Product Description
An introduction to the educational background, equipment, clothing, and various duties of an astronaut. ... Read more

Product Description
"TRB Special Report 250 - Air Traffic Control Facilities: Improving Methods to Determine Staffing Requirements" reviews the methodologies by which Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates and applies its staffing standards, examines the feasibility and cost of modifying agency staffing standards and developing alternative approaches for application to individual facilities, and recommends an improvement strategy. The appropriate level of staffing for air traffic control (ATC) has long been controversial. As a service of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), ATC is almost exclusively staffed by federal employees. Following the controller strike of 1981, which resulted in the firing of two-thirds of controllers, congressional concerns about staffing were focused primarily on the overall size and rebuilding of the workforce. During the 1990s, however, congressional concerns shifted to questions about whether staffing levels are appropriate at the agency's highest traffic locations. FAA has long had difficulty staffing its ATC centers, terminal radar approach control facilities, and other terminal facilities in metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.In addition to being the most demanding locations because of the volume and types of traffic that must be handled, they are among the areas with the highest cost of living. Concerns about stressful working conditions and the amount of overtime required of workers at these locations have been raised regularly by the controllers union and sometimes by members of Congress. In the aftermath of the controllers strike, FAA developed analytical models for estimating the number of specialists required to control traffic safely. The application of these models to particular locations became a source of controversy between FAA and the controllers union. The committee formed to examine whether these models were sufficiently accurate for estimating staffing levels at specific locations determined that they could not be relied upon for this purpose. The models provide a useful starting point, but the staffing estimates they produce need to be adjusted on the basis of both local conditions and the norms that exist across FAAs workplaces. The committee recommended a process that FAA could follow to make these adjustments. ... Read more

Product Description
This comprehensive book is written in an easy-to-use, understandable manner for professionals in the travel industry. The text adheres to the "ARC Industry Agent's Handbook," the industry standard for the sale of airline transportation in North America. It includes the most current information and practices, including sales, promotion, booking, pricing, and ticketing of airline travel. It also addresses the changing role of the retail travel agent as well as the effect of technology in the workplace. This is a useful guide for the practicing professional as well as for the growing number of individuals interested in operating a home-based travel agency.It provides all the information required to sell and book airline travel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great training tool for the travel agent
"Every thing you ever wanted to know about booking a flight" This book is easy to follow with diagrams,charts and self tests.I am a new travel agent and this book covers all the aspects of booking a flight. A Must have for for all the newbie travel agents.

The best on the market-detailed and up-to-date
This book is excellent for students studying travel and tourism. Also makes a wonderful self-teaching tool for independent learners at home.It is so detailed and clear that it is like having a "teacher sittingright next to you!"

Highly recommend.And, the third edition iscoming out next year -2000. ... Read more

Product Description
An insider's story of Lockheed's Skunk Works, the supersecret facility that developed the U-2 American spy plane and other high-technology aircraft, follows the period of the author's career from 1975 to 1990. Reprint. NYT. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (90)

