Ask the pilot

The good, the bad and the ugliest, ungainliest, silliest-looking passenger airplanes of the world.

By Patrick Smith

Sep 17, 2004 | There used to be a lunch counter place, the Tasty, over in Harvard Square, right at the corner of Mass. Avenue and JFK Street. Mounted on the back wall was a great big Rand McNally of the world. The place was popular with college kids, and whenever a foreign student came in they'd mark his or her home city with a pin. After a while there were so many pins you could hardly see the borders between countries -- Europe and Asia were just a mass of red tacks.

Or maybe they were black, I can't remember, but I bring this up because I'd like to do the same thing. The amount of overseas e-mail I get seems to be growing, with a sudden surge of letters from as far afield as Johannesburg, Melbourne, Hong Kong and Kiev. One reader, in New Zealand, is bold enough to propose that most of Ask the Pilot's regular readership exists outside the United States. That's a bit extravagant (and how would he know?), but nonetheless I'm so flattered that I plan to start marking up an atlas, Tasty style, with little pins. The result should be similar to the map already hanging in my dining room, part of which you can see here. Except those are places I've traveled to; this will work in reverse.

So, to those of you reading from beyond Fortress America, tell us where you are. What I wouldn't give for a Muscat or a Mogadishu. And no cheating. I'll need one of those strange-looking e-mail suffixes for proof.

Just imagine readers on six continents simultaneously tuning in to hear me reminisce about the baguettes on Air France or complain about security; the sun never sets on Ask the Pilot. This propels an ego like you wouldn't believe, especially for a maladjusted wretch like me, so be careful. Temper your adulation, lest I start to take "cult following" (somebody said it, I forget who) too literally and go Jim Jones on you.

Now, if I could just get a hundred of my well-heeled devotees to PayPal their life savings into my offshore bank account, we could, um, lease a 747 and fly around the world on a grand tour -- your beloved columnist/aeroguru confidently at the controls.

But that's getting ahead.

Many of those chiming in from overseas have been doing so in response to my recent column about Soviet airliners. The gripe seems to be that I've forgotten or ignored the many other airplane makers out there, past and present. Enough with Boeing, Airbus and the Russians. What about Holland? What about aviation powerhouses like Ireland or the Czech Republic?

This is all very lite and geeky, sure, but my therapist says it's a good idea to take a few weeks of "recovery columns" after that mind-bending summer of Annie Jacobsen.

Me: She haunts me. She lives in my head! Every night, these awful dreams...

Therapist: Now, now, try not to think about Annie. Think about Mr. Tupolev instead. Or the Short Brothers.

So, in the interest of mental health and as homage to my distant fans, it's time for a synopsis of some foreign-bred firsts, worsts and novelties.

Next Page: Commercial aviation's most notorious flops

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