The Airport by James Kaplan
As news coverage raises serious questions about aircraft safety and airport security, James Kaplan offers a timely behind-the-scenes account of John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Airport: Planes, People, Triumphs, and Disasters at John F. Kennedy International achieves the impossible-it goes "inside" the sprawling J.F.K. to expose the lifeblood of a major metropolitan airport.Kaplan spoke with many of the key players within Kennedy's city of 44,000 around-the-clock workers, including administrators, technicians, crime investigators, pilots and skycaps. He interviewed people who hold such bizarre posts as Kennedy's notorious "Birdman" who patrols the runways for "laughing seagulls"; the leader of the "Beagle Brigade" who uses beagles to track the illegal entry of unwanted materials; and one of the airport's medical team who must contend with airport "mules," men and women who smuggle drugs by ingesting large quantities of drug packets into their bodies.
The Airport assesses the crucial role that deregulation has played in shaping today's airline industry, producing lower fares that allow more people to fly, but in a manner that feels "progressively more inconvenient." Kaplan suggests that deregulation may have contributed to dangerous declines in maintenance and safety standards. In addition, he examines all the other elements affecting airline safety--traffic control, weather, runway maintenance, radar and other sensing equipment, pilot and flight attendant training and disaster crews.
In The Airport, James Kaplan presents a panoramic, intimately detailed and highly personal view of the world of flying, and of a fabled airport's inner life, which even the most seasoned travelers never get to see.
For more than three decades, James Kaplan has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, as well as famous fiction (The Best American Short Stories). Several magazines have published his pieces and reviews, as well as more than a hundred big profiles, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. Pearl's Progress and Two Men from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book in 1998, are two of his works. The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious (coauthored with John McEnroe), Dean & Me: A Love Story (coauthored with Jerry Lewis), and Frank: The Voice, the first volume in his definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, are among his nonfiction works. With his wife and three sons, he resides in Westchester, New York.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780688149543 |
| ISBN 10 | 0688149545 |
| Title | The Airport |
| Author | James Kaplan |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Harper Perennial |
| Year published | 1996-11-12 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |