When I left you I was waiting in the Airport in Detroit for a Northwest Airlines 747-400 which would take me on the next leg of my journey. I was still with my friends from work and we had a number of hours to wait as a layover. The Detroit Airport, while not the largest in the world, is certainly an enormously large place. The terminal for Northwest alone had at that time something like 101 gates for planes to pull into. That terminal actually has its own monorail since it is so very long.
Finally the time comes for us to board the plane. This is something that took quite a while since that seat configuration holds 450 some odd passengers and there were very few empty seats. I was fortunate on this flight to have an aisle seat and the two seats towards the window were empty. Ultimately everyone was seated and belted in and the plane finally pushes back from the gate and gets in line for the active runway for takeoff. This took a while since Detroit is a very busy airport and it was the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. We finally reached the runway and there is no hesitation at all for this pilot because the throttles were firewalled while we were still getting straight on the runway. $ engines screaming we tore down the runway and lifted off, again with that slight uneasy feeling that I would eventually get used to. As we climbed out we banked over Detroit just a bit and then headed out over Lake Michigan on the start of our run up across Canada, across the Bering Sea and down the Pacific Rim to our next stop in Nagoya Japan.
As the seat belt signs went out one of my friends who had also never flown wanted to know if I minded him taking the window seat so he could take photos from the air. I of course had no problem with that so he took that seat which ended up providing me with a fair amount of amusement during the flight. One of the first things he noticed was that the wings were no longer sticking straight out but were flexed up by about 6 or 8 feet at the wing tip by the weight of the plane. He was horrified by this until I pointed out that flexing was good because if the wings did not flex under the load they would likely break off which would be a very bad and unpleasant thing to have happen. He finally calmed down and we had dinner served to us with the options being a beef or chicken dish. I opted for beef which was actually quite good. I have heard tails of terrible airline food and since we were flying economy I had not really expected much as far as the food goes. After dinner we had a movie and then the cabin lights were turned off so everyone could try to sleep.
I did not sleep well but my friend beside slept EXTREMELY well. I looked over at one point and he had managed to twist himself around under the seat belt so that his knees were on the floor of the cabin and his head was lying on the seat and he was sleeping quite nicely. I borrowed his camera and took a picture of that for his girlfriend back home. About 10 hours into this flight the lights were turned back on and we were offered breakfast. The choice was of an American breakfast of eggs and potatoes or a Japanese breakfast. I opted for Japanese since we were on our way into Japan. The Japanese breakfast consisted of several Sushi type rolls along with 2 pieces of some kind of steamed sausage. This is good but not something that many Americans will want to partake of because white sausage is just weird to Americans in most cases.
About 45 minutes to go and we felt the throttle back and the decent start into Nagoya. The captain came on the air and told us the temperature and that there was a light rain in Nagoya. We were at about 18,000 feet when we suddenly found a small hole in the air and the plane just dropped. Only about 20 or 30 feet probably but it caused some screams and I will tell you now that when something as big as that plane just drops it absolutely gets your attention. There were no problems after that and the rest of the landing was actually rather smooth. As we came in on the final approach I was able start seeing Nagoya from the air. I realize that there is a problem with space in Japan but I would not want to live by that airport. We were coming in and we were actually low enough that I could see people's faces. We went over the last row of houses and were on the runway almost instantly. The homes there are as close to the threshold of the runway as they can be.
We landed and taxied in without incident and we got to spend an hour in Nagoya as we refueled and after a flight of 14 hours I am sure we also got a new flight crew. I will leave you now as I look across the rain swept airport towards the lights of Nagoya that I did not have the time to visit and enjoy.
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