Air Travel - I'd Rather Go By Car

Lord Buckley said:
That's about right, you're mid Atlantic at 40,000 feet and that "moderate" turbulence starts....
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True story: Friend who is a Delta captain lost both engines on a 763 momentarily over the Atlantic. One went out, then the other briefly, which they managed to refire. The glide was to the Azores I think if not.
 
Rambo said:
true but a majority of this bullshit takes place on the ground.
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To normal people, but for me the fear happens up there, after you've drank all the booze possible and they're shutting out the lights for that enforced 8 hour sleep. Everyone else is asleep and your sitting there with the fear. All the stuff that happens on the ground is mere hanging around and waiting in comparison.
 
doghouse said:
True story: Friend who is a Delta captain lost both engines on a 763 momentarily over the Atlantic. One went out, then the other briefly, which they managed to refire. The glide was to the Azores I think if not.
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At least in Delta's cattle class you can keep on buying copious amounts of booze on the company credit card throughout the flight from the nearly retired in-flight entertainment crew. I actually quite like the airline after they've finished assertively interrogating you before boarding for this reason.

I was due to fly on a private jet once, but the pilot who had just qualified previously had managed to have a panic attack on the runway and ended his career immediately before my flight with him. Good job too, it would have been serious horror with the two of us in a panic up way up high over the Med. It would have been like a Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor routine without a happy ending.

Flown into Calgary, but never experienced that turbulence you get over the Rockies before landing there. Dreadful, I've seen the Youtube videos. One of the worse flights I ever had was a turbo-prop from Rotterdam to London City airport shocking white knuckle ride. The captain even announced he was slowing the plane right down so we wouldn't be sick.
Next worse one was flying back from Beijing and landing in a storm at Schipol. I wondered why the stewardess kept on bringing me brandies before the descent into the maelstrom....
 
doghouse said:
True story: Friend who is a Delta captain lost both engines on a 763 momentarily over the Atlantic. One went out, then the other briefly, which they managed to refire. The glide was to the Azores I think if not.
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You can 'restart' a jet engine by going into a dive (windmill restart). Not uncommon on military fast jets.
 
formby said:
You can 'restart' a jet engine by going into a dive (windmill restart). Not uncommon on military fast jets.
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The problem is if you don't know what the issue is, you can have an uncontained failure if you relight it. Better odds than no engine though I suppose.
 
formby said:
You can 'restart' a jet engine by going into a dive (windmill restart). Not uncommon on military fast jets.
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Lord Buckley should have this printed on a card to hand to staff on airlines he flies with
 
Flying into Cusco, First Officer comes out and looks at the wing. There is fluid pouring out. Captain comes out and looks. Then Captain comes on the intercom and says "we are leaking fuel but we are past the point of no return. Don't worry, we will be okay. The fire department in Cusco has been alerted"

Land without any problems.

The fire department was a guy with a hand pump hose attached to a tank on a wagon.
 
Coming into La Paz in a rain storm and Lloyd Areo Boliviano lands on the wrong end of the runway that you normally approach from the cliff side.
 
Flying at night to an Indian reserve in Northwestern Ontario in a Dehavilland Single Beaver on skis. Kinda like this one

IMG_7913.webp


Sitting in the right seat with the Pilot, who I swear is 17, and he taps me on the shoulder and points to a lake on a paper map and then points out the window and says "that lake look like the one on the map?"

Sure dude. Or one of a 1000 other ones.

Airstrip is ice, hence the skis.

Runway lights?

20 snowmobiles parked perpendicular on either side of the airstrip with their lights on.
 
Fly into the jungle to a finca with some dude's Uncle Tito who looks like the Mexican guy in the bumblebee suit on the Simpsons. Cessna 172. Grass runway. Do a low flyover to scare the cattle off of the grass strip, circle round and drop down, stall alarms going off. Land without incident.

4 days later, time to leave. He can't start the engine.

"Get the rope" he says to ChiChi his nephew.

Wrap a rope around the prop.

"Ok guys, get out there and grab the rope"

Three of us grab the rope and run to jump start the Cessna.

Works on the third attempt.
 
prince nez said:
You want terror? Try a Soviet airline.



https://m.ok.ru/video/233642463719
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I've flown in a Tupulev 134 and 154 travelling to Astrakhan. The B-17 nose cone and gun turret in the toilet is a handy addition if you need to convert to a bomber at short notice. The wheels are straight off a futuristic model from the original Thunderbirds puppet series.

Funnily enough, on landing at Amsterdam last week the mother-in-law complained on how bumpy it was and exclaimed that Russian pilots are the best as they are trained to give a very smooth landing.
 
Thruth said:
Fly into the jungle to a finca with some dude's Uncle Tito who looks like the Mexican guy in the bumblebee suit on the Simpsons. Cessna 172. Grass runway. Do a low flyover to scare the cattle off of the grass strip, circle round and drop down, stall alarms going off. Land without incident.

4 days later, time to leave. He can't start the engine.

