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Recently in Video review Category

Hollywood Takes on Frequent Flyers

By
Will Horton
 on November 10, 2009 1:38 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
In another example of art imitating life, George Clooney is starring in Up In the Air, a film about a frequent flyer mile hoarding businessman who loves traveling and found a woman who loves it too--but suddenly his company grounds him and puts him back at the desk.

Last month Gabriel Leigh made a documentary about frequent flyers.

Who knew such a relatively small group could garner so much interest?

Check out Clooney's advice on how to navigate those pesky security queues. The film hits cinemas next month.

Documentary About Frequent Flyer Mile Accumulators

By
Will Horton
 on November 3, 2009 11:02 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
For an assignment at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley,  frequent flyer miler hoarder Gabriel Leigh decided to make a documentary about his fellow frequent flyer mile accumulators.

His result is a 20 minute look into the fascinating--or bewildering, depending on your point of view--world of frequent flyer programmes. As the occasional mileage runner, I could easily relate to the video. The highlight for me was hearing how one mileage runner found an $8 fare between two cities in Thailand and hired local Thais to fly the route multiple times a day for 6 weeks. The organizer (who I presume took control of his workforce's accounts) ended up with over a million frequent flyer miles--and an inquiry from the Drug Enforcement Agency about if he was actually flying drug mules around Thailand.

This is 20 minutes but exceptionally well put together and worth your time.


Frequent Flyer from Gabriel Leigh on Vimeo.

Gordon Bennett Ballooning Cup To Be Held in UK For First Time

By
Will Horton
 on October 20, 2009 7:53 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Next year's Gordon Bennett Ballooning Cup, or Coupe Aeronautique Gordon Bennett, will be held in the UK for the first time in the cup's history.

The cup was inaugurated in 1906 and was frequently held until WW II. It went on hiatus until the 1980s when it was revived. At the 2009 cup, Britons Janet Folkes and Ann-Ruth Rich broke the female duration world record flying for almost 70 hours covering 1,100 kms from Geneva to Madrid.

During their flight they made this excellent video that has some spectacular views.




Flightglobal regularly featured this event in the 1900s. This page from 1909 tells readers about the upcoming event. Stay tuned to Flightglobal for coverage on next year's cup.

NASA Restores Apollo 11 Footage

By
Barbara Cockburn
 on July 17, 2009 3:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
This post was written by Will Horton, Flight's Washington, D.C. intern.

At the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Thursday NASA showed for the first time restored footage from the Apollo 11 mission. (In case you haven't heard, it's Apollo 11's 40th anniversary and Flight is celebrating in full force.) It was so new that the Apollo 11 crew--Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins--had yet to see it.

While NASA was able to land humans on the moon, transmitting video was no small feat. First, in the interest of saving weight and space, the camera NASA developed weighed just seven pounds and used seven watts of power, an amount of energy equivalent to one Christmas tree bulb. It achieved the savings through the use of integrated circuits, which were in their infancy at the time.

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DSC_8649.jpgModern cameras dwarf the type used to transmit footage from Apollo 11, of which a replica was on display during the NASA event. (Photos by Will Horton)

As a result, the camera's format was not compatible with television, leading to a circuitous broadcast process. Amazingly, NASA was able to explain the process with just two PowerPoint slides.

First, footage from the moon was transmitted to receiving stations in the US and Australia.
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The footage was then processed for commercial television display, and then transmitted to NASA in Houston via microwave links, AT&T analog signals, and Intelsat satellites.
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Finally, NASA aired footage from Houston to televisions. But the footage an estimated half billion people watched was significantly degraded during the conversion process.

There's good news and bad news. The good news is the receiving stations, in addition to converting the video, recorded the original un-converted, higher-quality footage (to save, and also in case live transmission did not work--a serious concern). Bad news: NASA has most likely recorded over the original footage and lost it forever.

So NASA turned to Lowry Digital, a Burbank, California restoration house that has restored Hollywood videos including Casablanca and the James Bond series. While Lowry and NASA had been informally working together, they only formalised an agreement last month. Lowry is doing the work pro-bono, which its president said will cost $230,000. There has been no announcement if Lowry will restore footage from additional Apollo missions.

The preview footage NASA displayed was the result of just three weeks' worth of work. All of the Apollo 11 footage is expected to be restored by September.

So how is the restoration?

Good. Really, really good. A significant amount of grain has been removed and objects are better defined. Audio has been cleaned up and the video stabilised.

Here are photos taken during the video comparison (click on them for a larger version). On the left is the footage aired in 1969 and on the right is the restored footage. Keep in mind these photos were taken off a screen showing the comparison.

Unveiling commemorative plaque

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Raising the American flag
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NASA showed this clip first showing the archive footage and then the new footage. (Sound is not the best, but the speaker acknowledges the restored footage is dark and that Lowry is still extracting data.)



