It's not often that I check an airliner's onboard air-flight status. So when I did, I was surprised to see us riding a rather speedy tail wind....
Now maybe I'm just not up-to-snuff about weather patterns at 39,000 feet, but isn't this hurricane-force winds? Is this normal at these altitudes? I'll have to consult my pilot and Boeing friends about this....
At any rate, it was nice to know it was a TAIL-wind rather than a HEAD-wind, pushing our overall speed near 700 mph....
Apparently, at 39,000, that put our plane past Mach 1.0 (i.e. the speed of sound)! Didn't realize passenger planes had that capability....
Kuwaiti gas flares. Individually, they illuminate up the night sky below many times brighter than any city light. Apparently, this is well-known to space satellites.
Dubai at night.
"B" has been eagerly asking about our upcoming trip every day since Jan 16. I'm looking forward to sharing it with her, now that she's able to comprehend the experience better.
We took off on JetBlue at 10 pm yesterday and arrived JFK at 6 am. The Emirates counter hadn't opened yet, so we were first in line in a rather sparse Terminal 4. Around 10 am, we were off again on an Emirates airliner, headed for Dubai.
The service on Emirates is renown for its excellence, and we soon found out why. What stood out was how they specially attended to the needs of our kids. We so appreciated it. The massive selections in their in-flight entertainment helped as well....not to mention the partially-full plane that allowed us to stretch out across multiple seats for restful sleep.
Overall, "B" and "J" handled the 17 hours of flight time quite well....and as a result, so did "L" and I.
