. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.—a pilot who flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world—moves between memories of his childhood in small-town New England and an adult life that encompasses more cities than he ever imagined possible.
The instructor says he has some paperwork to complete before we head out to his aircraft. He’s filling the boxes of a form, at a speed that suggests he’s done this many times. He asks me how much I weigh. Then he looks to a gauge, which I realize indicates the temperature of the outside air, rather than the air of this room in a low, ordinary building next to the apron where Pittsfield’s planes rest.
The air here isn’t usually a problem, he says as he works, we’re not that high up. It’s nothing like you might find out west. And anyway, today isn’t hot. But if you calculate your takeoff performance every time, he adds, as he opens a spiral-bound manual and runs his finger across a finely lined graph, if you do it no matter where you are in the world, you’ll never get caught out.Dusk fell while we were over Sudan, near the place where the Blue and White Niles meet and Khartoum rises.
African cities such as Johannesburg, Windhoek, Kampala, Lusaka, and Gaborone, as well as Addis Ababa, which is not far to the northeast of our present position, and Nairobi itself, dead ahead, have something in common: all sit at high elevations . Temperature falls with altitude, and one result of their loftiness is that they all have a far more temperate climate than would otherwise be expected for inland cities on our hottest continent.
We receive our final descent clearance and proceed southwest, past the city, before turning northeast to align with the runway. As we fly near the ridgeline-mounted navigation beacon known as Ngong we deploy the speedbrakes, the panels on the wing that produce a distinctive, low hmmmm as they extend into the fast-flowing air, and we lower the landing gear earlier than usual.