I'll just fly my "Az-truck" (Piper Aztec Type F, for those not knowing the reference) and take as many bags as I very well please. The problem isn't the 10 minutes it takes to board, the problem is the hour it takes to get your balls fondled by TSA before you even see airplanes.

(Written on 09/02/2011)(Permalink)

Haha I want one!! :) I'd buy it.

(Written on 05/30/2011)(Permalink)

... here's the Matrix 'vase' question. Would Capt. Sully have chosen a different path had the airplane given him gliding radius cones and a map with available airports with large enough runways to handle his airplane? -- Capt. Sully made the best choice he could have with the information he had available at the time. -- Would his decision have been different given more information? We don't know the situation the AF crew had at the time so I'm not sure I'd be so quick to blame them for handling it the way they did.

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

markaz -- Very much agreed. I don't know where the balance lies. -- Unfortunately, the general public tends to prioritize poorly. Especially with the state of the economy; people will go for the cheapest flights and are not willing to pay more than is absolutely necessary to get from Point A to Point B. Even I will go on this same website and seek out the best routes from A to B. -- So I will admit that I am partially at fault for always pushing to buy less expensive tickets. The businesses will always try to drive cost down and design requirements for airplanes are ultimately driven by business models for profit. You challenge this philosophy in your comment and I agree with you. Its not a simple problem that we can just pull an answer out of a hat. The hope is that even private industries will adopt 'best-practices' to ensure the safety and brand reliability of their products. (Hopefully society would apply this to not just aircraft but cars, even food!) Steve. Thanks for th

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

GLIDING comment: Yes, these airplanes glide. -- Pretty darn well actually ... --- They don't glide in thunderstorms though. :( MAGNETIC COMPASS comment: It is very true that compasses do these things. Unfortunately, they do these things when you're holding them steady on the ground, not moving, not doing anything funny, not in turbulence, not turning, not climbing, descending, accelerating, decelerating ... etc. I'm sure a lot of IFR pilots here can tell you what compass turns and timed turns are all about. :) Add in a thunderstorm and go try doing a compass turn... :) I know I'm being a little sarcastic -- but it is true that, in theory, you could do those back calculations. UNRECOVERABLE DEEP STALL comment: Sorry I paraphrased. I didn't scroll up and copy/paste. -- It is true that deep stalls in commercial airliners are very difficult to recover from. It turns out that, in theory, they should be pretty easy to get out of under certain assumptions (that don't alway

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

John, exactly my thoughts. -- I think the pilots likely did the best they could in the situation they had at hand. -- 100% agree with the sh*t show comment above. :)

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

There have been a few other comments that I've found interesting on here: 1) Pitot tubes freezing and 3 simultaneous frozen tubes (what are the chances?) >> Most commercial airliners in production are fitted with 3 tubes near the nose to give the pilot a portion of his speed indication (part of the equation is solved from data read from these tubes.) There are more pitot tubes on the aircraft used for different things (e.g. calculating EPR). If it is a test aircraft, it has MANY more. The ones pilots tend to depend on for their speed readings are the three that everyone seems to be familiar with on this forum. If designed properly, the pitot tubes are aligned and located in such a way so that they are exposed to very similar conditions with little aerodynamic interference. -- As such, when exposed to very similar amounts of very cold water from a high-altitude storm it is likely that all 3 will freeze under the same condition, making the assumption that the particular icing condit

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

... more comments to come soon.

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

Ok just because we all want to beat Steve with a <large> stick (myself included) -- yes I, inserted <large> after I typed that.. -- doesn't mean we just disregard everything he says. I think he still deserves a decent answer or a challenge to his answer so he can go shut up and think about it for a few minutes before coming back and giving an arm-chair pilot reply :) SO -- since I've missed out on a LOT of the conversation so far... I'm going to comment on a lot of stuff. STARTING ... with Steve. :) Steve's Example NOT taken out of context and a ::proper quote:: from his post earlier: "...even a twit knows that when your hear the stall horn, you add power and nose over....especially at Flight Level 350." Assumptions he makes: 1) The airspeed indication is such that a stall warning is believable. If the instrumentation available on the a/c is not sufficient for detecting a stall, it will give false positives. Stall warnings and stick shakers do not actually indicate stall.

(Written on 05/29/2011)(Permalink)

You mean flight 705 in '63. right?

(Written on 05/27/2011)(Permalink)