Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot by Mark Vanhoenacker

Author:Mark Vanhoenacker [Vanhoenacker, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780385351812
Publisher: ALFRED A KNOPF
Published: 2015-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

The flight computers can plot abeam points to tell us, for example, when we’ll pass closest to a place—the only nearby major airport along a remote stretch of our route, for example—that we won’t overfly directly. “We’re abeam Luanda.” Until now the Angolan capital’s airport has only gotten closer, but from the abeam point it recedes. I sometimes catch myself using abeam by accident when giving driving directions: “You’ll see the driveway when you’re abeam the red silo.”

I like the words for the patterned striations of cloud known as herringbone or mackerel, the ichthyology of our sea-sky. We speak, too, of port and starboard. There’s a story that the term posh derives from a preference for cabins on the shady side of ships sailing from Britain to India—“port out, starboard home.” It’s false, apparently, only a pleasing tale. But this precise phrase is echoed in certain cockpits. Many systems on an airliner are duplicated, and we can turn a switch left or right in order to select which system the aircraft uses. It makes sense to use both regularly, if only to know when one of the two has stopped working. When I started flying the 747, the standard was to use the left-hand system when leaving London and the right-hand when returning to it: “port out, starboard home,” the words of the legend printed right in the sober font of the flying manual. Starboard home, at least, remains a fine rule when sailing to Heathrow. If the wind is from the west the best prospects of London come to those on the right side of the plane, where copilots always sit, consoled by the view of what Churchill called “this mighty imperial city” as they wait to become captains.

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