Plane and Simple

Captain Doug Morris flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, “for an airline with a maple leaf emblazoned on its fuselage.” His employer’s name is almost the only detail missing from this compilation of facts and anecdotes about air travel.

This Is Your Captain Speaking aspires to be comprehensive and amusing, so it’s more like Aviation for Dummies than like Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain’s classic tell‑all. But Morris’s approach is probably best, because you want to believe pilots are calm, cool, and collected. Otherwise, you might worry your jet has a chef-on-heroin figure in command (which isn’t to say mental health and stress-induced problems don’t exist on the flight deck, of course). Nor does Morris offer stories of near catastrophe, except when they happen in the flight simulator.

His book...