Doug Morris

Doug Morris draws on his twenty years experience as an airline pilot for a large Canadian airline to address the mysteries of commercial flight In This is Your Captain Speaking: Stories from the Flight Deck.

Written in a personable tone Morris attempts to answer every question you might have about the career of a pilot and the operation of a commercial aircraft -including what they carry in their flight bag, how routes are planned, fuel tolerances, and the universal usefulness of duct tape; as well as queries about the notorious mile-high club, difficult passengers and shrinking seat sizes. As a certified meteorologist Morris also confidently address concerns related to weather such as turbulence, icing and the phenomenon of St Elmo’s Fire. The author’s explanations are concise and detailed but appropriate for a lay audience, with a glossary provided for further edification. Morris also includes good humoured asides and anecdotes throughout the book which are generally entertaining and offsets the technical minutiae.

While not the gossipy industry exposé I was hoping for, This is Your Captain Speaking did prove to be educational. I believe it would particularly be a good choice of reading for a nervous flyer, a young aspiring pilot, or someone with specific interest in commercial aircraft operations.… (plus d'informations)

An excellent, highly accessible guide to the wonderful world of air travel. The author, a pilot with Air Canada, is well placed (both literally and figuratively) to give the layman a primer on aviation. After a brief chapter on what it takes to become a pilot in the first place and a lesson on how planes are able to fly at all, Morris basically takes you through a flight, from arrival at the airport in Toronto to touching down in Hong Kong. There are chapters on takeoff, cruising, approach and landing, not to mention the weather one encounters along the way, and throughout each chapter Morris provides helpful recaps of the facts and statistics he's just gone through. He uses the terminology but does not sound jargony, and he even includes some jokes that had me laughing out loud.

I am docking half a star because the copyeditor fell asleep during the chapter on takeoff with some less obvious but still embarrassing homophones, such as berth/birth (when would you give someone a "wide birth"?) and shear/sheer. But this is a very minor bone to pick with this very accessible resource. Only 184 pages but he makes those pages count. Recommended for nervous air travellers and aviation enthusiasts alike.… (plus d'informations)