Looking skyward: Finding peace at the airport
As I am sitting on a park bench facing the runway at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the ground begins to shake. About two miles away, at the other end of the runway, one of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ many Boeing 787-9 airplanes begins to push 1.2 tons of air past its engines every second as it lifts over five hundred thousand pounds of fuel, cargo and passengers off the ground. In roughly thirteen hours, it will touch the earth once again on a similar runway outside of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the plane thunders down the runway, the roar of the fan blades overpowers the sound of my camera’s shutter, as I gather as many photos as I can in the few short seconds it spends on the runway.