Spend the night in a Jumbo without leaving the ground

by Scott Carmichael on

In December, Stockholm airport will be home to the first Boeing 747 hostel in the world. This 747-200 was built in 1976 and is currently being converted into a 25 room hostel with 3 beds per room.

Each room features a flat panel TV, wireless Internet access and a shared shower/toilet facility. The upper deck of this 747 has several more luxurious rooms with their own bathroom facility. For the ultimate in overnight luxury, you will even be able to spend the night in the cockpit, where you can enjoy a fantastic view of the air traffic at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport.

In addition to the 747 conversion, the developers are also building a restaurant and excursion area where visitors will be able to walk on the wing of the Jumbo. With the possible exception of working for the airline, or leaving the plane in an emergency, this will be the only time you’ll ever be able to do that!

And don’t forget – you don’t become a member of the mile high club unless you are at least one mile off the ground!

I’ve never been a big fan of hostels, but I’d most certainly make an exception for this one. The Jumbo Hostel will open its doors for reservations in December, in the meantime, why not enjoy some of the photos on their site.

Video of 747 struck by lightning

by Grant Martin on

It’s nice to know that if your 747 gets struck with 40 kiloamperes of electricity that it can keep on trucking. Aircraft are designed to withstand lightning strikes (if not multiple lightning strikes), although various small amounts of damage can occur. As one 747-400 pilot at the Professional Pilots Rumor Network (pprune) commented, “the auto-pilot dropped out and a few minor systems were temporarily lost” after a lightning strike on his aircraft, but shortly after that everything resumed.

Lightning strikes happen fairly often on commercial aircraft, but rarely is the event caught on film. This ANA 747 was hit just after take off, which can be a critical time during operation, but everyone and the aircraft survived just fine.

Rich heiress builds California house out of scrap 747

by Grant Martin on

Your house is definitely not the coolest on the block unless its made out of jumbo jet pieces. Francie Rehwald, daughter to a family owning multiple Mercedes Benz dealerships across California, just started construction on her new house made completely out of fragments of a scrapped Boeing 747. For forty thousand dollars, Rehwald purchased the pieces from an airplane junk yard in the Mojave Desert and after waiting over a year to get 17 permits pushed through the bureaucracy, finally just started taking delivery of wing segments.

The house and various surrounding structures will be built out of every single piece of the aircraft. In addition to the main 4000 foot square homestead, pieces like the nosecone will be used for a meditation pagoda while the tail will be used as a viewing platform for the surrounding area.

Rehwald, who says “I love to recycle, I love green houses and contemporary architecture, and I especially love nature and the natural environment,” apparently believes that this structure will be a sustainable, green alternative to conventional construction.

What’s interesting to me is that Rehwald still considers herself a staunch environmentalist in spite of the ruckus and cost involved. Sure, she’s recycling old materials to use for her home, but do the economic and environmental impact of moving the parts up to LA justify it? A helicopter costing $10,000/hour was required to move large sections of the wing, while several sections of the expressway had to be closed to move other parts up the coast. Would is just be better two melt down the aluminum and recycle it? It seems kind of selfish to me.

The biggest plane ever built

by Jerry Guo on

I just saw The Aviator, director Martin Scorsese’s 2004 blockbuster with Leonardo DiCaprio as aviation tycoon Howard Hughes.

It’s a pretty entertaining movie that really gives you a glimpse into the airline industry’s early days–when Pan-American was pretty much the only business in town. The story does feel a little dragged out and pretty early on, you already get the picture that Hughes is a bit of a nut.

One of the more relevant part is his development of the “Spruce Goose”, or more properly, “The Hercule”, quite frankly the world’s largest airplane ever built. At five stories and more than a football field in wingspan, this wooden plane (that’s right, it was made from wood because aluminum was too scarce during WWII) still beats out the Airbus A380 in size.

So the next time you’re on an Airbus, or even a Boeing 747, imagine if that whole thing was made out of wood–and made fifty years earlier.

Here’s a great graphical comparison.

BA 747 narrowly escapes a mid-air collision

by Martha Edwards on

I’m constantly extolling the virtues of flying, telling my fearful friends how safe it is — much more so than driving, suntanning, crossing the street, etc. So I always cringe a bit when I hear stories about plane crashes or near crashes. Like this one: A British Airways 747, bound for Johannesburg, narrowly missed crashing into a Argentinian747 in the airspace over Marseilles, France, much to the horror of those looking on.

The incident happened in late September, but has only been revealed now. Witnesses claim that the whole thing has been hushed up. It’s thought that French air traffic control is to blame, but further investigation will hopefully determine the cause for sure.

Luckily, it all ended ok, but other close calls might not be so lucky. Hopefully whoever is at fault has learned their lesson.

See also:

Why not fly in style? Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380 has full size beds! Check it out:

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