Pilot and author, Mark Vanhoenacker has just had his second book, How to Land a Plane, published. It’s a short, light-hearted but informative look at how planes stay up in the air, how they’re controlled, and how, exactly, they’re returned to the surface of their home planet.
Like us, Mark is a big fan of globes. Here, Mark tells us a bit about his new book and exactly why globes are so important to him:
When people ask me if my two jobs—I’m an airline pilot, and a writer—have much in common, they often do so with a smile. After all, the two professions appear to share little, except that both involve plenty of coffee, and both, these days, are typically performed in the warm glow of a computer screen.
But in my own life, at least, there’s a quite specific answer to what flying and writing have in common. Both professions have been tied to a love of globes—an affection that started in childhood and that in my mid-forties is still going strong.
Growing up in a small town in western Massachusetts—far from everywhere, it seemed to me, and certainly far from major airports—it was the light-up globe on my desk, even more so than the model aeroplanes I’d stood next to it, that opened my eyes to the wonder of flight. I was utterly transfixed by the idea that a plane could start on one side of the earth and by tomorrow—or by yesterday, in the right dateline-crossing circumstances—land on the far side of it.
The connection between writing and globes is less direct, but to me it’s equally pleasing. Even as a teenager who dreamed of becoming a pilot, I took pleasure in writing. Back then, and for a long time after, I mostly wrote diaries, and longhand letters to pen pals and far-off friends. But about eight years ago I began to write professionally. In 2012, I wrote an article about my love of globes for the New York Times. An agent in London saw the globes article and contacted me. Over several months and a great deal of tea, the idea of my first book, Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot, took form. It was published in 2015.
I wrote this second book, How to Land a Plane, to make the wonder of flying more understandable and accessible—and, perhaps, to inspire a potential pilot or two. Unlike in Skyfaring, there are illustrations in How to Land a Plane—some technical and some more playful—by the talented Amber Anderson.
If you’re more of an armchair traveller, nothing would make me happier than to think of you—or indeed the future pilot in your family—at home, reading How to Land a Plane in the light of a globe. And if you happen to bring this little book with you on your next journey, I hope that it will make your time in the airport or the window seat pass by more enjoyably. See you on board.
How to Land a Plane by Mark Vanhoenacker £9.99
Mark Vanhoenacker is a Senior First Officer with British Airways on the Boeing 747 fleet. Follow him on Twitter (@markv747) or Facebook (facebook.com/skyfaring) contact him—and send him your favourite window seat photos—via the website skyfaring.com.