General aviation/airplane news and chat

[editor]

I didn't think this post deserved a thread of its own so I made a 'general' one.

I saw this from my airplane window and thought the passing aircraft was one hell of a dirty bugger. Is this normal?

 

[nogojones]

Where's Jazzz when you need him?

 

[a_chap]

I saw this from my airplane window

Your airplane window?!?

Jesus! I can barely afford a car.

I'm cancelling my server fund DD forthwith!

 

[mauvais]

Where were you?

You could find out what aircraft it was via Flightradar24 or similar. Perhaps it's something military or old.

 

[Lancman]

Contrails look very different when seen from above compared with the view from below because the reflected/refracted light is different.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Contrails look very different when seen from above compared with the view from below because the reflected/refracted light is different.

Yep.

Hard to tell, but looks like an A320, so not an old, dirty plane.

Is this the same editor that was in the US last month, now flying back from (easy train ride to UK) Italy, who was bemoaning pollution just this week?

 

[T & P]

I suspect the background colour in this particular case might also make the contrails look darker.

 

[editor]

Yep.

Hard to tell, but looks like an A320, so not an old, dirty plane.

Is this the same editor that was in the US last month, now flying back from (easy train ride to UK) Italy, who was bemoaning pollution just this week?

I always go by train wherever possible (as does my band). However, this short holiday was an unexpected birthday present and had we gone by train it would have been a rather impractical 38 hour round trip by train.

There really was no need for the cheap little personal dig. It has nothing to do with the topic, but everything with you trying to disrupt the discussion and score points. For the record, I have never been against all aviation, but would prefer it if people took the train whenever practical.

 

[editor]

Here's the other pic I grabbed

 

[DownwardDog]

The An-12 is the unmatched coal burner in my experience.

 

[T & P]

Modern airliners are fairly clean and can achieve lower CO2 emissions per passenger mile than many cars. Things have improved greatly since the era of first-generation passenger jets, at any rate...

 

[hash tag]

I'm impressed you got the pics. Last year, when I was on a plane and saw another plane pass by like that. By the time I had blinked the other plane was long gone.

 

[editor]

I'm impressed you got the pics. Last year, when I was on a plane and saw another plane pass by like that. By the time I had blinked the other plane was long gone.

I had to work quick! To be honest I thought the plane was on fire at first.

 

[skyscraper101]

Seeing as I can, I’m currently posting this from 38,000ft above the earth on a Norwegian airlines flight from London to Miami

Free onboard wifi FTW

 

[A380]

The pilot was under orders to turn up the quantity of Illuminati mind control chemicals at that that particular part of the flight obvs.

 

[LDC]

I had to work quick! To be honest I thought the plane was on fire at first.

Did it have Malaysian airline markings?

 

[2hats]

Thought this as good a place as any, though perhaps it should be in the art forum instead... Get your bids in:

Concorde Turbo-Jet Engine, Complete with Afterburner
Condition: Used
Seller notes: "Not able to fly but perfect to dismantle and repurpose into collectable pieces of furniture or art"

A Rolls-Royce Olympus Turbojet engine 593-610, fitted with afterburner. Complete with serial numbered mobile stand. BA signed / Auctioneers certificate of authenticity. BA restriction of use, it must only be used for static display.

PS

I saw this from my airplane window and thought the passing aircraft was one hell of a dirty bugger. Is this normal?

Yes. You are (roughly) at the same altitude as the contrail. Here the bulk of the air scattering the sunlight is behind that contrail so the background scene appears brighter than the contrail: air molecules scatter in all directions (Rayleigh scattering process), whilst aerosols forward scatter (Mie scattering process), which here means directing light away from the observer (the sun is pretty much behind the observer, judging from the illumination of the mountains). Contrast that with staring up into the sky at contrails, as you tend to do more often. There the bulk of the air is in front of the contrail (and the contrail is largely backlit so the light (Mie) scattered off it is preferentially brought towards the observer: the contrail tends to look brighter than the sky.

Almost certainly it is predominately this phenomenon you are witnessing rather than contamination of the contrail due to engine inefficiency.

