General aviation/airplane news and chat

[T & P]

Never mind big scary spiders. Irrational as it is considering the worst that could happen to me was a sore arm if I got stung, if I were a commercial pilot and a big fuck off wasp suddenly started buzzing around me as I was flying manual on final approach, I am sorry to say that all passengers and crew in my care would probably be fucked.

 

[HAL9000]

 

[T & P]

Wow. IIRC, there was at least one aircraft model that could easily tip if loaded incorrectly due to its asymmetric CoG (727s perhaps?), and ground crews would even be equipped with custom stilts to prop up at the offending end of the plane to prevent it. But I wasn’t aware it could happen with the A321.

 

[T & P]

In other aviation news, this is the kind of story nervous flying types definitely don’t want to hear about

Alaska Airlines Pilot Charged With 83 Counts of Attempted Murder After He Tried to Shut Down Engines While Off-Duty in Cockpit

Off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson was arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder

themessenger.com

 

[DownwardDog]

Wow. IIRC, there was at least one aircraft model that could easily tip if loaded incorrectly due to its asymmetric CoG (727s perhaps?), and ground crews would even be equipped with custom stilts to prop up at the offending end of the plane to prevent it. But I wasn’t aware it could happen with the A321.

You can tail sit just about anything with sufficient disregard for the loading plan. The Il-62 and Caravelle had built in tail props that were deployed whenever they were on the ground as they were very prone to doing wheelies.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Charles Rolls (of Rolls Royce fame) moments before becoming the UK's first (powered) air-crash death...

 

[A380]

 

[Storm Fox]

My picture of a jet landing at Queenstown airport New Zealand, taken from a track leading up the Remarkable Range of mountains.



donkyboy 's post on the underwheling films thread reminded me of this photo as a lot of LOTR was filmed around Queenstown.

I also fell in the river where the scene was shot of the 9 riders getting washed away.

 

[T & P]

My picture of a jet landing at Queenstown airport New Zealand, taken from a track leading up the Remarkable Range of mountains.

View attachment 397679

donkyboy 's post on the underwheling films thread reminded me of this photo as a lot of LOTR was filmed around Queenstown.

I also fell in the river where the scene was shot of the 9 riders getting washed away.

‘Do you want him? Come and claim him!’

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

View attachment 397549

Is that spitfire heading off to the pub?

 

[bcuster]

 

[A380]

 

[A380]

 

[T & P]

I didn't know the ATR-72 had a vertical take-off variant... Go to 00:38

(annoying soundtrack warning)

 

[spitfire]

I didn't know the ATR-72 had a vertical take-off variant... Go to 00:38

(annoying soundtrack warning)

"Hang on, just got a whatsapp from my mu...oh fuck...SORRY!"

 

[T & P]

6/8, I surprised myself. Though to be fair, without the visual aid, and the preceding article I'd just read, I'd probably have scored 4 max.

BA - The Club - Can you guess the airport code?

Now you’re clued up on the stories behind some of our more curious airport codes, it’s time to take our code-breaking quiz

theclub.ba.com

 

[High Voltage]

4/8 all of which were total guesses

 

[spitfire]

7/8.

Pictures helped a lot.

 

[Storm Fox]

6/8
Yeah, the pictures helped a lot

 

[High Voltage]

Didn’t really pay any attention to the pictures tbh. I thought they were just a pretty background

 

[spitfire]

I learnt that Lagos has a massive bridge. Never seen a picture of Lagos before really other than reportage stuff.

 

[Chz]

8/8, surprisingly.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Bit of a worry if not, tbf.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Airport codes are quite interesting (to me anyway, not to most people I guess).

Airports change names all the time, but airport codes almost never do. One that famously did was IDL, changed to JFK. (IDL has never been re-designated either).
Codes not changing whilst the names do explains things such as Chicago O'Hare being ORD. Many people try to explain why ORD is derived from O'Hare, but it just isn't, prior to 1949 when it was was renamed after a local flying ace it was called Orchard Field.

Canadian ones nearly all start with a letter Y. This may have something to do with them having a weather station back in the day ("do you have a weather station? Yes"). There are a tiny number that start with a Z (Bathurst, New Brunswick is the only one I have ever encountered, but there are a couple of others). Whilst the weather station thing sounds plausible, I suspect the truth is that it's just to piss off travel agents..

 

[Chz]

Ah, my hometown and good 'ol YYZ. I mean, seriously.

 

[Elpenor]

8/8 easy peasy

 

[Elpenor]

This uses 2010 data, but if anyone wants to spend 15 minutes guessing the top 100 destinations from Heathrow have fun

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Ah, my hometown and good 'ol YYZ. I mean, seriously.

Your hometown comes with with YTO for the area, YYZ for Lester B and YTZ for Island. YTO makes sense, YesToronto, but the other two are just out to annoy folk.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

This uses 2010 data, but if anyone wants to spend 15 minutes guessing the top 100 destinations from Heathrow have fun

You can use airport codes for this, which makes it quicker, but you do need to enter one per airport, so JFK and EWR, SVO and DME, BFS and BHD etc. rather than just the city names:

 

[T & P]

Well, should we make it a hat trick of quizzes and test our knowledge of airline two-letter codes?



Fair warning: in at least one instance, it wouldn’t admit my submission for a very well known airline because it was expecting me to provide its full, three-word official name, even though it’s known universally by just two of those words. So if you’re sure you’ve got a given code right but it’s not being accepted, try to remember if its full name might consist of three words…

7/15 for me. Not great but should have been 9/15 due to discrepancies such as the one described above