On a Wing and a Prayer

We are home!  But you have not seen the end of my Hawaii posts, not by a long shot.  I have so many photographs to show you, it will last until the middle of October!  We left Maui yesterday in the morning and took a short flight to Honolulu, had a several hour layover, and then at 3 PM took off in an Airbus 330, which is a BIG airplane!  More than 300 passengers.  Long flights by air are so routine these days, that I had to think back to when four-engine propeller aircraft plied the skies over the pacific, carrying between 47 and 80 passengers, traveling at a speed of 300 MPH.  Our Airbus 330 did nearly twice that!  Our flight was direct from Honolulu to JFK which is wonderful - not having to change planes.  It was 9 hours and 30 minutes, and just about 5000 miles.  This first photo is of sunset over the Pacific ocean.

This ghostly photograph is about 45 minutes before sunrise, east of Scranton, Pennysylvania.  At first I thought I was seeing rivers, but then realized that it was fog in all the valleys in that area.  I love the ghostly effect, with the fog and the lights on in towns below.

Only a few minutes later, the plane banked, and the golden light of dawn illuminated just the underside of the fixtures under the wing which operate the flaps.

And then, on approach to JFK, I saw the not yet visible sun, illuminating the clouds on the horizon.  We couldn't see the ground,  but then descended through a cloud deck at 600 feet and made a perfect landing.  A magical flight!