Stuff You See While Flying

We’re back in the OC tonight. Why is flying so exhausting? We are all bushed.

The drive back from LAX was amazing! No traffic. How very un-SoCal.

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On the way to Milwaukee our little 737-300 taxied by an Emirates Airbus 380-800. What a behemoth. My seat was lower than its wing! The A380-800 is bigger than nearly all 747s.

It’s got 399 seats in Economy, plus 75 in Business. There are also 14 “closed suites” in First Class for the 16 hour flight to the Persian Gulf.

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Winner of the “Best Paint Job” award goes to Air New Zealand for this black, silver and gray 777.

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Nearly every flight from LAX exits over the ocean. On the way out we flew over the Port of Los Angeles. It might as well be considered a wormhole in the space-time continuum connecting China and America.

Look closely at the cranes. Ships used to unload in port. Now everything stays in its container and moves on.

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We also flew by Rancho Palos Verde. When I took this shot I didn’t realize the Trump National Golf Course Los Angeles is cut off on the right. If I would have known I would have aimed farther left.

2 thoughts on “Stuff You See While Flying”

  1. Geoff,

    Part of the exhaustion you are experiencing comes from the fact that even though breathing feels normal at cruise altitude, most passengers don’t realize that the cabin altitude is actually like breathing air with a density as if you were at about 8000′ of elevation. Most modern airliners operate at a cabin differential of about 8.6 psi diff. At sea level the psi that the atmosphere exerts on the body is 14.2 lbs/sq inch. Therefore, at normal cruising altitudes in a jetliner, the amount of air pressure on the body is considerably less and the amount of air one takes in is also considerably less, resulting in the feeling of being exhausted when one flys at altitude for a considerable period of time. This is one reason why most passengers fall asleep during the enroute portion of the flight.

  2. My nursing classmate friend, who I lived with for a bit when I first went to L A in the 60’s. built a home in Rancho Palos Verde and lived there til sometime in the 1990’s. They then built in a gated community in San Clemente. It amazes me how densly populated everplace is now—-but then I look around here in CT and what was once farmlands is now full housing communities. No wonder the world is in the state it is in-now.
    Looks like you had a nice clear day flying out of LAX—is it less smoggy out there now? Used to be you couldn’t see the mountains til around Thanksgiving time!

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