The View Never Gets Old...Does It?
When the cockpit is the office, it's normal the wallpaper feels familiar
The thing about becoming acclimatised to the beauty of seeing the world from 37,000 feet is that it rarely happens quickly.
It’s the kind of change that moves at a glacial pace - so stealthy and subtly slow, you barely notice it.
Which, if you actually stop and think about it, makes perfect sense.
It’s one of those inevitable truths, right?
Like slots in summer, or the difficulty downloading December’s roster.
But at FL370, when the gorgeous glowing sunset is part of the shift, the truth is we don’t tend to stop and think about it…
The Best Office Window in the World
During the slow shuffle of a recent disembarkation, a passenger paused to compliment my “smooth landing” - my colleague’s handiwork - before mentioning how beautiful the view had been cruising along the Croatian coast.
“I bet that view never gets old!”
The comment instantly jarred.
Even as we traded smiles - and acknowledged the crazy privilege of having the best office window in the world - my mind was already spinning, trying to remember if I’d even glanced along the coastline.
Unlike our recent smooth landing, the realisation hit hard.
Those stunning views are one of my favourite perks of the job - one of the first things people always ask about - and something I never imagined I’d even begin to take for granted.
The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me - like insects hovering around Pitot tubes.
That evening I found myself racking my brains and replaying the sector like an FDM trace, wondering whether I’d genuinely stopped registering one of the very things that made me want to fly in the first place.
A Postcard from 37,000 Feet
As my mind wandered, I smiled as I recalled my very first week observing from the jumpseat - the wide-eyed wonder and slightly disbelieving awe of having a bird’s-eye view of the world.
Every day brought a new landscape - a fresh canvas of colour - and a new reason to take yet another photo.
My photo album that first week could’ve produced a postcard per sector.
A collage of snow-topped mountains, smoking volcanoes, glistening coral reefs - and those burnt-orange sunsets that felt custom-made for cockpit windows: each one beginning with bursts of sea blues and fiery yellows, and ending with the sense I’d never seen better.
Still sitting, smiling, I realised that when I do stop to look, the sense of awe and wonder is just as strong as it was all those years ago.
Everyday Awe
But here’s the thing…
Sometimes we simply don’t pause to look.
The views are still spectacular - they don’t lose their magic - far from it.
The Alps still protrude dramatically through an enormous blanket of cloud.
Volcanic islands still pierce vast glistening blue seas.
And dark nights still regularly reveal twinkling constellations that look close enough to touch.
But amidst the flying, monitoring, radios, calculations, briefings - and all the other regular Flight Deck routines - our attention is often rightly focussed elsewhere.
And that’s ok. It’s normal.
The SOPs of the job slowly settle into routine, even if the views are anything but.
Perhaps it’s not so much the views themselves we subconsciously get used to - but the subtle privilege of knowing they’ll be there tomorrow.
It’s probably inevitable that by the time we’re scribbling into our third logbook, we no longer spend every spare second of cruise downtime soaking up the panoramas the way we did when the ink was still fresh in the first.
The Views That Remind Us Why We Started
But even so - even if we miss the occasional stunning coastline - extraordinary moments still punctuate the routine with refreshing regularity.
A flash of the Aurora on the way to Scandinavia…
Etna billowing smoke and leaking lava after a block of leave…
Or simply observing the quiet “wow” of a new colleague catching their first sunrise over snow-capped mountains.
And in those fleeting moments, the cockpit window quietly reminds us why we began this journey.
That we are part of a remarkably small group of humans who get to regularly glimpse our planet from this extraordinary vantage point.
After countless flights, the office wallpaper may feel familiar - but it is anything but ordinary.
An enduring wonder, just quietly waiting for the times we pause to look.
—
Two Six Left
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