Two F-15s scrambled from Portland to meet Alaska Airlines flight 819 in the middle of the Pacific last night because there was supposedly a hijacker on board. A hijacker probably named Mike Crotch because there was really no hijacker at all—the whole thing was the result of a prank call. More »
The GeoEye 1 and IKONOS spacecraft have captured satellite images of the mysterious Xian Aircraft Corporation Y-20, China’s first long range jet transport. It shows the clearest image of the giant transport plane yet and reveals that China’s plane looks a lot like the U.S. Air Force’s C-17. That’s not an accident. More »
Bit by bit, flying is getting a little more tech friendly. First, the FAA started reconsidering its total ban on electronic device use at takeoff, and now the FCC is making it way easier for airlines to get in-flight Internet. The future looks bright. More »
In November of 2011, American commercial airlines consumed 48.3 million gallons of fuel—every day—and paid a total of $49.8 billion that month to do so. And with increasingly tight operating budgets, fuel efficiency has quickly become a primary concern for the airlines. Boeing thinks one possible solution is its new plug-in hybrid jet concept that burns 70 percent less gas per flight with the help of the local power grid. More »
I’ve traveled 18,054 miles on airplanes this year. That’s 27 flights. And on each of those 27 takeoffs and 27 landings, a hungover flight attendant has asked me and my fellow travelers to turn off our phones. I didn’t, not once. And you know what? I didn’t die. All 27 planes found the runway, none of their engines sputtered out. More »
There are two things for certain with this old Georgian Airways Yakovlev Yak-42 that’s been turned into a pre-school. The kids attending this kindergarten officially have no reason to ever complain about having to go to school. And Kindergarten Plane actually sounds like an entertaining Schwarzenegger film. “This Summer flight school will never be the same.” More »
Sometimes things on TV can look so real that we think it’s happening in real life. That’s the magic of the moving pictures! Like this fake plane crash for the TV show Chicago Fire, it fooled the news broadcast WGN-TV and tricked real people on the ground too. More »
What?! Is that a squadron of commercial airliners?! Not quite, but through the magic of editing, it sure looks like it. With the help of Adobe Premier, Cy Kuckenbaker took five hours of plane landings on Black Friday and condensed them down into just thirty seconds using composite and timelapse techniques like the ones seen in Empty America. The result is a staggering vision of some sort of commercial jetliner apocalypse, and it’s damn cool. [PetaPixel] More »
Scarecrows are a tried and true piece of human technology, but nowadays birds harass more than just crops; they also bother planes. That’s why South Korea has developed a new kind of overkill scarecrow for airports: an unmanned tank with laser and acoustic weapons. More »
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