 

[skyscraper101]

Browsing a bit more urban up in the air earlier

 

[19sixtysix]

Thought this as good a place as any, though perhaps it should be in the art forum instead... Get your bids in:

Concorde Turbo-Jet Engine, Complete with Afterburner
Condition: Used
Seller notes: "Not able to fly but perfect to dismantle and repurpose into collectable pieces of furniture or art"

A Rolls-Royce Olympus Turbojet engine 593-610, fitted with afterburner. Complete with serial numbered mobile stand. BA signed / Auctioneers certificate of authenticity. BA restriction of use, it must only be used for static display.

Want. I have seen the plane behind view of concorde's engines after burners on hammering up the runway. Awesome!

 

[Crispy]

Thought this as good a place as any, though perhaps it should be in the art forum instead... Get your bids in:

Concorde Turbo-Jet Engine, Complete with Afterburner
Condition: Used
Seller notes: "Not able to fly but perfect to dismantle and repurpose into collectable pieces of furniture or art"

A Rolls-Royce Olympus Turbojet engine 593-610, fitted with afterburner. Complete with serial numbered mobile stand. BA signed / Auctioneers certificate of authenticity. BA restriction of use, it must only be used for static display.

PS


Yes. You are (roughly) at the same altitude as the contrail. Here the bulk of the air scattering the sunlight is behind that contrail so the background scene appears brighter than the contrail: air molecules scatter in all directions (Rayleigh scattering process), whilst aerosols forward scatter (Mie scattering process), which here means directing light away from the observer (the sun is pretty much behind the observer, judging from the illumination of the mountains). Contrast that with staring up into the sky at contrails, as you tend to do more often. There the bulk of the air is in front of the contrail (and the contrail is largely backlit so the light (Mie) scattered off it is preferentially brought towards the observer: the contrail tends to look brighter than the sky.

Almost certainly it is predominately this phenomenon you are witnessing rather than contamination of the contrail due to engine inefficiency.

Tldr: clouds look grey from below, but white from above. Like that.

 

[T & P]

General question about inflight maps. Why when you zoom in on the territory you're flying over, the maps always highlight obscure towns no one has ever heard the fuck of? And why do they still look so shit?

 

[Teaboy]

The obscure towns make it more interesting.

 

[Teaboy]

Anyway in general aviation chat (as this thread is) its been a bit of a shit show for airlines of late. A few have gone under and loads are reporting losses and in a lot of cases eye watering losses.

The blame is being laid at the door of oil prices and over capacity. The second one is key here I think and comes back to this central theme that pretty much every prediction of increased air traffic has been way over the top. Jet has gone to the wall and Air India in a right old mess and only being proped up by the government and India is one of the major developing markets we keep being lectured about.

This brings me on to a hobby horse of mine in that this is one of the central arguments as to why Heathrow must be expanded. Even when its obvious what a fallacy it is it must never be discussed.

Also in Heathrow news its good to see the vital and rare slots being used for all these developing markets we keep getting told about. Latest one is not a A380 to China as you may expect but a Flybe tiger moth to Cornwall. Fantastic.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Anyway in general aviation chat (as this thread is) its been a bit of a shit show for airlines of late. A few have gone under and loads are reporting losses and in a lot of cases eye watering losses.

The blame is being laid at the door of oil prices and over capacity. The second one is key here I think and comes back to this central theme that pretty much every prediction of increased air traffic has been way over the top. Jet has gone to the wall and Air India in a right old mess and only being proped up by the government and India is one of the major developing markets we keep being lectured about.

This brings me on to a hobby horse of mine in that this is one of the central arguments as to why Heathrow must be expanded. Even when its obvious what a fallacy it is it must never be discussed.

Also in Heathrow news its good to see the vital and rare slots being used for all these developing markets we keep getting told about. Latest one is not a A380 to China as you may expect but a Flybe tiger moth to Cornwall. Fantastic.

India has always been weird, very few point to point routes, to get from anywhere interesting to anywhere else worth going to you must always transit Mumbai or Delhi, which is a pain in the arse. And last time I flew out of Goa there were more flights that day from Goa to Moscow than to Delhi.

And yeah, Heathrow's latest 'emerging market' is Newquay, Fly Be switching that route from Gatwick (an airport that has shit-loads of new long-haul routes btw). There are quite a few new China routes from Heathrow, Hainan on Hainan Airlines etc., but these flights always seem wide open even on the day of travel, so can't see them lasting that long.

