Mark Vanhoenacker. Massachusetts (USA), 1974. He is a pilot and writer. A regular contributor to the New York Times and columnist for Slate, he has also written for Wired, The Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Independent. He has always liked airplanes. Born in Massachusetts, he studied history in college and graduate school, but left academia in order to become a management consultant, as he had heard that they had to take many flights. He came off that path in 2001 to try to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot. Since 2003 he has been flying a British Airways Boeing 747, on countless trips from Heathrow to destinations around the world. Air travel is his first book, a kind of biography about the experience of flying, an experience that provides us with unique perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we make up, above the mountains, oceans and deserts; through the snow, the wind and the rain, renewing an activity both earthly and superhuman. Despite recent disasters and the monotonous experience of so many commercial air travel, many pilots like Vanhoenacker are still totally in love with flying, even though a complete lack of turbulence sometimes makes their journey too smooth for their liking.