April 1, 2026

It’s the fall of 1981. Specifically it’s October — or, “Rocktober” in the lingo of the big local rock station, WCOZ, a monthlong event highlighting a different band each day.

Today is “Cars Day,” and I’ve set my alarm extra early. I’m yet to own a stereo, so next to the radio I’ve placed a cheap old cassette player, my finger ready on the RECORD button. The instant I hear the opening of a Cars song, I’ll press.

I’ll do this multiple times, and by the end of the day I’ll have a muffled analog catalog of my favorite tunes, all with the first two seconds missing.

Long before Husker Du and the Jazz Butcher, my big musical infatuation was the Cars, the Boston-based quintet fronted by co-singers Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr. I can’t recall when or why, exactly, I got hooked on their music, but the Cars were my soundtrack through my first two years of high school.

According to the desks at St. John’s Prep, vandalized by bored tenth-graders like me, the most popular bands in the world were Rush and maybe Van Halen. I’d leave Cars graffiti, adding a little prog-rock flourish. I’d draw a checkered flag, like the one on the Panorama album.

I mention all of this because of a new book, “The Cars: Let the Stories be Told”, authored by Bill Janovitz, himself a musician from Boston.

The title borrows from “Let the Good Times Roll,” the unforgettable kickoff cut from the group’s eponymous debut, released in 1978.

The author had to be from Boston. Nothing else would be right, or fair. And if one person in the world was gonna read his book, if only for old times’ sake, well that would have to be me.

I seldom read music biographies from start to finish. Often they’re too too bogged down, hyper-detailed and meandering (Chris Salewicz’s bio of Joe Strummer runs for 650 pages). So I pick around for the good parts. This one, though, I took in cover-to-cover, straight through.

It’s exhaustive, comprehensive, painstakingly researched… all the things good music journalism should be. It’s unpolished in parts, but luckily for us Janovitz is a decent writer as much as a thorough historian, bringing us not just a chronicle, but one that’s fun to read.

Sadly neither Ric Ocasek nor Ben Orr are still with us. The surviving three bandmembers, however, are generous and gracious with their contributions.

The author reintroduced me to a band that, as a young teenager, I thought I’d known so well. Turns out there was plenty I missed. Some of it basic, but much of it those nuance-y sort of details that, as youngster, were bound to go over my head. I knew what I liked, but my knowledge and understanding of music was, let’s be honest, pretty unsophisticated.

I’d never appreciated the brilliance of Elliot Easton’s song-within-a-song guitar solos, for example, or the fire of his rockabilly-style leads in the song “My Best Friend’s Girl.” I’d never noticed those bass licks at the beginning of “Bye Bye Love.” And I had no clue that when Ben Orr repeats the word “time” during that verse in “Just What I Needed,” it’s a nod to the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray.”

Of course it is, but at fifteen it skipped right past me. All these things did. Heck, I was into my 20s before I knew, or cared, that David Robinson had been the drummer in the Modern Lovers.

As I read, I found myself highlighting pages, then throwing on my headphones, listening and re-listening to this or that highlight that Janovitz points out. In doing so, I rediscovered my love for the Cars.

Their first two albums, anyway: the self-titled debut and its follow-up, Candy-O. That aforementioned Panorama, while its checkered flag motif looked cool on a desk, never did much for me, and neither did anything afterward. If the author fails at one thing, perhaps, it’s helping me realize, all these years later, that the Cars’ hadn’t, in fact, jumped the shark. But save for a song or two, I can’t agree.

That first pair of records, though, is unmatchable. There will never be music like that again.

To what decade this music belongs is open to argument. The second album, Candy-O — the one with the famous pin-up girl by Alberto Vargas — was released in 1979. But to consider it a 70s record (or to call the Cars a “70s band”) would be ridiculous. Stylistically it was way ahead of their time. If 80s music ever needed a formal introduction, let it be the opening 25 second of the song “Let’s Go.”

The dropoff following Candy-O is part of the reason my obsession with the group waned. By late 1982 I’d left the Cars behind, drifting away from mainstream music altogether.

Funny, a bit later on, during my punk rock years, I would often see Ric Ocasek, mantis-like and unmistakable, perusing the record bins in Newbury Comics. He was still a giant to me, but I was too shy ever to say hello.

This book, and the memories it brings back, makes me wish I had.

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April 1, 2026

So far I haven’t had much to say about the deadly collision at La Guardia airport on March 22nd, when a Jazz Aviation (operating as Air Canada Express) regional jet collided with a fire truck seconds after touching down. The truck had been cleared by air traffic control to cross the active runway.

The most obvious question is why the controller permitted the truck to cross. How did he forget, or not notice, that the RJ was, at that moment, barreling down the same runway? The airport was busy and the tower had been dealing with a different flight declaring an emergency. Maybe that explains a few things, but how is it, in a time of high workload and high distraction, that a single controller is empowered to make a life-or-death decision without a second controller’s scrutiny, especially at night?