 

[A380]

General question about inflight maps. Why when you zoom in on the territory you're flying over, the maps always highlight obscure towns no one has ever heard the fuck of? And why do they still look so shit?

Often, but not always, because they are taken from an aviation database so they might be smaller towns with airfields rather than bigger ones without .

 

[A380]

India has always been weird, very few point to point routes, to get from anywhere interesting to anywhere else worth going to you must always transit Mumbai or Delhi, which is a pain in the arse. And last time I flew out of Goa there were more flights that day from Goa to Moscow than to Delhi.

And yeah, Heathrow's latest 'emerging market' is Newquay, Fly Be switching that route from Gatwick (an airport that has shit-loads of new long-haul routes btw). There are quite a few new China routes from Heathrow, Hainan on Hainan Airlines etc., but these flights always seem wide open even on the day of travel, so can't see them lasting that long.

Can’t see why you’d want to go to Hainan particularly unless you are a spy and there probably aren’t enough of them to support direct flights. I mean it’s perfectly nice but mainly agricultural China with a couple of resorts that could be literally anywhere in the world. Built for internal Chinese beach holidays ( interestingly because until recently very few Chinese people learnt to swim the swimming pools don’t have deep ends...). They are starting to offer beach holiday packages for visa free travel to Russians, mostly to people from Eastern Russia.

Asside from that you can look at the nuclear submarine base and maybe see a rocket launch from a long long distance the internet connections are very very fast though...

Are they trying to get in on the stopover market? As well as HK both Beijing and Chengdu (pandas!) offer local short ( five day?) visa less entry if you are traveling onwards. Do Hainan air offer flights to Australia yet? I’m fairly sure they offer SE Asia destinations so maybe that’s the business plan?

 

[DownwardDog]

General question about inflight maps. Why when you zoom in on the territory you're flying over, the maps always highlight obscure towns no one has ever heard the fuck of? And why do they still look so shit?

The map data is populated from the aircraft's FMS which uses IFR routes and waypoints. It's showing the nearest towns/cities to those waypoints.

 

[Teaboy]

Couldn't find a suitable thread and don't think the question is worth a new one.

How come there can be such wildly different costs for the same airline ticket through different providers? I've been looking at a ticket which costs around £250 - £260 with most of the big names travel agencies and the airline itself. Yet there are a few ones I've not heard of selling for just over £200 and one is selling for £175.

How does that work? Its the same flight (with one connection but the same airline throughout).

Bahnhof Strasse ?

Anyone else any insight into this?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Couldn't find a suitable thread and don't think the question is worth a new one.

How come there can be such wildly different costs for the same airline ticket through different providers? I've been looking at a ticket which costs around £250 - £260 with most of the big names travel agencies and the airline itself. Yet there are a few ones I've not heard of selling for just over £200 and one is selling for £175.

How does that work? Its the same flight (with one connection but the same airline throughout).

Bahnhof Strasse ?

Anyone else any insight into this?

Airlines that are part of IATA all use the same 'published fares'. Therefore London-New York-London on BA in business can be £5000, on Air France it will also be £5000. Of course no one in London would buy the Air France ticket for £5000 as you'd need to change in Paris whereas with BA you fly non-stop. So Air France offers discounted fares, some of which they publish as discounted fares and others they offer to select agencies to sell on their behalf. Sometimes they will offer a specific agency a very heavily discounted fare on a particular route over a certain time, which is why comparison sites might show the airline price and most agency prices all very similar and then one agency 30% cheaper, or so.

BA also offers discounted fares as they can't fill their business cabins with £5k paying punters, so they offer cheaper tickets from London that have restrictions on them, these are also 'published fares'. They also offer route deals to certain companies, but if they are UK based they must buy a shit-load of seats for BA to be interested, a certain Big Pharma based in Brentford gets a discount on London-Philadelphia tickets somewhere in the order of 75%, but on every single flight that company accounts for ~20% of all passengers.

BA also offer deals to passengers in France, in the same way that Air France do in the UK.

And then you get less, er, reputable carriers that have trouble filling their seats even at discounted fares, so they offer them at even greater discounts to non-IATA agents...

 

[Teaboy]

Right. So in a situation where there is decent airline (LOT) and the ticket price being offered by an obscure travel agent (Travelgenio) is that much cheaper its likely because LOT is pushing cheap tickets through that agent alone?