The designer of the F-117
Ben Rich was born in 1925 in an upper-class Philippine Jewish family, which fled for the United States just before the Pearl Harbor attack; they lost everything but had more luck than Ben Rich's aunt, who survived a Japanese concentration camp. Ben Rich went to college at age 21, and got a master's degree in aeronautical engineering, despite his family's dreams of him becoming a doctor and his father-in-law's wishes that he inherit his delicatessen business. After the graduation he was hired by Lockheed, where he designed inlet ducts for the company's jet aircraft. In 1954, Clarence Johnson, the head of Lockheed's "Skunk Works" secret projects division, borrowed Rich to design the inlet ducts for the U-2 spy plane, expecting him to leave within a few weeks or months. Rich stayed at Skunk Works for 36 years, taking over the business from Johnson in 1975 and retiring in 1991. Under Johnson, Rich worked on some of the most amazing planes in the history of aviation: the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 reconnaissance plane, for which he designed a unique engine - a turbojet that turns into a ramjet at high speed, and the D-21 drone. In addition to Rich's memoirs, the book also has stories by pilots of the U-2 and the SR-71; the Americans flew the U-2 over the Soviet Union and Cuba and the Nationalist Chinese flew it over the People's Republic. When Francis Gary Powers came back from Soviet prison, many Americans thought he should have killed himself instead of allowing himself to be captured; Clarence Johnson took pity on the guy and hired him as a test pilot. When Ben Rich became the head of Skunk Works, somebody brought to his attention a translated paper by an obscure Soviet physicist that showed how to calculate radar cross-sections; since this paper was written, computers had become much faster and it became possible to design an aircraft with a tiny radar cross-section. Ben Rich's team designed the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. They also toyed with a stealth catamaran and even proposed a submarine invisible to sonar, but the U.S. Navy didn't care about it. During the First Iraq War, only 2.5% of coalition aircraft were F-117s, but they struck more than 40% of the strategic targets, overcoming Iraqi air defenses. Now, if your country consumes too much foreign oil, you can set your top engineering talent on reducing the consumption of oil, or you can set it on designing an aircraft that would be invisible to the air defenses of one of the world's top oil producers in the case you go to war with it. Moral considerations aside, which choice makes more engineering sense?

Must read!
Anyone interested in aerospace technology has got to get their hands on a copy of this book. Not only is Ben Rich a genius in aerodynamics, he is a wonderful storyteller. Loads of interesting information and great stories.

Great Book from an employee of lockheed
What a great book. It details the saga of America's leading aerospace corporation, its rise to technological excellence and financial success is to a large extent the story of how an extraordinarily gifted and at times overbearing aeronautical engineer helped to transform a meager airplane manufacturer into the world's most formidable air and space powerhouse. Mr Rich argued successfully to install a twin tail on the Electra airliner, thereby improving its stability. He continued infuencing designs at the company for the next forty years. The revolutionary World War II fighter, the P-38, the first operational American jet, the P-80, the high-flying spyplane, the U-2, and the ultra-fast reconnaissance platform, the SR-71, all emanated from the fertile mind. The legacy of this design genius is to be found in the Skunk Works' output since Johnson's departure -- the incredible F-117A Stealth Fighter, the Air Force's next generation air dominance fighter, the F-22 Raptor, and the X-33, which is a prototype of the Venture Star spacecraft destined to replace the aging and costly Space Shuttle. In the 576 pages of this opus, Rich superbly weaves Johnson's intriguing story into the mosaic of both the corporate history of Lockheed and the chronicle of twentieth century airpower. This masterful book provides the insight necessary to understand what made the Skunk Works and its parent organization the leading players in the aerospace industry. Rich asserts that the people carrying on the work of Kelly Johnson aim beyond the horizons and we should be grateful for that. And we should also be grateful that a distinguished aviation historian like Mr Rich has so accurately and comprehensively recorded such an important slice of aerospace development.

Don Shin Lockheed

Skunk Works
What a great story!Well written and from a man who was there and lived a great adventure every day of his incredible career.I bought copies for my each of my sons and my father.This is a tale that should to be told to a much wider audience.Too bad more American corporations aren't run on the basic principles that the Lockheed Skunk Works lived by.

