In days of yore when I used to fly commercial I always got a window seat so I could navigate.  On my last commercial flight several years ago I was on a flight from Charleston SC to Dallas.  I remember telling myself we should be crossing the Mississippi River about now.  And sure enough a few minutes later it came into view.  And on cloudy days just looking at the clouds was a treat.

Now comes this!

https://slate.com/life/2024/07/flying-is-better-with-an-open-window-shade.html

Many years ago when I was still in the Air Force there was a little blurb in The Air Force Times about a B-52 crew on a check flight.  The inspecting offiicer was being a bit harsh with them, questioning every move they made.  He caught the pilot staring out his window.  He asked the pilot what he was doing.  The pilot replied, "I'm looking at the clouds!" 

Why else do we love to fly?

Noel

Another reason is that sense of freedom. When you thunder down the runway, ease back on the yoke and the nose lifts and you feel the bogies snap back in place, freedom! Even when it's bad weather and you have moderate turbulence on the aircraft while sitting in the chocks. When you break ground and start working that RADAR, asking for deviations as you dodge storms. You gain altitude in the muck and finally the clouds start to glow bright. Once you pop out climbing above the clouds to crystal blue skies and endless sunshine, freedom!.

The graceful beauty of an aeronautical machine. The sounds of engines and even smell of exhaust fumes and even hydraulic fluid. The sense of purpose, precision and team work involved in aviation. The sense of adventure in every flight or just being around an airplane. Appreciation of engineering marvels. Words fail me when trying to describe this affection. 

This says it all.

  HIGH FLIGHT

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed--and done a hundred things

You have not dreamt of--wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence.  Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delicious burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

I've put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 

John Gillespie Magee Jr.

 

I was on an Air Canada flight recently from Toronto to Vancouver on a 787, this was mid June, beautiful summer day and blue skies all the way, but for some reason the automated window shaders were set to dark on the entire flight. I had the window seat so I would open the shader but that would last about 10 seconds until it slowly went to dark again. Canada has the most beautiful scenery especially on a day like that but unfortunately Air Canada doesn’t want you to see it 😂

Edited July 13, 20241 yr by Matthew Kane

John Gillespie McGee Junior said it better than anyone else I have ever heard or anything else I have ever read trying to describe flight Sue.  At the USAF Museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton Ohio there is a copy of it on a wall.  And if you push the button under it you can hear his mother recite it.

I tell people who ask me what it's like to fly that I cannot put it into words myself and read them High Flight.  Here in the home I have read it to someone or other at least a dozen times.  As far as I know I'm the only one in the home who has ever been a pilot.  In my own experience flight simming is fun, but doesn't even come close to the real thing.

A hundred years or so ago my wife gave me a bronze bust of an early aviator with a leather helmet and jacket and mounted on the walnut stand and next to it is a plaque with High Flight etched on it.  It was a Christmas present,  It's one of my few real treasures.  My grand daughter is the repository of all the family heirlooms.  It will go to her on my passing.

Thanks for adding it to the thread Sue.  I should have thought of it myself.  The closest most people ever come to the feeling of flight is looking out the window in the passenger section of a commercial airliner.  Closing the shade or tinting the window to deprive them of that view is a crime and those who get nothing out of gazing at the ground and sky through that porthole have no souls.

Noel

There's always a wise guy, like me, trying to be funny with an alternate take.

 

21 hours ago, Fielder said:

There's always a wise guy, like me, trying to be funny with an alternate take.

I'll see your Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story with a cartoon I saw when I was a kid 60 years ago called "Russian Rhapsody" (1944), also produced by Walt Disney and starring Gremlins. I was able to track it down at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/russian-rhapsody-1944-restored

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 20241 yr by Mike A
sp

@Mike A Link works fine, Mike!

Gremlins from the Kremlin?

Mike's list can play tons of old Warner Brothers cartoons. Including about 70 that were originally remastered and published on 10 laser discs.

Not loving the idea of flight at all:

In 1940, in a city in England, when you begin to hear these noises over your head. The sounds were more ominous back then. (BoB started July 10, 1940).

 

I've never seen "Gremlins from the Kremlin" before now...  😄

Just one more cartoon from my childhood memory, since it’s off-topic but WWII like the one I posted above, and I was able to track it down. This one has Popeye in the U.S. Navy: “Blunder Below” (1942). In the early to mid 1960s they still showed some WWII era cartoons.

 

On 7/15/2024 at 11:23 PM, Mike A said:

Just one more cartoon from my childhood memory, since it’s off-topic but WWII like the one I posted above, and I was able to track it down. This one has Popeye in the U.S. Navy: “Blunder Below” (1942). In the early to mid 1960s they still showed some WWII era cartoons.

Cute.  If they made that cartoon today it would be vampires versus the zombies.

Noel