The Airport by James Kaplan

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.

James Kaplan has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, as well as notable fiction (The Best American Short Stories), for more than three decades. His essays and reviews, as well as more than a hundred major profiles, have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His novels include Pearl's Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious (coauthored with John McEnroe), Dean & Me: A Love Story (with Jerry Lewis), and the first volume of his definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, Frank: The Voice. He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780688092474
ISBN 10	0688092470
Title	The Airport
Author	James Kaplan
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	William Morrow & Company
Year published	1994-08-01
Number of pages	278
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.