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Freaking airplanes! How do they work? This video shows an Airbus A330 taking off from the Farnborough Airshow in 1994. About 24 seconds into the video, the jetliner appears to hover, nearly motionless, in midair.
-via Jalopnik
Jason Steffen is a particle physicist who works at Fermliab. He’s used his knowledge of complex systems and motion to develop an airplane boarding procedure that is more efficient than those currently in use:
In his method, first, alternate rows on one side of the plane board, but just the window seats. Then the other side boards, in alternate rows with one row between each passenger. Again, window seats only. Then back to the other side, with the middle seats this time. And so on. The result is a beautiful choreography as rows of passengers simultaneously stow their luggage and take their seats in tandem.
Link -via Popular Science
Have you ever seen the movie Airport 1975? It was a disaster movie set on a 747 that had suffered a midair collision. The pilots were dead, leaving only a flight attendant to try to keep the plane in the air. Could an untrained person fly a jetliner? Popular Science asked Dale Wright of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association:
Assuming you remain composed, the biggest factor in a successful landing is whether or not the plane is equipped with an auto-land system to control the throttles and, as its name suggests, land the plane. Not all large commercial aircraft have auto-land, however, and without it, you would be forced to disconnect autopilot to land. At that point, says Chris Dancy, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the most likely mistake an amateur would make would be to fly too low, or too slow, which could lead to an aerodynamic stall, in which the airflow around the wing is no longer smooth enough to keep the plane in the air.
Even if the plane has autoland, setting down a 400-ton jet is still an enormous task. After activating the system, you’d have to engage the wing flaps and the landing gear and continually input new speed settings as the plane descended. But if you can dial in all the right numbers (aided by your pal in the control tower), once the plane is about three miles from touching down, the auto-land system kicks in and does the rest of the work, letting you sit back and enjoy the view.
Without auto-land, on touching down you would have to hit the brakes, which are controlled by way of a complicated foot pedal system, and reverse the thrust of the engines (if the runway is short) to stop the plane, Wright says. He guesses that a novice has a “less than 1 percent chance of landing and keeping [the plane] on the runway and not hurting anybody. And that’s on a good day.”
Link | Image: Universal Pictures
A pillow fight broke out on a recent Lufthansa flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt:
In video captured on a passenger’s cell phone, the woman is seen tossing pillows around the cabin after being bombarded by playful French tourists.
The German airline even paid tribute to the attendant for making the flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt more enjoyable.
A Lufthansa spokeswoman told AOL Travel News: “It’s an example of passengers enjoying themselves in economy class. And it shows we still offer pillows to our passengers in economy class.”
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
This video shows a huge Russian transport plane taking off from Canberra International Airport in Australia. It barely makes the takeoff, using every inch of runway available. Warning: NSFW language from the air traffic controllers.
via Ace of Spades HQ | About the Plane
If you’re a brand new pilot, it’s probably handy to have labels like this, pointing out where the door is, where to sit — that sort of thing. Working with the advertising agency Atmosphere, the South African airline Kulula has debuted its new branding scheme called “Flying 101.” Major features are labeled on the exterior of the plane. More pictures at the link.
Link | Photo: Kulula
Since he was a young boy, Anthony Toth has seen the first class cabin of an old Pan Am 747 as the very quintessence of luxury. So he has spent the past twenty years building a simulation of that environment in his garage. In addition to spending $50,000 on the project, he’s traveled widely just to find vintage equipment. Candace Jackson writes in The Wall Street Journal:
To find artifacts from the airline, which ceased operation in 1991, Mr. Toth spends his vacations trekking out to an area in the Mojave Desert known as the airplane boneyard, where retired aircraft are stripped for parts. When he can’t buy an original Pan Am item in good condition, like seat covers, he recruits professionals to create suitable stand-ins.
Julie Fisher, a friend of Mr. Toth’s, says one time she got a call from Mr. Toth saying he’d heard about a source for headsets in Bangkok. A few days later, the two of them hopped a plane to Thailand for the weekend to track them down. (As an airline employee, Mr. Toth can usually fly himself and a friend for free if space is available.)
There’s a slideshow of Toth’s work at the link.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Brian L. Frank for the WSJ
