For the proper thrill, one should always travel by air, and always on the airline of the country you're visiting. Not practical in every case, but definitely sexier. Going to Morocco not long ago, part of the excitement was flying on Air Maroc. Not merely on Royal Air Maroc, but on the identical 747, registration CN-RME, that I remember spotting at Kennedy airport in 1979.

True story: you can whittle down the thrill to the very airplane. I can tell you the exact South African Airways 747 I rode home from Jo'Burg. It was ZS-SAW, the Bloemfontein.

All of this constitutes a dogma that finds its way, week after week, into this corner of Salon. Some would say I've beat you over the head with it. So be it. From thus comes the whole inspiration for Ask the Pilot. I'm happy to assuage your fears with straight talk on turbulence and wind shear; pleased to inform you about the composition of jet fuel or the workings of a transponder. But whatever levels of knowledge and eloquence I appoint to such tasks, they're symptoms of something much more heartfelt.

It's critical to remember that I write not strictly as The Pilot, but as something else too. I would guess that half, possibly more, of what I discuss in this space are things as unknown to the average pilot as they are to the layperson. Pilots are adept with aerodynamics and the physics of flight. I understand those things, but I also bring an enthusiast's knowledge of the world's airlines; the places they fly; the genealogy of civil aviation. Ask the Pilot, name aside, is neither about planes nor about flying, strictly speaking. My subject is the greater realm of air travel in whole. The difference is an enormous one, and the goal isn't only to inform, it's to inspire.

Which -- qualifier time -- isn't to ignore or downplay the hassles of a journey by air. The evolution of flight, both in strict technological terms and through economic accessibility, has rendered it ordinary, unexciting, a pain in the ass. Flying is easier; more of us can afford it. We don't marvel over airplanes because we're used to them, just the way we don't marvel over computers or television. You could say we're not supposed to marvel.

However, growing accustomed to something and taking it for granted are different things. Plus, there's a difference: You don't sit on your computer, or hop into your television, and fly halfway around the world. The TV and computer bring the world to you, if only in a virtual sense. Flying, which is to say traveling, is such a physical act.

The disconnect between flight and travel is, to me, unnatural and not to be forgiven. Nobody gives a shit anymore how you get there. I'm trying to change that, one jaded passenger at a time.

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