But be the judge for yourself! You can download the restored videos on NASA's website or watch them below:

One Small Step...


Buzz Aldrin Sets Foot on Moon

Raising the American Flag


Unveiling Commemorative Plaque



And to briefly acknowledge the conspiracy theorists, an AP reporter asked if a Hollywood company restoring Apollo 11 footage only fueled claims the moon landing was faked.

The response?

Lowry Digital is a restoration house, not a special effects studio. For now, we can continue to celebrate Apollo@40.

Forget Wifi and PTVs, For Entertainment Bring Scissors and Glue

By
Barbara Cockburn
 on July 14, 2009 12:58 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
It's not entirely clear what Virgin America wants to achieve with this video (maintain its status as a hip airline? keep up its Virgin ethos?), especially since as of late it's been promoting the fact it is the first carrier in America to equip its entire fleet with wifi.

But this sure makes for an interesting watch and will definitely be generating some buzz for the airline at a time all carriers need it the most.

A "bored artist" makes art out of the magazines and safety card in the seat pocket. Oh, there were also some cocktails involved, apparently.

If you want to repeat this feat the next time you fly, just make sure your scissors are TSA-OK and your glue conforms to the 3-2-1 liquids rule.



Did they replace the magazines and safety card at the end of the flight?

Safety Videos Get Cheeky

By
Barbara Cockburn
 on July 13, 2009 7:24 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)
By now you have probably seen the much-talked-about (with 4 million hits on YouTube) Air New Zealand safety video performed by real Air NZ staffers wearing nothing but body paint.

(Apparently we liked it so much we posted it on both the Unusual Attitude and Asian Skies blogs.)

The latest cheeky safety video comes from Thomson Airways in the UK and is narrated entirely by children pretending to be the flight attendants.



But the Thomson video is not all fun and giggles. As Travel Daily News reports:
Conducting its own research into the merits of the new and improved safety video, Thomson found that there was a:
- 15% increase in the number of passengers who paid full attention to the video;
- 66% increase in the number of passengers who felt that the new film made them feel more safe;
- 333% growth in the number of passengers who engaged with the video; and
- 91% increase in the number of children under the age of 12 who watched the entire video until the end.
On a related note, there is an article somewhere on the internet with a quote from Sir Richard Branson saying how Virgin Atlantic had to fight UK regulators to let it use an animated safety video. Virgin claims animated (and witty) safety videos hold passengers' attention better. Does anyone else remember this article?

These safety videos are fun to watch, but as a passenger do you think you would find yourself paying closer attention to the safety procedures, or would you be distracted?

Passengers Get a Bit Too Comfy

By
Barbara Cockburn
 on June 22, 2009 4:48 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
As airlines constantly try to out-rival each other in passenger comfort, we never thought we would say they reached the bottom. But jetBlue and AirTran have, or at least in the wrong--but hilarious--category.

To promote the launch of its new New York-Los Angeles route (and that's LAX, not Ontario or Burbank) jetBlue teamed up with YouTubers to have them fly on the airline and make quirky videos en-route.

In "How to Make Yourself at Home on a Bi-Coastal Flight", Kevin Nalts unfurled a yoga mat in the aisle, washed his socks in the lavatory sink and then hung them on a clothesline across the galley, and went beyond the wildest faux pas you could imagine.



Similarly, Mark Malkoff earlier this month embarked on a 30-day quest with AirTran to supposedly rid himself of his "fear of flying". (But the Colbert Report staffer undertook a similar project last January living in Ikea, and AirTran is using the occasion to promote its plan to equip its entire fleet with Gogo wifi by the end of the summer, as Brett Snyder reports.) In this episode, Mark asks passengers how he smells.




You can also watch Mark receive a shower courtesy of the airport fire department, unfurl a roll of toilet paper down the aisle from the lavatory toilet and then press flush, and many other shenanigans.

These stunts may not involve lie-flat seats or in-flight wifi, but who ever knew getting comfortable could be so much fun?

A call out to readers: have you been on any of these flights, or even regular flights where your seat neighbour got a little too comfortable?

Merry Christmas Everyone!

By
Stuart Clarke
 on December 25, 2008 1:06 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Everybody on the Flight blog wishes you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. We are hoping that Santa brings us this C-17 replica for Christmas...




Here's hoping!!!!

Is this for real?

By
Barbara Cockburn
 on November 4, 2008 4:37 PM | | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Watch this video of a light aircraft losing a wing in flight. I won't tell you how it ends.

 

Flightglobal's video review of the week: Red Bull,100 Greatest and an A380 vs car

By
Stuart Clarke
 on May 9, 2008 2:53 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week starts with highlights from the Red Bull Air Race, where Paul Bonhamme took the second race in San Diego. Follow this year's events on AirSpace as we bring you the latest standings and video and picture highlights:

Continue reading Flightglobal's video review of the week: Red Bull,100 Greatest and an A380 vs car.
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