When Mark Vanhoenacker published his first book, Skyfaring, in 2015, many critics called it “poetic.”
In Skyfaring, Vanhoenacker, who began his career as a management consultant and now flies widebody aircraft for British Airways, has harnessed his passion for aviation, and weaves it into a tale reminiscent of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s adventures in the early twentieth century.
Skyfaring is, quite simply, a love letter to modern flight, and everything it represents.
“Flight, like any great love, is both a liberation and a return,” he writes in the first chapter, drawing the reader in to the fascination and magic of taking to the sky. Thousands of hours later, his love of aviation today remains as strong as the dream he had when he was young, as he stared at the aircraft models hanging from his childhood bedroom ceiling.
In that sense, Vanhoenacker is all of us—pulled into aviation by the fascination of an activity that just three generations ago seemed unfathomable, and the endless possibilities that activity offers.
From the account of departing a rainy London Heathrow and heading eastward to Japan (where Vanhoenacker spent time as a teenager), to the final pages depicting his deepening gratitude for the place he calls home, Skyfaring explains the allure of taking flight to the uninitiated. The book confirms the unspoken understanding that our bonds with aviation are ethereal and unshakable.
“So high above the world, open to more of the planet and sky than any species has the right to see, we find room for introspection in one of the last places we might have thought to look for it.” Read Skyfaring and fall in love with aviation all over again. 
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