Three continents, three encounters, same story
Story 1, Los Angeles, early March 2010: Early last month, after a 22 hour flight from Singapore to Los Angeles, I was picked up by someone who works at Boeing, has a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from Stanford, and an MBA from UC Irvine. In the six hours I had in LA, he introduced me to another very talented friend of his, who drove us to a vantage point from where we could see all of the LAX runways. We ended up spotting planes for over an hour.
Then we drove to the famous “In & Out” to spot more planes, before heading to a restaurant under the flight path of landing planes, for dinner. For a plane freak like me, this was like putting a kid in a candy store – all day long!
Story 2, Santiago de Chile, late March 2010: I had spent my first day in Santiago mostly sleeping in the hotel, as opposed to checking out the city. In the evening, I met with an airline industry veteran, who not only met me for …






