Investigators reveal cause of British Airways crash (hint: it was engine failure)

by Aaron Hotfelder on

We reported several days ago on a British Airways flight that crash-landed into Heathrow Airport on January 17. Now investigators have revealed the cause of the mishap, which resulted in no fatalities and was the first ever crash of a Boeing 777.

Just a few miles from the runway, at an altitude of about 600 feet, the pilot attempted to increase engine power to prepare for landing, but the computer-controlled engines didn’t respond. An attempt to do the same thing manually also failed, and in less than a minute, the plane skidded onto the runway. Several passengers were hurt– one seriously– though investigators are saying that the damage would have been much worse if not for the capable performance of the flight crew, especially co-pilot John Coward.

Now investigators are trying to discover whether this same sort of engine failure could occur on any other of the almost 700 Boeing 777s that are currently in operation.

That would be bad.

Actual Snakes on a Plane

by Anna Brones on

It’s happened before, both in a movie and in real life, but somehow snakes keep squirming their way onto planes, this time on a Vietnam Airlines flight from Bangkok to Hanoi.

On Thursday, authorities at Hanoi’s Noi Boi Airport discovered thousands of non-venomous snakes that had been shipped as cargo in 60 boxes. According to the Associated Press, Trinh Ngoc Thanh, Vietnam Airline’s spokesman, said that the boxes had been declared as carrying live fish. Unfortunately for the snakes, who had been packed in ice water, many died en route. Those who had made it alive were transferred to the Wild Animal Rescue center in Hanoi.

This isn’t the first time that Vietnam has had a snake shipment problem. Last month authorities found 1,540 pounds of dead snakes on a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok. Besides raising questions about cargo inspection at the Bangkok airport, it also points at an important wildlife issue; Ptyas Mucosus, the scientific name for the snakes, are a protected species, thereby implying illegal trade.

In any event, for those of you traveling through Southeast Asia, it might be a good idea to keep Samuel L. Jackson’s number on hand. He did do an impressive job dealing with those on-board snakes in the movie…

Inside of airplane “more beautiful than I ever imagined”

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Abha’s post from a couple days ago– “India’s rich pay to live like peasants“– reminded me of a story about essentially the opposite situation. An Indian businessman is selling plane tickets for a flight that never leaves the ground.

Why would someone want to buy a ticket for a permanently grounded flight? Well, maybe you’d pay the £2 too if you’d never been on an airplane before. The Times Online has the story on these “flights to nowhere” that are exposing some Indians to the “pleasures” of air travel:

“All they want is the chance to know what it is like to sit on a plane, listen to announcements and be waited on by stewardesses bustling up and down the aisle. In a country where 99% of the population have never experienced air travel, the ‘virtual journeys’ of Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer, have proved a roaring success.”

One young teacher relished her fake plane ride, saying, “It is much more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

There’s probably a lesson to be learned here somewhere.

Is sitting in the back of the plane safer than in the front?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

It might seem like whether a passenger sits in the front of an airplane or in the back won’t affect their chances of surviving a crash, because if the plane is going down, you’re screwed either way. But people do have their preferences, and on a recent 20/20, Gena Binkley and John Stossel (possessor of one good-lookin’ mustache) investigated whether those preferences really make sense. So do they? Is the back really safer than the front? ABC News has the scoop:

“‘I’ve heard this myth so many times and there’s just nothing to support it,’ said Nora Marshall of the National Transportation Safety Board. She has spent 24 years investigating plane crash survivability at the NTSB.”

An aviation analyst added: “We’ve got as many people who’ve gotten out of a front section of a jetliner as they have gotten out of the rear section… The best place, if there is a best place, would probably be next to the emergency exit, but even that isn’t proven out.”

And what about that bit of “common sense” that if there’s a plane crash, you’re out of luck no matter what?

“‘Even in the accidents that involve fire and major structural damage and, and include injuries, we still see that more people survive than are killed in the accident,’ Marshall said. She and her colleagues at the NTSB issued a report [pdf] that found that in most plane accidents in the United States, the majority of passengers on board survive.”

Check out this web video for the full investigation.

Personally, I’ve always heard that the drive to the airport is more dangerous than the flight itself, so I always become inexplicably nervous about the drive to the airport. Go figure.

Classic prank: going through security with a vibrator in your pants

by Jerry Guo on

I suppose everyone gets around to pondering this timeless question: what would happen if you stuffed a vibrator (turned on, for good measure) down your pants and then tried to go through security at the airport?

Well, here’s the answer you’ve been waiting for. John Hargrave, the cheeky trouble-maker who hacked the Super Bowl, found that it’s surprisingly easy to do. I won’t ruin the blow-by-blow account, which is here.

For an added bonus, if you’re a frequent driver on the Massachusetts Turnpike, John has found out that those toll-booths don’t really make you pay. This funny prank (in which at one point he tapes two pictures of the rapper 50 Cent to pay for a $1.00 toll) is here.