Qatar Airways flight 740
Qatar Airways flight 740, direct from Los Angeles to Doha, reminded me all over again what I love about flying long distance, especially with an ethnically diverse group of passengers and crew, and with mostly clear skies. During 15.5 hours of looking out the window, I saw the Santa Monica Pier, the cities of Twin Falls and Great Falls, a bit of the Northern Lights somewhere north of Hudson Bay, then Norway, Sweden, and Finland, both Domodedovo International Airport and Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, South Ossetia and the Caucuses, the wintry landscape between Lake Sevan and Mount Ararat in Armenia, the Iranian city of Qom and the landscape around Shiraz. The picture above, of a flight attendant from Kenya, was taken near the end of the flight as we began to descend over the Persian Gulf.
It’s a small world, and below are a few glimpses of it, taken from several windows on Qatar Airways flight 740, on January 29 and 30, 2017.
The California coastline at Santa Monica and Venice Beach in Los Angeles County
Sierra Nevada Mountains about 300 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California.
Hello Montana!
Sunrise over the ocean somewhere between Greenland and Norway
Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia. Opened and used by the military during World War II, it transitioned to civilian use after the war. Ronald Reagan flew into this airport for the 1988 Moscow Summit.
Hopping over my seatmate Vijay from India, I hurried to the other side of the plane and looked down at Domodedovo International Airport, which later I would read is Moscow’s only privately owned airport.
Above the Caucasus, somewhere over southern Georgia and northern Armenia
Winter landscape and communities in Armenia
Mount Ararat and Armenia
Entering Iran — my first views of this country I so much want to visit
Qom, Iran
The coast of Qatar
