Patrick Smith (columnist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patrick Smith (born 1966) is an airline pilot, air travel columnist and author. His weekly air travel column, Ask the Pilot, appears every Friday on the website Salon.com. The column first ran in 2002, and takes on everything from the latest urban myths to the trends and travesties of the airlines.
His earlier columns were adapted and compiled into Ask the Pilot-Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel, published by Riverhead/Penguin in June, 2004. The title was Amazon.com's choice for Best Travel Book of the year.
Smith also pens a weekly column for the Italian newsweekly, Internazionale. An Italian version of his book was published in 2005.
He describes his work this way:
"In addition to addressing the staple concerns of passengers, from turbulence to terrorism, Ask the Pilot urges people to reevaluate the link between flight and travel. My love of commercial aviation nurtured a passion for seeing the world, and I encourage that passion in others. I'd never have traipsed off to Botswana or Cambodia if I hadn't been infatuated with the airplane first, and what underpins my writing is a desire that readers, too, will come to see the airplane as more than just an inconvenient means to an end. My audience is not those with a predisposed interest in flight, and the plan is to make air travel compelling in ways that people do not expect -- be it my unorthodox opinions about security, or rhapsodising about the livery of Air-India. The topics I highlight are the more nuanced ones."
Born Patrick R. Santosuosso, a third-generation descendant of Neapolitan olive growers, he took flying lessons at fifteen and went on to become a C-minus student at St. John's Prep School north of Boston. His self-published punk rock fanzines and poetry journals of the 1980s and 1990s are considered among the more curious works of literature ever produced by a resident of Revere, Massachusetts. In 1990, he earned his first cockpit position, as a copilot on regional turboprops, earning $800 a month.
Patrick travels extensively in his spare time. As of early 2006, he has visited more than 60 countries. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
