The view from 36,000 feet

I fly a lot; it comes with my job, along with living 6000 miles away from aging parents, and wanting to occasionally see the sun while living in Seattle during the winter. I don’t particularly enjoy 10 hours sitting in a 26 foot wide aluminium tube, but it’s a necessary part of my life.

Even though I’ve worked in aero for more than 20 years, I still find the whole thing incredible. I work in a factory that creates machines that fully laden weigh close to 500 tons and carry 500 people close to half way around the world at 600 miles per hour and works 6 miles up in the air. I get the physics, I understand how they fly and have spent most of my career involved with making them better, but this still astounds me.

Every now and again I have to find time to wander across the production floor, and spend a few minutes on 747 or 777 that’s in the process of being built to remind myself that as a company we create some thing incredible every day. It’s very easy to loose this perspective when I’m stuck in my office looking at processes, plans and issues.

I’ve found a number of tricks to make flying long haul more bearable. Ambian and a glass of wine made the trip form Seattle to London go by quickly and helps with the jet lag. I largely slept though the kids using the rear of economy for games of tag.

As an indication of how much I flew at one point, for a number of years nearly every movie I saw was on the tiny screen. Saw Star Wars Episode-1, 2 and 3 on airplanes, and to be frank the experience was not quite as good as the big screen.

On the London to Seattle trip I got to watch the entire Bourne trilogy, 6 hours of it, one after the other and then finished it off with classic Steve McQueen in Bullit. I am a big fan of the video on demand (known in the acronym filled world of aero as AVOD) systems on aircraft, while I’d not pay much more for an aircraft with one, it would sway my decision if prices were similar.

On a side note, I get that airlines have spent the last 5 years eliminating costs and reducing as many expenses as they can,. As I consumer I don’t begrudge the airlines a profit, they are in business after all. I still don’t understand how they are making a penny when charging $600 (including taxes) to fly from Seattle to London and back again.

However the meals are now almost inedible. I think I was just given what may be the worst meal I’ve ever had, it was labelled “Vesuviun Chicken”, I’ve no idea exactly what it was, but I’m pretty sure it’s been a long time since it even resembled a chicken. When breakfast at Garfunkles in Terminal 4 at Heathrow looks appetizing it’s bad.

However, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve flown through Heathrow T4 and the Bloody Marys at the Caviar house are as good as ever. It’s a toss up between theirs and Lola in Seattle for the best Bloody Marys I’ve had.