Vanhoenacker opens our vision to a more expansive landscape. He says, “I get to so see so much of the urban world, in particular, and it's a joy for me to share it as best I can… Travel is a miracle and is something that would have amazed almost all humans who have ever lived to be able to travel the way some of us do now.” Mark Vanhoenacker is a seasoned, long-haul commercial pilot and a brilliant lyrical writer about his journeys as experienced both from the air and on the ground where he chronicles for us some of the planet’s great cities. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and a columnist for the Financial Times. Born in Pittsfield, in Western Massachusetts, he trained as a historian and worked in business before starting his flight training in Britain in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world. He is the author of Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot (Alfred Knopf 2015), How to Land a Plane (The Experiment; Illustrated edition, 2019) and Imagine a City: A Pilot’s Journey Across the Urban World (Alfred Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2022)

Interview Date: 11/4/2022 Tags: Mark Vanhoenacker, piloting, William Stafford, The Way It Is, Pittsfield MA, Brazilia, the color blue, place lag, clouds, Aurora Borealis, solitude, Travel, Philosophy, Writing