The view from above – Jerry Chandler lets fly
It’s easy to become a jaded flier, to view air transport as simply a faster (sometimes) way of getting from Point A to Point B. What stops me from falling into that nihilistic mindset are the holes airplane manufacturers have so courteously drilled in the side or the fuselage. They’re windows — quite literally — to the world.
Flying back from Tokyo (NRT) just last week on United Airlines, I picked up the inflight magazine. A photographer had chronicled, in vivid color, her favorite scenes from the window seat. Earth and sea were swirls of blues, greens, and browns. Beautiful.
The piece made me think about my most sublime moments aloft, nose pressed hard against the cold glass (plastic actually) of the portal:
- A late afternoon approach to Hong Kong’s now shuttered Kai Take International Airport, the sun glinting from the skyscrapers at the base of Victoria Peak, as boats skitter about on the harbor like waterbugs;
- Manhattan from 35,000 feet on a flight from Boston to Atlanta. Again, late afternoon, the stark magnificence of the World Trade Center towers casting slating shadows across the Hudson, and the Statue of Liberty eternally on guard in the harbor;
- The spell-binding, heavenly lightshow of cloud-to-cloud lightening over the Appalachians as our Eastern Airlines' DC-9 makes its way oh-so-carefully from Washington to Atlanta, putting into humbling perspective our place on this planet;
- Another kind of light show, this time man-made, as the DC-8 in which I’m riding begins to make its initial approach to Cam Ranh Bay, in a place they once called South Vietnam. I’m on my way to war, and C-130 gunships are “beating up” the periphery of the airport to make sure our plane is not shot down, their tracer bullets arching out into the blackness;
- Anchorage International Airport in the dead of winter, in the middle of the night. Emptiness surrounds the place, emptiness devoid of any visual reference. Then, suddenly, there’s this oasis of light, and a feeling of peace rushes over you;
- Finally, and best of all, breaking out of a fog bank, a "marine layer", shrouding San Diego Lindbergh Field in the early morning. Below, all is grey, subdued. There, just above the clouds, awaits dazzling deliverance from the earthly burdens that corrode our souls, and feed our cynicism.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Cheap Flight News