aviation

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20547599

Captured this guy doing some sort of low-flying surveying. The way they were flying around erratically and extremely low got me curious. Looked up the aircraft: the leasing company photos didn’t show this device.

Transcript for the comic embedded in the link: An XKCD comic about how to decode a METAR:

METAR - "Meter" (Usually misspelled)

KNYC - Station ID

251600Z - Time (25:16:002)

18035G45KT - Wind speed has been 18,035 knots for a good 45 minutes now.

6SM - Observer is a size 6 small.

VCFCFZVA - Sorry, the station cat walked on the keyboard.

+BLUP - Weird noise the sky made earlier.

NOSIG - The observer has no significant other :(

LTG OHD - We overheard someone saying there was lightning.

A3808 - Hey look, an Airbus A380-800!

RMK - Remarkable!

A02 - Fanfic archive equipped with a precipitation sensor.

SLP130= - Observer got sleepy around 1:30.

Image alt-text on the website: "In the aviation world, they don't use AM/PM times. Instead, all times are assumed to be AM unless they're labeled NOTAM."

Here is an article: https://www.thesun.ie/sport/13888559/sao-paulo-blimp-botafogo-copa-libertadores-brazil/

I have a few friends who have their own pilots license (private pilot i assume). How safe is it to fly your own plane?

I have acrophobia so learning how to fly is not high on my list but would like to know about how safe it is to assuage some fears. To be it seems scary because if something goes wrong, you wouldn't be the only person getting hurt (as would be the case for scuba diving or skiing) but you might also risk hurtings others like your plane crashing out of control.

edit: i'm asking on the off chance i feel like one day getting a private pilots license like my friends. i'm not planning on flying with the friends anytime soon; they live on the other side of the world.

Picture taken at 01:30 on 5.7.2023 at EFHK.

Alaska Airlines CEO: "Following tonight’s event on Flight 1282, we have decided to take the precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 #Boeing 737-9 aircraft."

https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/operations/as-1282/

@aviation

#boeing737

GE Aerospace Demonstrates New Rotating Detonation Combustion (RDC), could power super-efficient hypersonic aircraft with longer range that exceed MACH 5, or >4,000 MPH

https://www.geaerospace.com/press-release/other-news-information/ge-aerospace-demonstrates-hypersonic-dual-mode-ramjet-rotating

@aviation
#aviation

Split boarding or two-door boarding sounds at least to me like a no-brainer. Basically you open both the front and back doors and let passengers board from ends of the airplane. Seems at least to me it's a lot more common with the terminals that use air stairs that you need to walk across the apron to get to rather than jet-bridges, as it's pretty easy to just roll two air stairs up to the aircraft.

Why isn't this more common? Boarding and deboarding a plane is slow and very prone to a single person holding up the entire process as there is no room to go past them in the aisle. Allowing boarding from both the front and back doors will at least half the time it takes, and especially with deboarding, gives passengers two options for exits which means a single person can't hold up the entire plane. If the people in front are being slow, just leave from the back.

I know that designing a jet-bridge that can line up with the back door is pretty difficult especially since you have to fit it alongside the jetbridge for the front door, but why not just use the jetbridge for the front door and roll air stairs up to the back door and have half the passengers go down to the ground and walk across the apron? I'll gladly spend a few minutes walking through the heat or rain if it means we can board and deboard in half the time, especially if it means we don't lose our takeoff slot from a slow boarding process and have to wait on the tarmac for even longer.

What do you think? Are there practical issues that this is not done more often? Or is it simply because the airlines don't really want to pay for more gate services?