When I worked for the FAA I would regularly fly from Maine to an Oklahoma FAA School. All of the classes were on how to maintain and repair the ground based navigational equipment used by Air Traffic Control and Pilots. Great stuff, lots of interesting electronics and fun people to work with.

The problem was that I didn't really like to fly. That is, I liked to fly (and had taken a few lessons) but didn't enjoy sitting in the back being flown. Sort of like how I always got car sick until I started driving. I flew on Delta 727's, usually a seat in the very back, next to the engines. Loud and bumpy.

Since then I've flown on a wide variety of aircraft, quite a few places and have learned to love it (and how to get a better seat).

One of the best parts of flying is the perspective on the world below. This photo was taken somewhere near the Colorado/Utah border from 30,000+ feet. Sometimes you can get great shots, even through a few panes of airplane window. Massimo flies quite a bit and has started a nice collection of aerial shots.

I've been trying to search for other collections with limited success. There's some interesting finds, like Sam's mega trip photos (lots of airplane pics!). A search for airplane window in the google image search turns up some interesting results as does airplane view.

I've heard of airplane trips where a bunch of people charter a private aircraft, usually something like a reconfigured 737, and go on an excursion. Kind of like a cruise ship, stopping at a variety of places. I wonder if they have such a thing for photographers where the aircraft is retrofitted with lots of picture taking "windows", maybe even a glass bottom section?

The real challenge when flying cross-country is trying to figure out where you are. If you fly transatlantic they'll often have a channel showing a moving map of where the airplane is (hmm, still over the ocean!) but I've never seen one on flights across the US. On one flight I had a GPS on, held close to the window, and knew where I was the whole trip. That was a blast, especially zooming in and watching the GPS try to scroll terrain at 600 miles per hour!

Google's map site recently added satellite views, using the same easy-to-use navigation as their regular maps (best map interface ever). So I figured, hey, I'll just look at the satellite pictures of the Colorado/Utah border area and find where this picture is. Right...

Give it a try, see what you find. I think that link is of the general area. Actually some of this looks familiar, but it's a big country.

Google ought to consider overlaying boundaries on the satellite images. Show where the state borders are, maybe even town names. And I think airlines need a new audio channel: the Latitude/Longitude channel where a mechanical voice reads off the approximate lat/lon the whole trip.

Isn't this a strange place to grow things?