Ramblings about aviation

 Blue Sky

Blue sky, so vast, and wide,

Stretching over land and tide,

A canvas of azure hue,

Painted with a master's view.

Above our heads it reigns supreme,

A kingdom of light and dream,

Where clouds dance and birds soar,

And dreams take flight forevermore.

Its grandeur is beyond compare,

In its beauty we can all share,

A calming balm to soothe the soul,

A place where peace and serenity unfold.

So gaze upon the blue sky above,

And let it fill your heart with love,

For in its endless expanse we find,

A world of infinite possibility and boundless mind.

- Frederick Amazing

I love aviation. When I see the sky, and see planes, they fascinate me. A plane has a beautiful form, you see. It's the product of man's endeavour for man to conquer the last frontier. For all of humanity, man has never conquered the sky. We conquered land, the seas, the Arctic, the Antarctic... but somehow humanity never managed to conquer the skies. 

Nowadays, we see how the sky can be pierced, penetrated. We tend to take that for granted. Flying is beautiful. It may not seem so to those who complaint about lacklustre airplane food, or rude flight attendants. But it is. We soar in the skies above God knows what. Like a king atop his throne. We look out of windows in curiosity looking down on cities, mountains, seas...

But we as humans are fallible. Sometimes, we become like Icarus, flying up too high near the Sun only to come plunging to the ground once our wings fall off. I guess that is why planes crash. We become complacent or we don't know much about the world around us, so things go wrong. Looking back at the 1954 De Hevilland Comet crashes, we are constrained to lament just how much we don't know about the world. De Hevilland didn't know much about metal fatigue and pressures. The crashes taught the industry a painful lesson on that.

Everything in life has two sides to a coin. Life and death. Illuminating light and the enveloping darkness. Happiness and sorrow. I guess the same is true for aviation. We, as humankind, endeavoured to conquer the skies, and we did. But at the same time, we don't know much about aviation. We discovered microbursts and icing the hard way. We have triumphed over the sky, soared high in the sky, and so it is only to be expected that we falter.

To me, flying is innately human. It may be a paradoxical statement to make. After all, we, as humans, have not quite been endowed with wings that can help us fly and soar into the vast expense that lies about our heads. But it is manifestation of the human condition. We, for centuries, looked at the sky and saw birds flying, and thought, "Why can't I fly too?" But we enlightened ourselves and taught ourselves how. We learned the rules of the world, and now we can see how we can pierce the sky with the roar of engines, not by nature, but on our own. There, to me, perhaps is where the beauty of aviation, of conquering the unknown vast expense that we call the sky, lies.

Even our hearts are lost in blue,

Painted with it's tempting colour,

Behind the aluminium side, the sound of engines,

The blue lies on the wings, like paint,

Don't be afraid of the blue, you won't drown,

Those are only fairy tales.

- Blue Berets, синева (Blue)