– The featured image depicts my last flight from Kansai Airport on 19 March 2020, right before the lockdown –
It is autumn-winter in 2020. We are in the midst of a global pandemic with subsequent economic tailspin, which put the boot into international aviation, more so than Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future managed. Yet all I crave is to fly away. I am being constantly asked, if I don’t have a bad conscience? I always answer the same: I’m a vegetarian! The meat industry has a carbon footprint of around 40%. Aviation has a CO2 emission rate of around 2%. So let’s get things into perspective. Aside from that, the aviation industry is getting fuel-efficient planes, with Airbus planning on creating a carbon neutral plane by 2035. And you can buy CO2 compensation with your ticket. This is not so much a sale of indulgences to gloss over flaws in the system, but a step into the future. Not that I condone low-cost tourism to places where the booze is cheap and the women desolate. That is a different tragedy. That being said, I absolutely support the climate change fight. Love Jane Fonda! Pilot colleagues of mine have witnessed first hand the disappearance of glaciers in Greenland on their transatlantic flights during the last two and three decades. Alas, there are no chemtrails. I, too, wanted to believe that the truth is out there, but it’s not in chemtrails. And Roswell was a weather balloon. If one worries about mind control by the government or sinister forces, one rather not watch reality tv and dehumanizing casting shows. Condensation trails of aircraft do not control us. No place for conspiracy theories in my storytelling. I notice that the aviation industry is being vilified and blamed right now, throughout this pandemic. Voices are speaking up for aviation’s demise. People tell me they’re happy that aviation has been stunted, because presumably they care about the environment. And this, despite their ordering online and consuming goods which rely on global mobility. There are so many ways to save the planet and fight destruction. But aviation and mobility are part of our prosperity. Please stop reading, if you are offended by aviation and get dizzy from height and velocity or feel nauseous by my storytelling so far. There are travelogues out there for every taste, and websites for every political inclination. This one here is about airplanes, airports, culture, history and my travels. My story here is neither a political nor activist one.
My story is the romance of flight
That romance has been somehow heartbroken since the pandemic. A month after I started out in this business, the fatal crash of our flagship plane over the Atlantic – the same one on which I had an introductory flight to New York ten days earlier – deeply affected me. A little bit later, I was on a four night layover in Tokyo when 9/11 happened and afterwards I witnessed the grounding of my airline. Then there were SARS, wars, swine flu, Zika, Ebola, migration and refugees and many more crisis situations accompanying aviation throughout the last two decades. Yet the Great Pandemic of 2020 made me realize that my understanding of aviation could be ephemeral and I need to start writing about it as an oral history. During the lockdown months without any flights, I tried to compensate by setting up my pandemic daily routine as a longhaul flight. Including mandatory controlled rest. I would pretend I was on a night flight. I love night flights by the way, so much time to read and gaze at the stars in the wee small hours before the busy arrival service. I’d browse the magazines we offer, anything from The Economist to Horse and Hound, while everyone else is asleep. This provides abundant material for lots of fascinating conversations with guests, like the producer scion of one of the founding studios in Hollywood, with whom I talked classic movies from Los Angeles all the way to Zurich. His husband got bored with our analyzing John Ford (the establishing shot!) movies in between the different courses. And if harassing the pilots for the names of visible stars wouldn’t work, I’d try to identify them with my Star App. There’s a star called Rigel! I’ve known about it since Star Trek and The Old Man and the Sea, and it gives me a thrill to search for it in the night sky from the cockpit jumpseat. The universe is so beautiful and amazing. Just sitting there at thirty five thousand feet and gazing at it is comforting and contemplative. And certainly life-affirming. To me, those moments are magic. But I missed them during the pandemic grounding. I blasted John Denver’s „Leaving on a jet plane“ all throughout that kerosene rehab. I re-watched airline disaster movies – they’re so unrealistic, except for Sully. I am serious. Actually, Canadian FA Kristen Gillett pretty much sums up how homeoffice for cabin crews looks like, here is the link to her Youtube video: When Flight Attendants work from home. Have you ever met a particle physicist working at CERN and telling you why they live for their job and love what they’re doing, even though the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Bosons and the Dyson Spheres and Event Horizons are still quite experimental and the answers to the universe might not be found by our generation? I have, and I empathize with those scientists, as I share the same amount of passion for aviation. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s on its way.
Silly? No, sentimental!
„Grounded Beef: Asian Airlines are selling in-flight meals directly to the public“, reads an article from The Economist from 29th August 2020. There’s people like me, apparently! Albeit, sans the beef. I love airline food, especially when it’s neatly arranged like a bento box. According to that article, Singapore Airlines and other carriers have been creative during the pandemic and offer their catering for sale to the general population. One grounded Indonesian passenger in that article „misses the experience of flying so much, that he bought a few inflight meals from Garuda Indonesia“. Same with another one in Brisbane, who buys takeaways from Gate Gourmet: „I like it (Gate Gourmet’s Chicken Mango Curry) so much, I would consider flying to somewhere just to eat this.“ And recently, a scenic flight on Quantas over Sydney and the Australian Outback sold out in 10mins. People miss flying so much, they’re willing to pay for a flight that will return them to where they started from within a few hours. Flying is an essential and sentimental need for many of us. Being in that now heartbroken industry for 22 years, I’ve flown to Rome and Venice just for lunch or gelato and back, because that’s one of the benefits of working for an airline. I used to hop standby onto a flight in my free days to see an exhibition in the US or taste food in Asia. Or research an airport in Korea for my PhD thesis about airport architecture. On a serious note, the romance of flight is not just that. It is not only movement, consumption and flying to different continents. It is a rich history of society, culture, politics, humanity, architecture and the arts. And this is what I want to share with you, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you do, fellow aviation fan. I have lived it, worked it, studied it, earned a doctorate and wrote a book about it. It’s all in the airport aura.
