Flight tracking for your iPhone or iPod Touch

by Brenda Yun on

If you’re a frequent flier and an iPhone or iPod Touch user, then you’re in luck. The latest version of Appropos Mobile‘s FlightTrack application will likely save you a lot of time and spare you of some travel woes and headaches.

For just a few bucks, you can get up-to-the-minute flight arrival and departure information through the easy to use FlightTrack application. No longer will you have to check the internet or call the airline to make sure a flight is delayed or cancelled. The user-friendly application will give you the most accurate information for you, the busy traveler. You can even check your own flight status and altitude in the air!

As an added bonus, FlightTrack Pro teamed up with TripIt, the online trip planner, to serve as your very own personal assistant. Once you plug in your travel details, the application will automatically keep up with and inform you of your latest and upcoming whereabouts.

The FlightTrack application has consistently ranked among Apple’s top travel applications, so there’s something to be said about user satisfaction. To find out more about FlightTrack or to download the application, visit this site.

Tune in for the V Australia 777 Launch

by Grant Martin on

The world’s newest Transpacific carrier takes delivery of their first Boeing 777 aircraft this week, as executives from V Australia and Virgin converge in Los Angeles for the ceremony. Tomorrow afternoon, Richard Branson and top brass will pick up the aircraft in Washington and shuttle it down to LAX, where a fanfare of media pawns, cocktails and schmoozing will welcome the group.

On arrival, we’re welcome to browse through the aircraft, drinking in the succulent Business Class seats, crawling through the lavs and measuring seat heights, widths and pitches. Yours truly and the Cranky Flier will be there, and unless the latter gets us kicked out of another Virgin event we should be tweeting through the evening (EST) and sending updates.

What do we expect to see? Well, a few pictures of economy and economy plus have already been leaked to the internets, but what we’re really looking for is leg room, video screens (the service is purported to use the same RED system that Virgin America uses,) business class amenities and general ambiance of the aircraft.

Anything else you want to see? Shoot us a comment or a tweet and we’ll try to collect some good content.

FAA releases US Airways flight 1549 ATC transcripts

by Scott Carmichael on

Sorry if our constant coverage of the US Air flight 1549 crash is beginning to bore you – but it isn’t often that a plane ditches in a river, and everyone is able to walk away.

The news today comes courtesy of the FAA, who just released the air traffic control transcripts of the actual event.

The audio is pretty boring, so I cut out the most interesting part where the controller is told by the pilot that he’s going to ditch in the Hudson river (as you can see in the image above).

If you really want to hear the conversation, you’ll find the MP3 file here, or a written transcript here.

Apparently you can’t strip in airports

by Mike Barish on

You’re late for a flight. Your clothes are wet and filthy. You have a change of clothes with you in the airport. What do you do? If you said, “find the closest restroom and put on your fresh duds,” then you are well on your way to staying out of jail in Salvador, Brazil.

It seems that two German tourists decided to just strip down and change their clothes in the middle of the Salvador airport. The two travelers said that they thought it “was normal” to change clothes like that in Brazil. Because it’s always Carnaval in Brazil, even at the airports.

Surely they must have had a good reason for attempting to get out of their clothes so urgently. Well, “one of them got wet during a boat trip and the other felt sick and vomited during the same trip earlier in the day.” Wait. He didn’t think to change his clothes immediately after vomiting? Did he spend the rest of the day in the vomit-covered shirt and only think to change when he got to the airport? How chunky was the vomit?

They have been charged with obscenity and could face up to a year in prison, where stripping down will have even worse repercussions.

No word yet on whether they continued to wear their German uniform of wool socks with sandals.

[Via Sydney Morning Herald]

Australian man nabbed at customs for smuggling live pigeons in his pants

by Jeffrey White on

Folks, file this one among the stranger tales of customs violations you’re likely to hear.

Australian customs officers recently stopped a 23-year-old man from Melbourne who was attempting to smuggle two live pigeons from Dubai into the country by strapping them to his legs.

Customs officers were already suspicious of the man’s bags — which they found to contain two bird eggs and several undeclared eggplants, according to reports — and when they pulled him aside they found that he was wearing special tights under his pants that concealed a live pigeon down each leg.

One wonders whether at a critical moment the helpless little things didn’t let out a last-ditch oorhh! to earn their deliverance.

What’s going to happen to this guy? A spokesperson for Australian Customs told local media that he is likely to face various smuggling and quarantine violations, which carry fines exceeding $100,000 and which could land him in jail for as many as 10 years — to say nothing of the fact that he is now officially pigeonholed as a complete moron.