"Samba do Avião" (aka "Song of the Jet") is a Brazilian song composed in 1962 by Antônio Carlos Jobim, who also wrote the original Portuguese lyrics. The English-language lyrics are by Gene Lees. In the biography Antonio Carlos Jobim: An Illuminated Man, Helena Jobim, describes how her brother came up with the idea for the song: "Tom’s many walks from Ipanema to Santos Dumont Airport yielded that ode of beauty.... He would head towards the airport, following the water’s edge around Guanabara’s bay. The pretext to go there was to buy foreign magazines and newspapers. From Santos Dumont Airport he could observe his passion, the airplane. Yet he still kept some distance from those machines. He was afraid of flying, but he loved their power, splendor, and aerodynamics—man’s conquest over machi