Wonderful Gift for the Airplane Enthusiast
I purchased this as gift for my boyfriend, as he has always found the aircraft industy to be fascinating. He absolutely loved it. I would reccommend this as gift to anyone interested in learning about Lockheed or the aircraft industry in general. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1986, the president of Eastern Airlines and former astronaut, Frank Borman, set his airline on a collision course with Frank Lorenzo. Desperate to revive his failing talks with Eastern's unions, Borman began negotiating a sale with the man they feared most. Frank Lorenzo had built Texas Air and Continental into an empire through anti-union tactics and had earned him labour's hatred and the support of the big money-men like Drexel's Mike Milken. But Borman, blinded by his own arrogance, misjudged, and his beloved airline ended up with Lorenzo. "Businees Week"'s Aaron Bernstein gives an account of this saga, which has implications for the future of American business. The wider failure of Eastern under Lorenzo marks the demise of the traditional tough-guy approach to management. In this age of techno-service, businesses cannot survive with embittered employees. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Michael Manning Review of Grounded by Aaron Bernstein
While I lived in Dallas, I read Bernstein's book around the same time time that filmmaker Oliver Stone was in town filming the movie "J.F.K.". I submitted Bernstein's book along with a detailed proposal that included optioning the book rights for a movie with actors Daniel J. Travanti as Lorenzo, Brian Dennehy as Charles Brian and Michael Douglas as Trustee Marty Shugrue. Stone responded 5 days later to me through his assistant Kristina Hare that while this was a meaty subject, the political bent of the book ran counter to his convictions. I found this response puzzling. The book details how Lorenzo, a brilliant financial manipulator, rose from Queens, New York to the heights of owning the world's largest commercial airline empire second only to Russia's Aeroflot. This book is clearly a portrayal of how Lorenzo's get tough tactics with Eastern's notoriously militant IAM led by Charles Bryan from 1980 forward led to a war with Texas Air Management. Lorenzo ended up dismantling the very asset he bought by striking blows against labor in a bitter showdown. Eastern under CEO Frank Borman had 43,000 employees. By the time the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York ousted Lorenzo as "incompetent to reorganize Eastern's estate", only 18,500 employees remained and over $700 million of assets were either sold or dubiously transferred at little or no cost to Texas Air's Continental Airlines. So, Oliver Stone's rationale is quite strange. He is pro-union and this book details how Lorenzo started an unnecessary war with Eastern's unions rather than allow a professional manager to run the airline. Bernstein had unprecedented access to Frank Lorenzo and former managers of Texas Air as he delivers a step by step cautionary tale of how a well educated albeit, a brutal minded executive became his own worst enemy. It is a well paced and well written book that should become required reading for any business school management class.

Average Effort
This is a study in an ego taken over.I view is that the games he played could almost be criminal.I would have liked more information for the company as the author does seem to set out to make Frank be the bad guy. I would also have liked more details on the business end of the airline industry.I thought the writing was above average, he moved the story along through some topics that could be considered dull, union negotiations etc.All and all not a bad book and if you find the airline industry interesting then you should read this book.

Excellent
Excellent book, well researched and very well written.Accurately portrays the events that lead to Eastern's demise.I am no fan of unions.But, Lorenzo displayed a blatant calloused disregard for Eastern, it's people, and everything connected with it.

Another Labor Bashing of Frank Lorenzo
One of the most unfair treatments of the demise of Eastern Airlines ever written and the second worst book on the subject. Biased towards labor from the beginning, Bernstein paints Goya-like pictures of an evil Frank Lorenzoand his henchmen cackling over a cauldron late at night, thinking up waysto lie, cheat and steal Eastern away from the hearths of America.At thesame time, Charlie Bryan is portrayed as some mythic hero who ". ..read Ghandi and Kahlil Gibran and even Sun-tzu. . .".Right. Biasshows in the fact that no Texas Air management are quoted; no personalattributes are ever given, making Lorenzo, Bakes et all appear as soullesscorporate thugs, while the stalwart union defenders with defiant chinsthrust forth, are given warm wonderful hearts and the purest of intentions.I'm surprised Bernstein didn't have pictures of Bryan petting a puppy andholding a baby. Of slight redeming value is the fact that the book doestell an accurate story.Eastern didn't have to die and maybe Lorenzodidn't have to kill it, but the interpretation and presentation aredesigned only to support an intransigent group of labor leaders in theirrefusal to see the reality of the world. This book is only marginallybetter than the worst book written about Eastern, "Freefall".

