Skyfaring

April 6, 2015
In this intimate, often illuminating piece, Slate columnist Vanhoenacker takes readers on a personal tour of his world as an airline pilot. His manner is leisurely, poetic, and prone to philosophical musings as he shares his decade’s experiences as the pilot of Airbus A320 and Boeing 747 planes. He explains technical jargon and the secret language of the airline industry, discusses “place lag” and in-jokes, and grants a view of the world as seen from 30,000 feet. “Air crews come to know a life of motion, of transiting the physical miles between our memories or ideas of places,” he writes. When discussing our fascination with flight, he claims, “while airplanes have overturned many of our older sensibilities, a deeper part of our imagination lingers and still sparks in the former realm, among ancient, even atavistic, ideas of distance and place, migrations and the sky.” Vanhoenacker conveys that sense of freedom, wanderlust, and traversing a large world made small by travel, while at the same time demystifying the inside of the cockpit and humanizing the all-powerful pilots within. Readers who can withstand bouts of existential navel-gazing will find Vanhoenacker’s memoir packed with eloquent insight into a high-flying world. Agent: Caroline Michel, Peters Fraser & Dunlop.

Starred review from May 1, 2015
Vanhoenacker's workplace is the cockpit of a 747. Leaving a contrail of information with lapidary prose, he shows why he loves his job. The author takes his readers on a journey that is far removed from terrestrial concerns, part memoir of wanderlust and part handbook of professional flying. Before each trip, there is the gathering of the crew, numbering in the teens, who may never have met before, and the aircraft is inspected. Vanhoenacker describes some of the electronic instrumentation aboard a modern airliner, as well as the process of lifting the massive plane into another world where there is no local time. The author notes that there are various compass headings that show diverse ways north, and each may be useful. In the sky, nearly everyone uses English, whether they are from Tokyo, Amman, Beijing, London, or countless other global cities. When the autopilot is disengaged before landing, an alarm sounds to verify that flying manually is really intended. At a critical point during the descent, the pilot is ordered by the computer to decide whether to touch down or head up again. Vanhoenacker also informs us that airports are distinguished places-in Japan, ground crews have been seen bowing to departing 747s. For those not privy to the view from the cockpit, the calculus of flight is fascinating. The author artfully considers geography and aerodynamics, but there is more. He reflects aloft what earthbound readers seldom think about, and his engaging essays consider the texture and weight of air and clouds and the essence of speed, place, night, day, and time. This pilot is an accomplished stylistic acrobat who flies-and writes-with the greatest of ease. The anatomy of an airliner and peripatetic aerial travel, as well as a sophisticated worldview, combine for first-class reading-sure to enhance your next flight.

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April 15, 2015

Vanhoenacker's debut poignantly recalls how he came to become a long-haul pilot, abandoning postgraduate work at Cambridge University for a management consulting position, largely because of the amount of passenger flying time he was forced to undertake. Three years later he leaves again for flight training. The author describes in detail his classroom instruction together with various exams for his Boeing 747-type rating before entering the cockpit as a licensed pilot. In a skillfully crafted amalgam of autobiography, avionics, history, geography, physics, and poetry, he explores the welcome challenges and rewards of his work with technical precision and uncommon sensitivity, describing, for instance, the freedom of flight, the sense of solitude, the opportunity to experience the world, the fun of unanticipated layovers, the love of a brilliantly conceived aircraft, the hurly-burly of ground crews on the taxiway prior to liftoff, the challenges of on-board emergencies, the effects of long-haul piloting on one's biological clock, and the unparalled beauty of the firmament and world's oceans as seen from the pilot's seat. Even so, Vanhoenacker concludes: "Every landing is a return from the possibility of all places to the certainty and perhaps the love of one." VERDICT A singular glimpse into the multidimensional life of an extraordinary airline pilot. Recommended for aviation specialists and enthusiasts, airline personnel, frequent flyers, and public libraries.--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Jockeying for a spot to put your carry-on in the overhead bin, coughing up the cost to upgrade your seat assignment for an extra three inches of legroomthese are the stresses most frequently associated with air travel in the modern age. In his first book, pilot Vanhoenacker leaves such mundane worries behind and, instead, invites readers to join him in the cockpit of a 747 so that we might experience the oft-forgotten magic of flight. In elegant and balanced prose, he meditates on every aspect of aviation (the new orientation to time and planetary motion that is fostered by a flight path that chases or skirts the sun, the perspective gained at night by seeing our civilization engraved in light, the place lag that occurs when we move faster culturally and geographically across the globe than our brains are able to conceive). The lift Vanhoenacker creates with his language is due to the carefully constructed machinery of each chapterthe way in which he balances personal narrative, research, and reverential reflection. Skyfaring is not another Cockpit Confidential (2013), filled with industry-insider secrets; rather, it is an artful and elevated look at the soul in flight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)