Last week we kicked off our new feature, the ‘Video of the Week’ with a wonderful scene taken from the nose gear of a 747 that was flying freight in Africa. This week, the pilot and videographer uploaded a “How-To” video that shows just how those exceptional scenes were captured, and just how they managed to lower the nose gear without dropping the main landing gear at the same time.
While that’s not this week’s video of the week, we just couldn’t get away from Balleka’s YouTube channel just yet. I wanted to share a video he did from the perspective of the Flight Engineer or “FE.” The FE is in charge of that rather large panel that sits behind the pilots on older aircraft like the 727 and, in this case the 747-200. In this rather amusing video, the “FE” laments that he’s working with “Clowns to the left of him and Jokers to the right.”
Full disclosure: I was an FE for over 4 years and I can certainly relate. It’s a thankless job that doesn’t even offer the chance to hand-fly a landing at the end of the day-which is the best part of the trip.
So here’s Balleka’s tribute to the FE, called the FE’s Lament 2010.
Do you have a great travel related suggestion for our Video of the Week? Fill out this form or just include my twitter handle @veryjr in your tweet about it. Maybe we’ll use it as next week’s Video.