennie Ford, a man who is marinating like a cocktail olive in the sour middle-aged juices of his own mistakes, but who has decided to redeem himself completely by attending the wedding of his estranged daughter. Now, as some of us have learned from painful personal experience, it's not always easy to redeem a lifetime of screw-ups in one weekend, but that doesn't deter Bennie from heading to the airport to fly off to what he has decided is the most important event in his life. (The fact that he doesn't seem to notice that the wedding should actually be the most important event in his DAUGHTER'S life, not his, is an early clue of his particular breed of hilarious narcissism.) But at the airport is where his troubles begin, as American Airlines cancels his flight and thus--as far as he is concerned--destroys his life. What follows is a complaint letter raised to the level of high narrative art. I have never before encountered a novel written in the form of a complaint letter, and we can safely assume there will never be another such after this one, just because Miles has created an inimitable story here--one which, despite all the dark wit of its narrator--leaves room in the sad margins for real heartbreak, real feeling, real life. (This is something Amis himself wasn't able to do until many years into his career.) This is the most entertaining first novel I've read in a long while, as well as a searing cautionary tale. Bring it to the airport with you next time you fly somewhere to change your life...

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Price: $12.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sometimes the planes don-t fly on time.

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter-s wedding when his flight is canceled Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O-Hare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. A man both sinned against and sinning, Bennie writes in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heart-on-sleeve emotion, and wide-ranging erudition, underlined by a consistent groundnote of regret for the actions of a lifetime -- and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right. A margarita blend of outrage, wicked humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term -airport novel- and announces the emergence of major new talent in American fiction.

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Price: $9.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this autobiography, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson says one of his prime business criteria is "fun." Fun made Branson a billionaire, and few business memoirs are one-billionth as fun as Branson's, nor as niftily written. Not only does it relate his side of near-death corporate experiences, it tells how the chairman literally cheated death by gun, shipwreck, and balloon crash.

Branson's empire--now encompassing interests in an airline, pop music, soda pop, e-commerce, and financial services--began when the dyslexic 16-year-old dropped out of school in 1968 to found the British magazine Student. His headmaster said, "I predict that you will either go to prison or become a millionaire." Briefly imprisoned for dodging customs selling records, Branson got his first million by releasing Tubular Bells, a maverick recording all the stuffy executives rejected. (1998's Tubular Bells III puts the series' sales over 20 million.)

Despite wild tales of Branson's wife-swapping and Keith Richards fleeing naked from Branson's studio at gunpoint with another man's woman, the most shocking parts of the memoir concern British Airways' James Bond-like "dirty tricks" campaign against Virgin Atlantic, resulting in the biggest award for damages in English history.

Though it's filled with famous names, witty quotes, and pulse-pounding accounts of lunatic balloon adventures, it is as a business thriller that the book really scores. His instinctive bet-the-ranch tactics could cost him all, or earn another billion. Either way, Branson will likely remain the most entertaining entrepreneur in Europe. --Tim Appelo.
Price: $8.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is "Hire people with a sense of humor," and in-flight meals are never served--just sixty million bags of peanuts a year. By sidestepping "reengineering," "total quality management," and other management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher's airline has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years and seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990.

Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate; and Fortune magazine has twice ranked Southwest one of the ten best companies to work for in America. How do they do it?

With unlimited access to the people and inside documents of Southwest Airlines, authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg share the secrets behind the greatest success story in commercial aviation. Read it and discover how to transfer the Southwest inspiration to your own business and personal life..
Price: $4.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In total passenger miles, air travel has never been more popular But as any frequent flyer knows, air travel problems are growing even faster long lines, lost luggage, overbooking, flight delays, and serious safety issues. And instead of doing something about it, the traveling public seems simply to be sitting down, buckling in, and allowing itself to be treated like sheep.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There are solutions to our air travel problems, real solutions that can make real differences. And they don t require 15 years to implement.

