A Record Flight

This morning, a Boeing 777-200 landed in London, after having taken off from Hong Kong yesterday. The 22 hour and 43 minute flight covered 11,664 miles, a new world record. Amazing!

Of course, who would want to spent almost an entire day on a plane? Even with comfortable seats? Still, this is an amazing record.

As a child, one of the joys I recall was going to the Minneapolis airport, Wold-Chamberlain field, with my dad and brother to just watch planes take-off and land. There was a free observation platform where people would gather to watch. Later, this platform came with a fee, and later still, it was closed to the public.

I remember what a sense of awe I had in watching these huge planes, small by today's standards, take off and land. I loved the DC-7's and the Boeing 707's. My favorite was the wild Boeing 727, with its three rear mounted engines. Watching a plane taxi to the end of the runway, turn into the wind, wait, wait, wait, gun the engines, and then slowly begin to rumble down the runway. And then watching these planes glide in, lower, lower, lower, lower, until their tires screeched as they touched the cement runway, and the engines roared in reverse thrust to slow the plane to a halt. All very exciting stuff for a kid. And I still find it fascinating today.

Anyway, quite an impressive record set today.