The Terminal

Late Sunday afternoon, and I am already at Arlanda Airport, though my flight to Copenhagen is scheduled to leave at 8 p.m. I am sitting in front of a large window in the new F-pier, with aircraft taxiing outside. With people walking hectically behind me, I hear someone assuring, “I will call you as soon as I land in Switzerland”.

My life has recently been filled with international travel. I have been to Asia, to the US, and all over Europe. As I for almost two years commuted between Sweden and Austria, I started to feel, in a sense, more at home in the international aerospace limbo than in either country.

An MD-80 is being parked at the gate as a Lufthansa Airbus starts its climb towards the horizon and Frankfurt.

This endless stream makes up the embryo of what one day can become a truly planetary civilization. However, these are transitional times. Presenting my paper in Karlstad made me once again aware of how immense the challenges are and how unsustainable everything I see outside my window, in fact, is.