Recently in Odd stuff Category

First frost of the year in London this morning and northern hemisphere aviation is entering the winter. There will doubtless be much airport angst ahead, especially in the US mid-west and northeast - so a quick reminder of just how remarkable it is that the video below is pretty unremarkable. Didn't even take a century to make this sort of thing routine.

Obviously the main thing pilots now do to pass the time on boring sectors is discuss what happened to the Northwest crew who overflew Minneapolis on a boring sector. But the bloggers among them are starting to put their thoughts into print.

Aluwings at The Wings Stayed On is educational about the inventive uses to which the flight management system can be put, but he's also good on why you really don't want to play with the aircraft systems and why SOPs are generally there for a reason.

And Aviatrix at Cockpit Conversation has been whiling away the hours by recording how she was whiling away the hours. In remarkable detail. She sounds good company.

All good, innocent fun. Although when the ACARS datalink was first introduced back in the early 90s, airlines were surprised by some of the data bills they started getting. Investigations followed and one carrier felt impelled to issue an edict banning the game of searching the weather data in order to bet with other crews on which airport had the lowest temperature in the world.

Blimey, talk about making a fuss!

In all fairness this was clearly not a trivial situation for the poor guys involved.

As best I understand it, it's the afternoon of 16 October and what I'm pretty confident is a Diamond DA42 with an instructor and student on board is returning to their Wuzhou Airport base. One way or another it turns out that the left main gear won't lower. Cue a pretty impressive emergency plan...

Not having had the pleasure, I didn't really appreciate just how clever those showers in first on Emirates' A380s actually are. Truly a design classic.

These very well-executed pix from Flyingflox over at flyertalk.com tell the story wonderfully well. I love the moving map display - nice touch.

Last time it was the remarkable tale of the diversion to drop off the flight attendant. This time it's the diversion to pick one up. Life on United's long-haul fleet is rarely less than interesting it seems.

Here's the flight in question. United 803 out of Washington Dulles on Saturday 10 October bound for Tokyo Narita. Unfortunately it turns up back at Dulles two and a half hours later - so why would that be?

My information is that this was due to the slightly embarrassing discovery an hour into the trip that the crew was one flight attendant short of the required minimum number. The aircraft dumped fuel and turned back to Dulles. I wonder what the passengers were told?

Anyone know anything more?

Let me tell you, if you think it's the presidency then you're not a Heathrow regular.

But weirdly enough it seems this actual question is going to be addressed. BAA, the little-loved operator of London's big three airports, is a finalist in the Project Management Institute's annual awards, due to be presented in Orlando tomorrow. So, it turns out, is Barack Obama's campaign team.

May the best man win. BAA press release below.

I've been ballooning just once before, at dusk, in the grounds of a chateau near Paris, in my suit, with my wife, courtesy of Fokker as it happens. We stepped out into a swamp and sat through dinner cold and wet from the knees down. I've always vaguely intended to try again, but these videos below are not doing much to advance the schedule.

I barely understand what on earth this is all about, but some of the pictures are quite good, and some not so.

I've got no idea how this happened. Lots of pix here though.

The aircraft is a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 737-400 at the gate at Kuching International in Malaysia and the pix were taken at lunchtime on Saturday 3 October. Bizarre.

Leave a comment if you know the story behind it all.

Two workaday aviation folk in the media for political reasons today - with contrasting results.

On the one hand there's 'Sully' Sullenberger of Hudson River fame who it turns out was approached by the US Republican Party to stand for Congress. Thanks but no thanks, was his very sensible response.

Now this is not because of stage-fright. Sully, who until a short while ago was a largely unknown airline captain, had his moment in front of Congress and used it with devastating effect to help wake up the country about some of what has been going on in the airline business.