Musings for the entrepreneurially minded
Posted in Flying on Aug 24th, 2012
Jaycar Electronics is a great place to visit. Unfortunately for me whenever I go there to buy a $10 plug or something mundane I walk out with a handful of other stuff purchased on impulse. One day I was there to buy a HDMI cable and accidentally walked out with a Radio Controlled Helicopter. When […]
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Flying, Travel on Apr 3rd, 2012
On an American Airlines flight between Los Angeles and New York in December 2010, I looked into the seat pocket and found an information card on the inflight internet service that was available. Looking for a way to kill some of the time on this long flight and curious about what the internet performance would be […]
When travelling to Johannesburg, South Africa from Sydney, Australia you fly over Antarctica. Believe it or not this is the shortest distance between the two cities on two different continents. The flight path is what is called a “Great Circle” track. This means it is the shortest distance between the points and along the way […]
Posted in Flying on May 27th, 2011
On 4 November, 2010 Qantas flight QF32, an Airbus A380 outbound from Singapore, ran into serious problems when a turbine on its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine suffered an uncontained failure. The crew professionally dealt with the incident inflight and successfully landed the aircraft without serious injury. It is also very interesting from a flight operations/safety […]
Posted in Flying on Dec 13th, 2006
Back in the early 1990’s I had the opportunity to “jump seat” my way around the world on a Qantas 747. On occasion I took a video camera onto the flight deck and recorded various aspects of those flights that would be of interest to aviation enthusiasts. Below is a collection of those movies. Enjoy. […]
Posted in Flying on Jul 6th, 2006
In an earlier post (Explosive Decompression at Altitude) the discussion followed that if there is a hole in the aircraft or some other factor that creates a decompression when flying at altitude then first priority is to get down to lower levels where oxygen is richer. People have been asking what happens if you are […]
Posted in Flying on Jun 21st, 2006
Back in 2002 I was travelling between Sydney and San Francisco on a United 747-400 when it hit clear air turbulence. The resulting damage was quite severe with many people hurt with broken bones; in fact some people were knocked unconscious. Read the newspaper article here. United Airlines gave me this letter as an apology…
Posted in Flying on May 28th, 2006
A number of people have asked me about details of losing pressurisation in flight at altitude. Flight crews are trained to react quickly to situations were there is a loss of presurisation. The human body relies on pressure so that the lungs can work getting oxygen out of the air and into the bloodstream. No […]
Posted in Flying on May 27th, 2006
Recently I took my kids on a tour of Sydney airport run by a company called Airside Tarmac Tours (http://www.airsidetarmactours.com/) It was all very interesting stuff driving around in a bus inside the airport perimeter fence and seeing how Australia’s busiest airport works. One thing that really amazed me was this car lot we drove […]
Posted in Flying on May 19th, 2006
Wondered why airline food is so bland and tastes like rubber? When cruising at 35,000ft the cabin altitude is at about 8,000ft. Huh? We’ll basically the higher you go the lower the air pressure gets. In fact above 10,000ft the human body starts to have issues such as a reduced level of ability for the […]