For the sake of full disclosure, I won't for a second claim to have found this video myself. In fact, I saw it on Airliners.net thread yesterday and thought it would make a fantastic Movie Monday. Airline, a documentary by the BBC, takes you inside the life of British Airways long-haul pilots (in five parts) as they fly the 747-200 from London Heathrow to Bangkok and then on to Sydney as Speedbird 009.
Perhaps most timely is the section on pilot fatigue and boredom in the wake of the Northwest 188 incident. The discussion centers around the increasing role of aircraft automation and the role of pilots in the cockpit as systems operators rather than aviators. Save for the aircraft types in question, the topics of discussion remain just as relevant today as they did two decades ago.
British Airways Flight 001, formerly of Concorde fame, just passed the one month mark as the moniker of the airline's new London City to New York-JFK all-business class service aboard two newly delivered Airbus A318 aircraft. The pair of 32-seat aircraft BA operates (G-EUNA & G-EUNB) can make the trip across the Atlantic to LCY non-stop and make one stop in Shannon, Ireland to fuel up and pre-clear the passengers through US customs. BA thinks they're really on to something here with the easy access to the London Financial District. The cabin is 32 MiniPod seats from B/E Aerospace with OnAir wireless connectivity.
Movie Monday returns after an extended hiatus with a three-part look inside Speedbird 001's new trans-atlantic service. CNN's Richard Quest takes us on board the flight across the pond with the smallest Airbus for his show, Business Traveller.
Mr. Quest says that the price of a round trip ticket is about $9,000, but a quick search on britishairways.com yielded a $4,500 price tag, which seems reasonable, even for a niche business class product.
This Movie Monday just speaks for itself. Israeli F-15 pilot lands safely with one wing. As the old adage goes, "A good landing is the one you can walk away from."
This week's movie monday takes us back to the late 80s aboard F-WWDC an -100 series A320 (MSN004) which later became F-GGEF in service with Air France. The video takes us on board this early A320, which first flew in June 1987, on what was then the world's first fly by wire jetliner. What makes the video unique is that the fly by wire envelop protection isn't being demonstrated in a simulator, but in actual flight pulling some pretty impressive maneuvers you don't usually see from the flight deck.
For a bit of a historical juxtaposition towards aircraft automation, Flight has a story this week detailing a possible feature on the A350 that could descend the airplane automatically in the event of a change in cabin pressure. The system would activate if sensors detected a change in pressure, but would provide the crew the chance to manually override if the pilots were to take over, or cancel the descent.
To the Edge of Space Gizmodo beat me to the punch on this one, but I promise that I found it before they did. I was saving it for a mini-movie monday. I, of course, have now way to prove that, but the beautiful video above (that should be watched in HD) is 11 minutes of what it's like to fly to the edge of space in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane.
UAVs come to DC! AUVSI is in full swing this week in DC and The D.E.W Line and As the Cro(ft) Flies will be all over the unmanned systems show. I most likely will pop over one or two days this week to shudder at all those jockeying to replace manned aircraft. Man...can't a pilot can't get a break?
Southwest and Republic Fight for Frontier In the ongoing battle for the future of Frontier, SWA has upped its bid for the Denver based carrier to $170m against Republic's $108m. If Southwest wins the bidding, which based on a $62m advantage, appears more than likely, SWA will transition Frontier's Airbus fleet to about 40 737-700s, replacing the 51 A320 family aircraft in the fleet. Southwest says it is also entertaining options for what to do with the remaining 10 Bombardier Q400s flying for Lynx.
Seattle pol takes jab at SC Hat tip to the Boeing employee who sent this my way. Larry Phillips (D), who's running for King County Executive, takes a shot at South Carolina. It's almost like he knows how to get the attention of the tens of thousands of Boeing employees who live in King County.
Spotters Delight The Seattle Times penned a great article about airplane nuts in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, that might be redundant, but the article captures the passion that enthusiasts bring to following things that fly. Also, Liz Matzelle, a good friend of this blog is prominently featured in the article.
