Passengers are on the record with their feelings about the state of air travel. But what do pilots think? World Hum contributor Terry Ward found one willing to talk, as long as he remained anonymous. Ward said that “the pilot was eager to talk to me as he’s been pretty fed up with the industry in general lately, even if he loves being a pilot.” Captain “No Name” is a pilot for a major U.S. carrier and he has eight years of commercial experience. Among the insights and observations he revealed to Ward in a piece posted on AOL: 

* JFK is a horrible airport. “The international terminal, terminal four, is new and nice,” he says. “But terminals two and three should be condemned.”

* Delayed passengers should get free liquor. “Maybe that’s the wrong attitude, but if you serve anyone two free drinks they’ll loosen up and it will make the two-hour delay pass faster,” he says.

* Pilots get special treatment from security. “We don’t have to put our gels in those little plastic baggies—they’re not supposed to take them from us if we’re in uniform,” he says.

For more insight about travel from a pilot’s perspective, try Salon’s longtime Ask the Pilot columnist, the also anonymous “Patrick Smith.” His most recent column covers some of his favorite questions he’s received from readers during the last five-plus years. Among them: Is it true that pilots aren’t allowed to ingest garlic prior to flying because it slows down response time?

Related on World Hum:
* Got Airline Complaints? Join the (Very Large) Crowd.
* Nine Great Ways to Get Thrown Off an Airplane

Photo by Ack Ook, via Flickr (Creative Commons)