ATC understaffing, I’m sure, has a role here. Otherwise, as a pilot-pundit I’m supposed to have answers. I’m afraid I don’t.

What I can tell you, though, is only a few days before the accident I’d remarked to a friend about how the proliferation of vehicles at busy airports felt unsafe to me. Not so much the myriad cars, trucks, and tugs that work the inner ramps, shuttling around luggage and whatnot, but the ones with authorization to operate on active runways and taxiways. These include airport maintenance vehicles, plows, emergency vehicles, and so on.

What training do these drivers receive? Listening over the radio, I sometimes shake my head. Their clearance read-backs, for instance, often sound tentative or uncertain. What sort of situational awareness do they have? In the cockpit, pilots listen out not only for the own instructions, but for those of other aircraft as well, allowing us to paint a mental picture of the movement around us. The importance of this would seem self-evident, but does the man or woman steering a fire truck think this way too?

And couldn’t the driver have seen the regional jet? A pilot will never cross a runway without double-checking, visually, for oncoming traffic. This isn’t possible in low visibility, but most of the time it is. The weather at LGA wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. As a motorist who’s been broadsided at intersections knows, putting your trust in a stoplight isn’t enough. You don’t cruise through a green without making sure that someone isn’t running the red. The truck, responding to an emergency, approached the runway at an angle. It may have been hard for the driver to see. Was his view obstructed, or did he merely take the controller’s word that the runway was safe?

And what of the Jazz pilots? It’s possible they heard the controller issuing that ill-fated crossing clearance. But they were already on the ground with only a few seconds to react.

The plane hit the truck straight on, nose-first, and both pilots were killed. Everyone else survived. It’s interesting to wonder what the outcome might’ve been had the pilots swerved to avoid the collision. There wasn’t enough time to turn clear; either way they were going to hit. And had they swerved, the point of impact would have been closer to the plane’s midsection, or even at the wing root, resulting in an explosion and many more deaths. The lack of a fire saved the passengers.

Most likely, once the investigation is complete, the La Guardia controller will receive brunt of the blame. This won’t tell the whole story. Understaffing, darkness, urgency, distraction, and ATC protocols all had roles to play, creating a situation where one small mistake proved fatal.

Photo by Jordi Moncasi, courtesy of Unsplash.

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When I take pictures, I try to stay away from traditional plane porn (of the sort that dominates on Instagram). I like to think my shots — the better of them, at any rate — are a little more offbeat or impressionistic. Case in point, these three, which rate among my favorites.

Top and bottom: A psychedelic flood of blur and color, here’s the world as seen through an airplane window cascaded by de-icing fluid. Those red and white pinpoints in the first one are, believe it or not, the distant lights of New York City.

Center: Two Skies. The underside of a jetliner tail juxtaposed with an afternoon sky above Somerville, Massachusetts.

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March 10, 2026

Just before we push from the gate, a suite of weight-and-balance data is beamed to us. The message is delivered through a communications platform called ACARS. The info is then entered (some we type in manually, some of it uploads automatically) into the flight management system to help us compute our takeoff speeds, flap and trim settings, and whatnot.

The message includes a tally of the plane’s occupants, or “souls on board,” as we call it. This includes everyone: passengers, crew, and lap children. I normally jot this number down on my cheat-sheet. In the event of an emergency, controllers will ask for it to assist with fire and rescue planning.

The other night, departing for Paris, as the message unspooled from the ship’s printer, something caught my eye. The SOB total read 301. This was the first time in my career that I’d pilot a plane carrying three hundred or more people.

With every seat taken and a full complement of crew, our jet doesn’t quite hold that many. It was the lap kids, bless their boisterous hearts, that tipped us over the edge.

No shortage of pilots out there fly planes with room for well over three-hundred, or even four-hundred passengers (some of Emirates’ high-density A380s carry over six-hundred). What such a number means for them, if anything, I can’t say. But for me it felt important. Not for bragging rights, but as a personal point of pride. It was, in a way, a redemption.

My flying career, beleaguered and busted-up as it was at times, had been building to this moment. For decades it had been a struggle. Bankruptcies, furloughs, bounced paychecks. Crappy jobs with crappy airlines flying crappy planes. Now here I was, about to take a widebody jet across the ocean with three-hundred people on it (or souls, if you’d rather, making it sound more lofty).

Pilots measure their progress by different milestones. First solo (I barely remember), first upgrade to captain (it happened in 1991). This seemed, well, heavier.

It took a long damn time, but things had finally paid off. And there was the number that, to me, best quantified it: 301.

I was going to include a photo of the printout with the total circled… until I realized I’d lost it.

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Photo by Alex Shuper, courtesy of Unsplash.

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March 2, 2026.

