Conquest of the Skies

Anyone seeking some divine awesomeness while on a long-haul flight could do much worse than spending a few hours in front of a David Attenborough documentary.

“Conquest of the Skies,” playing last night on LX52 (ZRH-BOS), was, I imagine, selected by whoever curates Swiss Air’s in-flight video collection for obvious contextual reasons.  And, I also imagine, with no small sense of corporate pride: as the painted lady butterfly (vanessa cardui) and peregrine (falco peregrinus) have conquered the skies, so have we at Swiss International Air Lines, a member of the Lufthansa Group.  I myself was not feeling quite so smug, casting several nervous glances out the window to confirm that the plane's wings were indeed proper airfoils, like those of the griffon vultures of Segovia (gyps fulvus).

One wonders if, 300 million years from now, similar films will be made by our cockroach ancestors’ version of David Attenborough, examining the fossilized remains of an Airbus 330-300, and speculating about the parasites it must have carried to and from their various colonies.