Flying Upside Down

by Duke Nukem

Collection of stories and recommendations of ex-pat (mainly USA) pilots contract flying for Chinese air carriers.

Genres: Aviation

414 pages, ebook

Reviews

[Ronald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not an easy read but a necessary one. This ‘book’ is a feature length no holds barred rant about the author’s experience as a contract pilot in China, replete with overt racism bordering on the extreme (repeated references to chinese people as monkeys and expresses his wish to kill them). There is also no restraint on releasing internal company documents complete with names of local employees, not to mention direct personal attacks on named coworkers. I had to read this one because the author spilled the beans on many of the safety issues not publicized outside the industry, and his technical credential is beyond reasonable doubt. I just wish I did not have to suffer through the pathological outburst of his hatred towards the Chinese.
As a Chinese speaker and one who spent some time working for multinational companies in China, I have to say the author’s various grievances can be explained at least 50% by the language barrier and cultural differences. In much the same way you cannot just expect everyone in europe to speak good English, let alone Chinese or Arabic, few Chinese people had the educational background or regular immersion to allow them to achieve a level of English sufficient for the author’s liking. The stories also took place more than 10 years ago in what locals would consider tier-two or even tier-three cities in China. His account is believable, but by no means generally true everywhere in this vast country. The capital cities are much more well off overall, while the countryside can be even harsher than what the author experienced. The country is also changing rapidly at a pace westerners are not used to seeing in the US or west europe. Some grotesque cultural vestiges and blue-collar mannerisms still exist, but they are quickly getting marginalized in the capital cities.
At the end of the day, the sort of sentiment expressed in this ‘book’ by an anonymous ‘author’ is not your ‘bad apple’ type of a racist, but rather a run-of-the-mill western expat who had a bad professional experience in China and did his level best to speak whatever was on his mind. This is not your extremist white supremacist type. If I run into this man in the US by chance, I might just remember him as a regular white dude and probably a good pilot. To see that regular people can harbor this much hatred and have this much energy to spill all of it on paper is not only sad but also concerning. How much misunderstanding and hatred is there in the world just because we don’t speak the same language? If technology can at least functionally remove the language barrier between peoples, would the world not be much safer and more prosperous?

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely irreverent book about flying as a contract pilot in Mainland China. Everything from living conditions, to pay, to punitive schemes for minor infractions, to hair-raising transcripts of conversations with air traffic control, management, and first officers. The structure is loose, mainly made up of anecdotes and redacted emails from company officials.

The book is self-published and free to distribute. It is also full of grammatical and orthographic errors, with a structure that barely deserves the moniker. The tone is joking, sarcastic and exasperated, often to excess. The formatting goes from passable to awful. The content, though, is fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. The non-pilot would probably not find it very interesting, as it is full of jargon and addresses the unique aspects challenges of the profession.

http://www.books.rosboch.net/2019/06/...

[VexenReplica · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Finished" at ~15%. This was an in-between Book Bingo read, and as such I knew I was not going to finish it. But, honestly, if the first 15% is anything like the rest of the book, you really only need to read like the first 5% and you have the basis for the entire novel.

The premise of the book deals with pilots flying for China's airlines and the shitshow that entails. It's a "choose your own adventure" dive into pilots' stories that generally end in disaster or disaster narrowly avoided.

There's a bunch of specific jargon that you'll probably need to know to fully get it, but even without it, you can catch most of what's going on.

This is a good book to just turn your brain off to and go along on the ride, because man, it's one helluva ride.