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Our series on great concert halls and nightclubs from New York music history concludes with a look at the old Metropolitan Opera House, which stood at West 39th Street and Broadway until 1967. Our guests include music writer Patrick J. Smith and Alfred Hubay, who worked at the Metropolitan Opera for 62 years.

Pilot and Salon.com “Ask the Pilot” columnist Patrick Smith talks about flying -- what causes turbulence, which airports are well-designed, the TSA and airport security. Plus: Your questions answered.

New information released Monday said that the distracted pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188, who overshot their landing strip in Minneapolis by 150 miles before turning around and landing safely, were using their personal laptops with their headphones off. For more, we talk with Patrick Smith, airline expert and author of the "Ask the Pilot" book and online column at Salon.com.

Yesterday’s dramatic crash landing of a U.S. Airways jetliner into New York’s Hudson River, and the equally dramatic rescue, had many people glued to their television screens. Fortunately, no one aboard the plane was killed. But the news that a flock of geese may have caused the crash has a lot of people wondering just how worried they should be about so-called “bird strikes.” For that answer we turn to Patrick Smith, pilot and author of Salon.com’s Ask the Pilot.

Patrick Smith, airline pilot and Salon.com’s air travel columnist, and author Ask a Pilot: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel (Riverhead Books 2004) and Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for The Record of Bergen County, NJ, discuss the Bush administration's plan to ease airport congestion.

Patrick Smith, airline pilot and Salon.com’s air travel columnist, discusses air travel in the New York region, congestion at the city's airports, and the possibility of seaplanes on the East River.