I left São Paulo on Continental 94 at 11:20 p.m. last night. Scheduled to fly 9 hours 20 minutes, traverse about 5,000 miles including an Amazon fly-over, and get to IAH/Houston at 05:20am. Well, we kissed the jetway at 05:19am.
Ho hum?
Sure.
But …
Jaded is natural after flying about 200,000 miles a year for the last 29 years. (Yup, 6 million miles, give or take.) But …
Hey it’s pretty damned amazing all the same! A plane with a million+ parts! Weather systems hither and thither (T-storms as we left São Paulo, for instance, God knows what cosmic disturbances over the Amazon). Air-traffic control systems in a dozen nations we flew over. A zillion human factors that could cause a glitch. And yet I flew NYC-São Paulo-Houston … spoke to 4,000 Brazilian execs … and landed in Houston within a … MINUTE … of planned arrival.
Cool!
(I’ll go back to taking it for granted tomorrow, but this day I will dwell, at least briefly, on the Wonder of It All.)