The sudden conflict with Iran has brought Persian Gulf air traffic to a halt. Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad have seen greater than 90 percent of their flights curtailed, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded.

This is no small matter. The airports of Doha, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi comprise a massive global crossroads — the biggest transit region on earth — hosting 182 million passengers annually.

Traveling from the U.S. to Thailand a couple of months ago, I shot this 30-second video of the departure board at Dubai. It was just after midnight, with the screen showing dozens of early-morning Emirates departures to just about anywhere you could imagine.

Each time that I pass through Dubai it knocks my socks off. DXB is the world’s biggest and busiest international hub, and the lineup of Emirates jets is astonishing, with 50 or more A380s, and dozens of 777s, lined up side-by-side. There are flights to six continents and across every ocean. Throughout the long history of commercial aviation, nothing like this has existed.

The growth of Emirates and the other Gulf carriers (together they are sometimes referred to as the “ME3” or “G3”) has been controversial. Lavish government subsidies, many argue, have permitted these airlines to take a huge and unfair advantage over others. Is this true? Sure. But it’s also true these airlines’ hubs are in the perfect geographic position to connect world’s biggest population centers; the governments of the U.A.E and Qatar realized this and ran with it.

They built their mega-carriers from scratch, and have done well, believing that the commerce generated by air travel is something to be nurtured rather than hindered. You can call it government subsidizing. You also can call it an investment in an industry your economy and society benefit from.

Here in the U.S., it feels like we’ve given up on that concept. Our airports are undersized and dirty, security screening has gone off the rails, and consider the misery we put international connecting passengers through. You ask if the complaint of government subsidies is valid. Yes, but it’s less a complaint against their governments than a complaint against ours. Once upon a time, America was commercial aviation’s global leader. That was then.

Of course, that geographic lucky card that has served the Gulf carriers so well has always been fraught with risk. This perfect connecting point is also a geopolitical powder keg, as we’re seeing right now.

How long the disruption might last is anyone’s guess. The ME3 have plenty of resources to weather the storm, but it’ll be interesting to see airlines from other parts of the world might benefit. Someone has to pick up all the traffic that was flowing through the Gulf.

That so many flights to so many places, carrying so many people, exist in the first place is impressive enough. Equally remarkable is how quickly this movement can be brought to a halt.

Cancellation stats for March 2nd.   Source: Cirium.

Photos and video by the author.

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Flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong the other day, I had the pleasure of sampling one of Cathay Pacific’s new “Aria” suites on the Boeing 777-300. This is Cathay’s swanky new business class product, currently available on a limited number of routes. A shame it was only a two-hour flight.

The food and wine were excellent — the service expedited for such a short ride. Find me a two-hour flight in the U.S. with a meal like the one below.

The “hard product,” to borrow industry parlance for the suite itself, was comfy and spacious. The layout is the common 1-2-1 herringbone, each seat with an oversized tray table and 24-inch video screen. (And I love the way Cathay’s headsets, while not bluetooth, are pre-plugged, with the attachment point hidden neatly away in a small amenities closet.)

What impressed me most, though, was the level of privacy. If you’re in the center section, as I was, a moveable panel closes you off from your neighbor, while on the aisle side your upper body sits deep within the sculpted shoulder wing.

It wasn’t until halfway through the flight that I realized there also was a sliding door. And I had to wonder, why bother? There was more than ample privacy as it was. With the seat in the bed position, there was barely two feet of open space, roughly at the position of your knees or mid-thigh. From Cathay’s point of view, is installing doors really worth the extra weight and mechanical complexity?

Looks like they’ve been bullied into it. For better or worse, doors are the industry standard these days. Indeed, airlines have gone sliding-door crazy. It’s become an arms race of sorts, and your first or biz class seat can’t be considered world class unless it comes with one, no matter how needless the amenity might be.

In some cases it makes sense. The geometry of a suite can be such that the lack of a door leaves you feeling exposed. The photo above, for example, shows the inside of an Emirates first class suite with its doors closed to the aisle (there are two that slide together). Without them, there’d be too much openness, too much clatter from outside.

But many are cozy enough to begin with, and the presence of a door feels gratuitous — even a little silly. They’re simply not needed.

If you insist, consider the way Air France does it, with a floor-to-ceiling curtain ensconcing each first class occupant. This is a simpler, less expensive, and much more elegant concept than the clunkiness of a door. (A curtain needs to be hung, however, which presents a problem for most cabin designs.)

How to define and quantify comfort? I reckon there are smarter ways for airlines to invest. We’re talking now about “soft product” enhancements, like better food or more gracious service. The worst thing a carrier can do is become hyper-focused on material aspects while the rest of its product deteriorates. I’d rather have a more attentive crew, a better meal presentation, or a less chaotic boarding experience, than some flimsy door.

Photos by the Author.

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