With decades of experience in civil aviation and policy, Drs. George Donohue and Russell Shaver are well qualified to assess the problems in the system and to offer responsible, workable solutions. Dr. Donohue, the current Director of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research and a Professor of Systems Engineering at George Mason University (GMU), has extensive high-level experience at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Shaver, formerly a senior RAND Corporation research analyst and now a visiting research fellow at GMU, served as chief scientist for policy analysis at the MITRE Center for Advanced Aviation System Development.

The stories they tell are compelling. They are high-profile horror stories passengers stranded for hours on the tarmac, flights canceled for bad weather when there s not a drop of rain anywhere near the flight path, and an overall sense of apathy and obstructionism among those responsible for managing the industry. Interestingly, these problems are not the inevitable result of the size or complexity of the U.S. system. Air transportation in Europe, with almost identical air traffic control systems and safety standards, is far better. Amsterdam moves 30% more passengers than Newark, but the average flight delay is an order of magnitude lower. In addition, a European Passenger s Bill of Rights giving distressed passengers the right to substantial and immediate compensation has been a powerful incentive for non-U.S. airlines to maintain their schedules.

The Causes

So just how did we get where we are in the U.S. system today? Donohue and Shaver cite multiple reasons for the chaos we now face. These causes include airline deregulation, multiple governmental agencies with no central oversight or responsibility, multiple corporate entities with conflicting agendas, and a technologically outdated air traffic control system. Even more importantly, there seems to be a complete absence of advocacy for the customer the passengers. The authors also explain that our air travel problems, if left unaddressed, are on a direct course to greatly impact the overall U.S. economy and harm our global competitiveness. In 2006 alone, the delays and cancellations cost U.S. travelers an estimated $3.2 billion. And in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. tourism industry is estimated to have lost $98 billion in revenue due to our air travel mess.

The Cures

Fortunately, Donohue and Shaver don t leave us in this state of chaos. Their provocative analysis not only identifies the causes and extent of the problems, but also provides us with a course heading that will put us on the path to recovery. The solutions they propose include holding the government decision-makers responsible, expanding the capacity of airports and airplanes, modernizing the air traffic control system, and implementing what the authors call the 30% solution to significantly reduce congestion.

In short, this book should be read by every airline passenger traveling in or through the United States. As a country,.
Price: $26.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"If you look at Southwest Airlines, and I admire what they do, they've been the most successful airline in the industry "

--Gerard Arpey, CEO, American Airlines

"Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times."

--Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program

In an industry with losses in the billions, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way examines how the company uses high-performance relationships to create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees. It then goes further to show how any company can foster these powerful cooperative relationships and explains how to:

• Lead with credibility and caring
• Invest in frontline leaders
• Hire and train for relational competence
• Use conflicts to build relationships
• Make unions its partners, not its adversaries
• Build relationships with its suppliers

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Price: $8.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving, provocative, and insightful examination of the most momentous event of our time.

At the heart of this collection is the long essay “Terror and Boredom,” an unsparing analysis of Islamic fundamentalism and the West’s flummoxed response to it, while other pieces address the invasion of Iraq, the realities of Iran, and Tony Blair’s lingering departure from Downing Street (and also his trips to Washington and Iraq). Amis’s reviews of pertinent books and films, from The Looming Tower to United 93, provide a far-ranging survey of other responses to these calamitous issues, which are further explored in two short stories: “The Last Days of Muhammed Atta,” its subject self-evident, and “In the Palace of the End,” narrated by a Middle Eastern tyrant’s double whose duties include epic lovemaking, grotesque torture, and the duplication on his own body of the injuries sustained by his alter ego in constant assassination attempts.

Whether lambasted for his refusal to kowtow to Muslim pieties or hailed for his common sense, wide reading, and astute perspective, Amis is indisputably a great pleasure to read—informed, elegant, surprising—and this collection a resounding contemplation of the relentless, manifold dangers we suddenly find ourselves living with.

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Price: $11.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Expert interviewing techniques for pilots applying with regional, national and major airlines. 500+ types of questions asked by interviewers, and samples of military and civilian resumes and cover, update, and recommendation letters. Over 20 illustrations. Prepares you for your interviews with Personnel, Flight Department interviewing captains, the physician and psychologist..
Price: $18.41 [Notify me when price goes down.]