Good Review but ends to early
Overall this book gives an sufficent explantian on the events that led up to Eastern's Shutdown.However, it is bias toward the unions without exposing there arrogance.If you ignore this fact and simply rely on thefacts given this is a fairly good book.And also, it ends before theshutdown of the company in January 1991.It does not show the final stageof the Eastern Airlines saga between where Frank Lorenzo loses power andthe company shutsdown.3 stars. ... Read more

Product Description
As all travelers know, flying is no simple matter. There are the horrors of the check-in to be negotiated, the uneven struggle to squash your hand luggage into the overhead locker and the constant fight with your neighbor over ownership of the armrest. Add to that the question of the food, the immigration queues and waiting for your luggage to appear and we can all see that something isn’t quite right. So when one of the world’s leading management gurus – Henry Mintzberg – decides to scrutinize the managment practices of the airlines and airports from his personal experience, it is worth taking notice. And when he does it in a higly amusing manne; it is worth reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Why? Why Did I Waste My Time Reading This?
Why didn't I really like this book?It's boring! I thought this book would either be one of two things, a book full of interesting funny tales of things that had gone wrong for actual travels or evidence as to how the airlines are ripping off consumers, how they are cutting costs and stuff like that.Instead this book is just some slow North American with the IQ of a rock's attempt to compare the marketing world to airlines.This guy is so arrogant and stupid that he doesn't even check first if he needs a tourist visa before visiting another country then complains just because he is a Canadian that he should get special treatment and not have to go through what people from every other country do.

He has obviously come across a basic marketing textbook somewhere but never bothered to get anyone who has actually studied or worked in marketing to explain the terms to him as he's a long way off most of the time.For some reason he isn't even prepared to stand by his comments and deliberately misspells every airport or airline he is complaining about so he won't get sued.This gets really annoying extremely fast.All his best material was used up in the first couple of chapters, the rest of the book is a struggle to get through.

A much better book to buy is Passengers who make your flight hell.

Amusing but not hilarious
This little volume comes straight from the heart. It's not amazingly hilarious, but if you are a frequent international traveller, then you'll relate to every story that is told.
Mintzberg flies frequently between Canada & France, so Air Kanuk & Air Gaul feature regularly, but other airlines come into their fair share of ridicule.
You won't laugh out loud, but it should bring a wry smile from every page. If you know a business traveller, and want a 'stocking filler', buy them it for Christmas.

Unfunny and uninspired
Other reviewers have it spot-on: this book is not (or very rarely) funny, poorly written, self-indulgent, and in particular offers no management insight at all, aside from informing airline managers how customers perceive their product, which I suppose was not exactly a secret.

It's humor but it's not fiction
I was at the bookstore buying more serious books on Six Sigma when this little gem jumped out at me.

By the time I got to the chapter dealing with food I was weeping with laughter. Just about everyone cops a swipe in this book and as an Australian, MBA qualified manager who used to work at Sydney Airport, I felt a few barbs myself.

Henry is working outside of his normal style and doesnt always pull it off but I nonetheless was refreshed to see that this world-wide authority on management shares some of my own misgivings about Globalism with a big G and Management with a big M.

The insights are a useful whack on the side of the head for anybody involved in managing any business. Readers who have travelled only a fraction of Mintzberg's air-milesare also bound to identify with at least some of his anecdotes, as I did.

By the end of the book you should understand the difference between Customer Service and customer service.

So, if your management-reading palate is a little jaded then treat this as sorbet-for-the-management soul.

Theory vs. Reality
I started reading this book in one of the lounges at JFK's Terminal One (and continued reading it over an excellent glass of wine on my way to Frankfurt). Hence the atmosphere was right somehow). Mr. Mintzberg is one of these "Professor of Economics Guru" who's frequently travelling and knows all about the world - except the real one. The "real one" in today's economics is surviving, especially for the airline industry. Airlines do have to fill their planes and make more revenues than they do have cost - as simple as that! Obviously Mr. Mintzberg has a hard time to get used to the fact that airlines can't give away anything for free. He's one of these guys spending 150 bucks for going overseas and expecting - of course - an upgrade for free including all the good stuff served in Business and First Class. Since that does not happen all the time he's blowing out all of his frustrations in this book. I feel sorry for having spent the money for this book, it's not worth it. ... Read more