Note: This web page has not been recently updated (except for this notice) and is kept primarily for historical interest. Links and contact information are probably out of date. What you are probably really looking for might be found at one of these pages: Berch on Food, my food and travel writing BerchLaw, my law practice page My LiveJournal My Flickr photo page My Wikipedia user page

Take a look at my Aircraft Photos Page!

Ever since I was a kid I've been fascinated by airplanes and airports, and have tried to keep up with advances in aviation technology and the business of aviation. One summer during law school I worked as a FAA/legislative intern for a commuter airline (this was during the exciting first days after deregulation), and I wrote my senior paper on the history of airline regulation. Now, I'm just a passenger like everybody else, and I hoard my frequent-flyer miles for trips abroad.

• Best airline (international): KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. These people are awesome; I'd fly them anywhere. Great planes, great people, tasty food, great passenger lounges, and the nicest home airport (Amsterdam Schiphol) anywhere.
• Best airline (U.S.): United Airlines. Goodness knows they're not perfect, but no one really approaches UA's combination of a dense route network, professional and knowledgeable reservation and gate agents, superb maintenance, decent catering, and a nice FF program. Their international service, though, is competent (more than you can say for some airlines), but wouldn't win any awards. It's definitely getting better with the introduction of the Boeing 777, which I've flown on to/from London several times.
• Honorable Mentions (international): British Airways. I've always found their service comfortable, friendly, and competent. The same is true of Lufthansa.
• Honorable Mention (U.S.): Southwest Airlines. Friendly people, cheap fares, irreverent attitude, and they get you there on time.
• Most overrated airline: Singapore Airlines. There's nothing really wrong with SQ, but I think their rep is mostly a myth, especially the "Singapore Girl" flight attendants (the ones I dealt with were not particularly knowledgeable or professional).
• Worst airline (international): Haven't really found one yet, but then I have not been on any Third World airlines. I did have an annoying experience with Air France back in 1997, trying to get from Paris to London (a simple matter, one would presume), but it was sort of made up for by the captain inviting me onto the flight deck to look at Comet Hale-Bopp. Wow. But they do still allow smoking on their long-haul flights, and that's enough reason to avoid them.
• Worst airline (U.S.): USAirways. I've never had good luck with them; their fleet is aging, their route structure has never really been rationalized, and there are concerns about their safety record. For bad food, though, try American or Northwest's domestic service. (Bistro bag? Bistro bag???)

My own very modest contribution to aviation on the Web is a lookup page for airport codes, since I was tired of trying to find them on the Web all the time; so I FTP'ed the source data and stuck it in a flat file and put together a trivial "grep" type search program. Since it's a string search you can search by code, airport name, or city name; the database has both IATA (3-letter) and ICAO (4-letter) codes. No attempt was made to sort/merge or clean up the data.

Much of my information in general comes from a mailing list I'm on called AIRLINE, which focuses on the airline industry from both a business and passenger point of view, as well as on plane spotting; there are also a number of airline employees on the list. You can subscribe to the AIRLINE list by sending the message "JOIN AIRLINE" to listserv@listserv.cuny.edu.

And speaking of spotting, I've put up an Aircraft Photos Page, nothing much compared to some of the serious spotters out there, but I love to watch and photgraph airliners!

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