Email Subscriptions I've gotten requests over the last several months to set up formal email subscriptions for FlightBlogger and all the solutions I had come up with were rather inartful. With the help of FeedBurner, I'm able to offer a daily email with a digest of the previous day's posts. I want to keep the email in your inbox to a minimum, so this is probably the best way to do it.
Sitting still...for now. I'm back in DC after two weeks on
the road and I am beyond happy to be back home with a chance to sit
still until next month. All told, I flew seven different legs and
7673 nm between DC, Oshkosh, New York City, London and back again. I'm
going to savor every minute of being back in 100 degree nasty sweaty gross swampy DC.
Greetings from London! I'm all set up here for the week at Flight HQ and I've wrapped up my final Oshkosh EAA 2009 video for the show. When the A380 (MSN004) touched down at Oshkosh on Tueday, it was greeted with an extraordinary silence from the thousands of onlookers who had come from far and wide to see the superjumbo up close, most for the first time.
After it landed at Wittman Regional Airport, Flight was invited on board for a tour of the A380 by Claude LeLaie senior vice president of the flight division, who sat in the right seat during the challenging approach to Oshkosh. I filmed the tour with just my iPhone (voice overs too) and the result is a closer look inside the world's largest commercial aircraft.
My colleague, Stuart Clarke, also joined me on the aircraft and had a more proper video camera to capture the tour. There's only a little overlap between our two videos, so consider them companion guides to an A380 flight test aircraft.
There's only one fitting choice for Movie Monday, on this, the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the Moon.
This week's comes from one my absolute favorite programs ever produced for television. From the Earth to the Moon was a 10-part HBO miniseries from 1998 about the Apollo program. Each episode tracked a different element of the program beginning with the Mercury 7 astronauts, through the technology proving missions of the Gemini flights, all the way through Apollo 17, the final mission to the Moon in December 1972.
Make sure to check out the related multimedia I've added in the bottom section the clips. There's some original archive footage from CBS news and the original Saturn V rocket reference manual from NASA. These clips, running about 15 minutes, show Armstrong and Aldrin's landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
This week's Movie Monday explores Air Transat Flight 236. The flight, a transatlantic A330-200 crossing from Toronto to Lisbon, took place on August 24, 2001. The cause of the accident, which resulted in 18 minor injuries and no fatalities amongst the 306 on board, was traced to a fuel leak on the right hand side of the aircraft, resulting from improper maintenance conducted five days prior to the flight. Once the aircraft ran out fuel over the Atlantic Ocean, the A330 was forced to make a dead stick landing with 200 knot approach speed into the Azores.
The dramatization is a decidedly overdone, but this incident and its importance was largely overshadowed by 9/11 just a few weeks later. One comment in part two of this 2003 documentary stood out. It was a comment from an Airbus pilot about moisture and the sensors of the A330 systems architecture. Possibly a throwaway line when the program was first made, but it certainly caught my notice.
***Editors Note - This is the first time I've tried to incorporate Movie Monday with Apture, please let me know if it displays alright.
Movie Monday is back and I was feeling inspired by my visit to the Air & Space Museum yesterday to provide another episode of Dogfights. This episode focuses on the "Dogfights of the Future" looking at new fifth generation platforms like the F-22 and F-35. In addition the show takes some creative liberties with the Su-47 or what may eventually be the Sukhoi PAK FA stealth fighter. The program gets even more creative with its view of Scramjet and space warfare, but it's interesting nonetheless. The full program is available in nine parts total after the break.
Also, if you find great aviation videos online, feel free to pass them my way. I try to make sure Movie Monday runs between 20 to 60 minutes, and that's really the only criteria along with the fact that they are embeddable.
This video was shot on board the flight deck of a Qatar Airways Airbus A330-200 (A7-ACB)
and provides a VERY detailed look at the controls and displays of the long-haul twinjet. I recommend watching with the HD setting on to see all the detail. Like Air France, Qatar's A330s are also powered by General Electric CF6-80 engines. I didn't have a movie for today, so this hopefully will serve as a substitute, albeit considerably shorter than usual.
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