(Video Link)
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
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The pilot claimed that the major cause of the incident was that the engines did not respond the an increase in throttle.
Air France had received bulletins from Airbus stating that there were two problems with the A320, firstly that there were problems with throttle response at low altitude and secondly that there were problems with barometric altimeter. Neither of these bulletins were passed on to pilots until after the accidents.
Some people have placed significance on the fact that the investigation was carried out by the French authorities when the aircraft's owner and operator and manufacturer were French companies.
Well it is disputed anyway.
And obviously the consequences of failure are somewhat more expensive if you stall an A330 at low altitude than if you do the same with a 172.
That reminds me -- planes like the Vought V-173* ("Flying Pancake") with *EXTREMELY* slow stall speeds could actually be pointed into the wind and appear to take off vertically, hovering straight up or even in reverse in the right conditions... Even though strictly speaking they had no special capabilities for VTOL beyond what all normal planes have.
* See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_V-173
Furthermore the text is somewhat misleading. The apparent hover does not take place during takeoff, but during a flypast.