Salon :: Tech & Business

Ask the pilot: Much of what frustrates us about flying doesn't take place during flight at all. It's getting on and off that's really irritating

It's not often you see a dateline composed of latitude and longitude coordinates, but that's the easiest way of describing this place -- a jungle lodge on the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil, three hours by fast boat from the Colombian town of Leticia. I've dispatched columns from some exotic places in the past, but never from a thatched-roof cabin on the banks of an Amazon tributary. If this one feels a bit looser and more casual than normal, I blame it on the setting. There's a languor in the air, to say the least. (And if not for the lodge's daily, three-hour allotment of electricity, I'd never have finished this thing.) <P>Being in the Amazon also has a way of putting one in a certain ecological frame of mind. That's much the point of being here, I guess, and it's a fitting coincidence on the heels of my recent two-part series on <a href="http://dir.salon.com/topics/airlines/">airlines</a> and the <a href="http://dir.salon.com/topics/environment/">environment.</a> <P>Speaking of which: If my flight from the United States to Colombia was any indication, my estimates on the volume of <a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2008/02/29/askthepilot266/">in-flight trash production</a> were woefully conservative. Within a half-hour of departure I had already gone through <i>three</i> plastic drinking cups: one cup for the orange juice served during boarding, another for the Coke Zero I drank after takeoff and yet a third accompanying the small bottle of wine that came with my dinner. I never had the chance to say no. <p>...</p><img src="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/tech/~4/247121575" height="1" width="1"/>

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