How to destroy V Australia’s $23M flight simulator

by Grant Martin on

I thought that I was the luckiest person in the world when Ken Pascoe and Marty Khoury, two pilots from V Australia invited me, a lowly blogger, out to visit them and their flight simulator out in Australia last week. Sure, I edit a travel blog and I do run Linux, but that usually can only get me so far.

So I was thrilled to accept the invitation and join the crew out in Silverwater, just outside of Sydney, last Monday. As I detailed last week, Ken picked me up at the train station and showed me around the CAE facility and cockpit, then the safety briefing started.

“Should we lose power and the gangway not extend to the sim, the escape hatch and rope are just outside of the cockpit,” Ken explained.

“Furthermore, if anything goes wrong during the flight, emergency stop buttons are here, here and here.” He pointed to a spot next to each seat and to two on the wall of the cockpit. “But you won’t have to hit those — I’ll have probably already reset the system once you realize something has gone wrong. Now, grab a seat.”

Pulling my SLR camera out of its bag and stepping towards the left seat, I paused, and turned to my companion, thinking that it would be best for me to film part of the experience before taking my turn. And that’s when the lights turned off and everything ground to a halt. Think of the noise you hear when a subway or train shuts down, it’s eerily quiet and something doesn’t sound right. Or the sound of broken dreams. That’s the one. I had pressed the emergency stop button with my shoulder when I turned around.
Note, that there are two emergency stop buttons on the wall of the cockpit: there’s the “turn off the movement and relax” stop and then there’s the “pull the plug on thirty computers, rip the circuit boards from the machine and stomp on them” stop. That second one is the one that I pressed.

“No worries,” said Ken, “this has happened before.” And as we left the cockpit, he gave a nervous chuckle. “We’ll be up in no time.”

Ah, but we weren’t. After an hour of pulling circuit boards out of the machine, two techs determined that they might have to order another board. My session and a later, real pilot’s session were definitely canceled.

Later that evening I got a text message from Ken saying that they figured out the problem after replacing two circuit boards, and that I should swing back as soon as I could. But by that point I was already headed towards Auckland.

Maybe next time, V Australia.

Model’s boyfriend puts the “bang” in Bangalore

by Tom Johansmeyer on

It always starts with a drunken model. Always. Cover girl Sarah Hannon was beyond furious when awaking to find her boyfriend, Daniel Melia, engaged in a “sex act” with the woman next to him. It sounds like he had a middle seat and liked it!

Hannon fell asleep on a nine-hour flight from Bangalore to London, as anyone would hope to do on such a long flight. Oh, and having bent elbows with boyfriend certainly helped. Melia’s libido, however, resisted the powers of both fatigue and alcohol, and next seat neighbor, Clare Irby, was happy to help him out.

The alleged performance occurred under a blanket, and Melia and Irby thought nobody was the wiser … until a flight attendant stopped them, impeding pleasure and likely ending a show for many passengers bored with the in-flight movie. This is when Hannon woke up and Hannon started screaming.

The model was furious and had to be calmed by the flight crew. When Kingfisher Airlines Flight IT001 touched down at Heathrow, police boarded the plane and arrested all three. Melia and Irby were pinched for alleged indecency, while Hannon was nabbed for being drunk on an aircraft. All three made bail.

The local cops had little to say but got it right: “They certainly put the bang into Bangalore.”

[Via news.com.au]

Could a “paperclip” mean the end of the armrest wars?

by Scott Carmichael on

We’ve all been there – battling with your seatmate for that 2 inch wide piece of plastic that separates you. I have no idea what airline seat designers were thinking when they decided to design the armrest the way it is, but it sucks.

Of course, the current armrest was designed years ago, and part of the design consideration was that it could hold an ashtray, something that nobody has needed on an airplane for a long time.

A new design called the “paperclip armrest design” may finally bring a workable solution to the problem. The spit level design offers some armrest space for each passenger.

The concept was designed by Jame Lee, a 25 year old management trainee with Cathay Pacific Airlines. It isn’t actually available for airplanes yet, as it is awaiting patent approval.

The main problem I see with the design is that it does not leave any room for the headset connector or recline button. Then again, given how many passengers hate having a seat reclined in their face, that button may be the next thing on the chopping block.

Slash flies Northwest/Delta

by Grant Martin on

One of the few advantages to being in an airplane almost every weekend is that sooner or later, you run into someone famous. That’s what happened last night on my way back from Los Angeles, where boarding my 757 I was pushed out of the way by an eager flight attendant carrying two guitar cases labeled “Slash.” As I pointed them out, one guy next to me suggested that the real Slash was probably on a private jet somewhere, so I boarded and turned to 5A without much further thought.

Sure enough, right before departure the guitar player from Guns n Roses and Velvet Revolver darted onto the plane and into the first class seat right behind me, 6A. I poked the dentist next to me and gestured over my shoulder — “Slash.” She didn’t follow, so I pulled it up on my iPhone and pointed again. That perked her up.

Over the course of the redeye flight I slept most of the way, and only wandered by a few times to see Slash playing with his own iPhone and drumming on my seat. Other than that he was really friendly and gabbed with the guy next to him for a quite some time.

After learning my lesson for taking a picture of Michael Phelps without permission last year, I decided to ask for a photo this time, and Slash was kind enough to pose with my seatmate, the dentist, in the boarding area just outside of the jetbridge.

In case you’re curious, that strap on his left shoulder is for his hat box, which he carried with him throughout journey .

Annoying mobile phone calls now possible on 27 European planes

by Scott Carmichael on

Here in the US, most of our airlines are rolling out WiFi Internet access to their entire fleet. For some reason, the European airlines seem more interested in bringing mobile phone access to their planes instead.

There are currently 27 planes out there with GSM mobile phone service, all part of a European Union trial. Last year, the EU granted permission for airlines to install the equipment, after extensive research into the safety of mobile signals in-flight. The service is installed on planes from bmi, TAP and Ryanair.

Personally, I think it is a horrible idea, and one I hope never reaches the US. I’m a huge fan of getting some work done during my flight, but to me that involves getting online, not talking gibberish to my “stock broker” or calling my family members and telling them how awesome the in-flight meal was.

Thankfully, the European airlines have put one very simple measure in place that will probably limit the amount of calls made during the flight – at just under $4 a minute, only the most insane or drunk passengers will spend any length of time on the phone.