Book Review: Skyfaring – A Journey with a Pilot
The 747 pilot as poet.




Flying remains among the most miraculous manifestations of humans’ capacity to evolve beyond the impossible, and it all happened in the nano-moment of the last 100 years or so. Yet within one lifetime, flying for most people in the developed world has become an unpleasantness to be endured, the price of getting someplace else quickly and, these days, with a great deal of assurance that the return to earth will be a safe arrival. The pilots who fly these aerial crowd conveyances are not immune to this disaffection, this blindness to the wonders of lifting 400 tons off the earth’s crust and returning it to the clutches of gravity thousands of miles away.