Detail of the roof at Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2F. There’s a slightly coloured version on my Instagram feed, but something about this structure makes me think black and…
I’d like to think I had it coming. As I was boarding the shuttle bus from the plane to the terminal at JNB, expecting to transfer to my flight to Atlanta, I said to my colleague, “I would love it if there was some issue and I ended up going someplace other than Atlanta.”
I don’t know when they disappeared, exactly. I suppose it’s been a few years. But from my earliest memories of flying, a clear standout wasn’t the sharp acceleration of takeoff, the strangely clogged and popping ears, or emerging into a gleaming orange sunset after climbing above dense clouds. It came via the speaker system.