Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot

Description

An airline pilot captures the wonder of flight for the modern traveller. 'In Skyfaring Mark Vanhoenacker reveals his passion for flight...the meaningful geography of the skies and the scent of the cities he flies to... This mesmerising book will make you view the world differently' Sunday Times **Sunday Times Bestseller** **Book of the Week on Radio 4** 'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical' Mark Haddon 'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject- a description of what it's like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensitive human being. This is a man who is at once a technical expert - he flies 747s across continents - and a poet of the skies. This couldn't be more highly recommended.' Alain de Botton Think back to when you first flew. When you first left the Earth, and travelled high and fast above its turning arc. When you looked down on a new world, captured simply and perfectly through a window fringed with ice. When you descended towards a city, and arrived from the sky as effortlessly as daybreak. In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers, armchair and otherwise, all too easily take for granted- the transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love. 'A beautiful, contemplative book... What Skyfaring gives is something we need- elevation; another perspective... Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian **A 2015 Book of the Year - The Economist, The New York Times, GQ and more**

Mark Vanhoenacker left academia to work as a management consultant, a position that afforded him regular opportunities to stare out of aeroplane windows and recall childhood dreams of becoming a pilot. He began his flight training in 2001. Today, as a Senior First Officer for British Airways, Mark flies Boeing 747s to major cities around the world. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and Slate. When his head is not in the clouds, he divides his time between London and New York.

Vanhoenacker is a remarkable writer. In Skyfaring he reveals his passion for flight, the mechanics of planes, the weightless, meaningful geography of the skies and the scent of the cities he flies to. He creates a still, almost poetic point in the turning, travelling world. This mesmerising book will make you view the world differently. All aboard! -- Helen Davies * Sunday Times * [An] ode to the wonder of flight in the tradition of the great pioneer pilot-author Antoine de Saint Exupery and Charles Lindbergh... flying remains a magical business -- Charles Bremner * The Times * Mr Vanhoenacker, fortunately for his readers, has lost none of his sense of wonder at the miracle of flight itself... a beautifully observed collection of details, scenes, emotions and facts from the world above the world * The Economist * Mr Vanhoenacker, fortunately for his readers, has lost none of his sense of wonder at the miracle of flight itself... a beautifully observed collection of details, scenes, emotions and facts from the world above the world * The Economist * A description of what it's like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist... This is a man who is at once a technical expert - he flies 747s across continents - and a poet of the skies. This couldn't be more highly recommended -- Alain de Botton A beauty. For so many flying has become humdrum: a bus journey to be endured then forgotten, not enjoyed and recalled. Vanhoenacker makes it wondrous again. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard * Beautifully... simply put. Vanhoenacker's prose has a functional eloquence that carries the reader along for the ride. -- Geoff Dyer * The Guardian * Reminds us of the magic of aviation... full of information that is wonderful in its simplicity -- Erica Wagner * The New Statesman * [An] endlessly surprising, strikingly original book... combines intelligence and sensitivity with an "outward-looking introspection" * Intelligent Life * Not since Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic Vol de Nuit...has there been such a fantastic book about flying... Skyfaring takes the genre to a whole new level. I found myself turning over the corners of almost every page with excitement and admiration -- Giles Foden * Conde Nast Traveller *