After reading Captain Taguchi’s Memoirs and finding it quite good, I bought another book he wrote: 機長の三万フィート (Captain’s 30,000 Feet).

It took me about 4-5 days to finish it, and following convention, here is a brief book review.

The main thread of this book is Captain Taguchi’s professional career, highlighting flight school training, the era of flying the propeller airliner DC-6, the era of flying the jet airliner DC-8, the instructor era, and the era of flying the Boeing 747. While narrating his personal growth, he very naturally weaves in a lot of aviation knowledge, which I think is a unique feature of this book. I have read many books written by captains; some focus on aviation popular science, while others focus on personal biographies. Although they are all well-written, their focus is quite obvious. However, this book perfectly combines popular science with his professional career, making it an effortless read with many learning points, which is truly rare. For example, in the section about flight school, it introduces the control methods of primary aircraft, which is very helpful for flight simulation players. Regarding the phase of flying as a First Officer, it introduces how to make passengers more comfortable, covering both advanced aircraft techniques and professional ethics, which is convincing. When discussing his method for using the Autopilot, he mentioned that he generally performs manual operation first to bring the aircraft attitude to a balanced state—that is, after trimming—before engaging the Autopilot. This recalls the books by Kan-ichiro Kato on aircraft accidents, which mentioned that many accidents were caused by pilots trusting the Autopilot system too much and engaging it while the aircraft was not trimmed, leading to disasters. Therefore, I find Taguchi’s explanation quite persuasive.

Taguchi classifies the pilots he has met into five types, a section which is also quite interesting:

1. The Heroic Veteran: Puts on airs, no longer continues to study their profession deeply, trusts their own experience more, delegates most operations to young people, and leaves them unchecked.
2. The Genius: Highly skilled. No matter how bad the weather, with turbulence or strong crosswinds, their mind remains very clear, and they always keep the flight smooth.
3. The Bookworm: Uses every bit of time to study ceaselessly, but is too dogmatic and cannot apply knowledge flexibly in practice.
4. The Unqualified: Although able to fly, they cannot fully master the skills; their control is stiff, and they cannot provide passengers with a good ride experience.
5. The Average: Also the majority of pilots. They possess various knowledge and experience and constantly study to improve, but no matter what, they cannot reach the realm of the Genius.

His evaluation of airports is also interesting. He rated Moscow as the worst airport, and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) also received a negative review. Recalling last year’s Asiana Airlines Flight OZ214 crash, I had a feeling of “So that’s why.” He explained that San Francisco has two parallel runways, but during the Descent, ATC does not tell the crew which runway to use for landing. The pilots often receive instructions only when they are at a very low altitude in the final phase of flight, leading to panic and confusion. He rated Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport as the best. The reason is that it is very human-centric; there are no right-angled buildings or routes, so it is easy to understand with good visibility, making operations very natural.

Reading a book is like reading the person. I feel that Taguchi should be a very smart person who is good at telling stories and possesses independent thinking ability, not just echoing what others say. In the afterword, he criticizes the Japanese right-wing’s attempt to change the pacifist constitution, which adds to my fondness for him.