"Get the rope" he says to ChiChi his nephew.

Wrap a rope around the prop.

"Ok guys, get out there and grab the rope"

Three of us grab the rope and run to jump start the Cessna.

Works on the third attempt.
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How many of these you got bro? It's starting to sound like Indiana Jones bullshit.

:cuterage:
 
We were on a DC 3 in the Bahamas one time when the left engine literally burst into flames with us all on the plane on runway. Pilot ran out with a fire extinguisher, put it out, tinkered with it, then fired it up and we took off.
 
OfficePants said:
How many of these you got bro? It's starting to sound like Indiana Jones bullshit.

:cuterage:
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Ololo. Lots more. 2 months a year in/around Bolivia for 7 years. Plus flying every 12 days or so in the Arctic from 1989 to 2005.

Did I ever tell you the time I rolled my Durango on the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk? Olololo

IMG_7933.webp
 
Once I was on a plane and we had a hard landing. The plane went back up in the air for about 1.2 seconds. I was fine buy my mom turned grey.
 
holy shit has anyone read this?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth

THE DISTURBING TRUTH ABOUT HOW AIRPLANES ARE MAINTAINED TODAY
In the last decade, most of the big U.S. airlines have shifted major maintenance work to places like El Salvador, Mexico, and China, where few mechanics are F.A.A. certified and inspections have no teeth.

i found it in the comments of the naked capitalism article i listed above. this is fucking nuts.
 
Family Claims They Were Kicked Off JetBlue Flight Over A Birthday Cake

Another day, and yet another story of airline customers claiming they were treated poorly while traveling: This time it’s a New Jersey family who says they were kicked off a recent JetBlue flight after a mixup about where to stow a birthday cake.

The family of four had booked tickets to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on May 3 to Las Vegas with plans to celebrate the mom’s 40th birthday with their family, reports The New York Daily News.

They brought a buttercream cake from a well-known bakery along, and had stowed it in an overhead bin near their seats in the last row.

“A flight attendant nicely asked me to remove the cake from that compartment, so I moved it to another one,” the man told the NYDN. “She then asked me to move it to underneath the seat in front of me, I did.”

But when another flight attendant got involved and asked her colleague why she had told the man he couldn’t put the cake in the overhead bin, the situation suddenly escalated.

“She said I was being non-compliant,” he says. “I said, ‘Miss, have you been drinking?’ Because her behavior was irrational and she stormed off.”

That’s when another airline employee told him that he, his wife, their 9-year-old daughter, and 7-year-old would have to leave the plane. He refused, and started recording instead.


Port Authority police officers were called, but as seen in the man’s video, they told him he and his family hadn’t done anything wrong, but that JetBlue policy required them to rebook.

“They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, huh?” the man says in his video. “It’s in New york — we didn’t even get there.”

JetBlue had everyone on the flight deplane so the family could get off the plane. Their tickets and reward points were refunded, and the family managed to book a flight for the next day to Las Vegas out of Newark.

The airline says the family was at fault for storing the cake in a compartment meant for emergency and safety equipment, and claims they refused several requests to move the item.

“The customers became agitated, cursed and yelled at the crew, and made false accusations about a crewmember’s fitness to fly,” a JetBlue spokesman said in a statement. “After the customers refused to speak with a team leader about the situation, the Port Authority Police Department was called and the entire aircraft deplaned.”

The man says he never cursed or raised his voice, ABC-7 reports. He’s now planning to file a lawsuit against JetBlue.

“I hope JetBlue will retrain their staff and recreate the culture I once loved,” he told the NYDN.

 
Rambo said:
holy shit has anyone read this?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth

THE DISTURBING TRUTH ABOUT HOW AIRPLANES ARE MAINTAINED TODAY
In the last decade, most of the big U.S. airlines have shifted major maintenance work to places like El Salvador, Mexico, and China, where few mechanics are F.A.A. certified and inspections have no teeth.

i found it in the comments of the naked capitalism article i listed above. this is fucking nuts.
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This has been going on for a long time. Most heavy planes get pretty rigorous maintenance, it's the RJ's that are run by regionals that are troubling.

It's also important to note that not all the offshore facilities are bad. Haeco is a world class facility in Hong Kong. They have been doing B and C checks for years for the big guys, including United and Delta. This is the first I've heard of United doing maintenance in Beijing, but that wouldn't worry me at all. American has always had U.S. based maintenance, except C checks I think, but I don't know if that includes the U.S. fleet they have now or not.
 
All BA flights grounded

"The GMB union has suggested the failure could have been avoided, had the airline not outsourced its IT work."

"BA in 2016 made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India... many viewed the company's actions as just plain greedy."

If only they kept the brown IT people in the UK instead of outsourcing it to the brown IT people in India.
 
I don't know how long it takes for them to restart some computers but they've had all day. You can't actually make it worst than it already is - it's down. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it.
 
More terror BS at Newark but only closed a terminal for couple hrs, not much longer than typical flight delay.
 
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