If only Kevin Smith was a poster here.
I took that flight but from Liberia to San Jose. San Jose was socked in with fog so they where going to go to an airport nearby… They rubber-banded a GPS to the control yoke so the pilot could find his way. Really odd now that I think back about it. Something must have been messed up with the nav computers on the plane. I think it was a dehavilland DHC 6 twin otter. Nature Airlines. It was… interesting. My Wife did not think it was funny at all.
IANA airline pilot, but I don’t think large aircraft have a ‘nav computer’. (I’m not sure what a ‘nav computer’ would be.) For navigation you have a magnetic compass, a directional gyro, and VOR receivers. LORAN and DME were popular for a while. Dad had them in his Skylane. He had an ADF in his Skyhawk, but I’ve only seen those in older (pre-mid-'70s mostly) airplanes. Granted you could (can) couple an autopilot to your LORAN or VOR + altimeter, but that’s not really a ‘nav computer’. On something like a ‘Twotter’ on a short flight, I see no problem navigating with a VOR and a sectional chart.
In any case, I actually wanted to allay any concerns about a GPS attached to the yoke. Portable, yoke-mounted GPS are quite common on General Aviation aircraft. There’s often a lack of panel space, and that’s the only place to put them. Since many DHC 6s were built before 1989, it’s reasonable to assume that many of them don’t have GPS built into the panel. (No reason you can’t reconfigure a panel to accommodate one, but it’s expensive.) So my assumption would be that the GPS on the yoke was a convenience.
It’s irritating that they don’t name the airline. What would be the possible ramifications if he’s not making shit up?
If there’s an airline that flies out of Ireland that forces people over 20 stone to buy an extra ticket I’ve never heard of it. How do they check? Have they started weighing passengers at check in nowadays?
They did that in one of the flights I took: the pilot was newish and the copilot a veteran of the route. I figured it was basically the same as a driver switching a Tomtom on when driving to a not-very-familiar location: it’s just an extra data point, a third way to calculate where you are (the two pilots are ways #1 and #2). None of my GPS has been built-in, but man, that nice lady inside is a lot better at reading maps than my usual copilots!
At what point do being squished by your seat mate combined with the vibration of the plane make it frottage? Just askin’.
This^^^^^
I am not a bit happy about the number of pilots that can’t use a map even adequately.
Without it’s precise calculations you could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?
Just a guess, but if it were anyone it would be RyanAir
I don’t see how the non adjacent seats are a problem. All he has to do is say to the guy next to him “I have an empty seat two rows back, wouldn’t you be more comfortable there than here?” and bingo, two empty seats side by each.
Unless the guy sitting next to him is being asked to give up an isle seat for a center seat. Sure, he may end up being more comfortable in the center seat but he may wonder why he should have to ‘downgrade’. It strikes me as a very half assed solution by the airline. It seems to me that they were more concerned with getting more money from the customer than really solving the problem.
Most international airlines I’ve flown with won’t allow you to change seats at will; it has to be agreed by cabin staff.
It’s also not easy to change seats - you have to be buckled in for the first twenty minutes or so, for example, and it’s probably only then that you realise changing seats is necessary.
(Bolding mine) In light of the thread title, that’s *precisely *what it was… **BOOM! **
If (and I suspect they don’t) RyanAir have such a policy it isn’t well known no enforced in my experience. Speaking as a fat lard the last time I boarded a RyanAir flight I had no interaction with any of their staff until I was right at the gate.
Or if said guy was traveling with his wife or kid and thus wouldn’t want to split his travel group up.
At a minimum, they should require at least one of the two seats not be a center seat.
What are you defining as “normal sized”? I’m 5’7" and 175 pds and have no trouble fitting comfortably into an airline seat.
They also have a special XL class, with more room.
I have a solution for that. make the seats with side slats so each person gets the space they paid for. I’ve been the center of a fat person sandwich before and it was not pleasant. The bulk of the person on either side of me spilled into my personal space. I had to sit with my arms folded in the whole flight. I looked like the guy in the Jimmy John’s commercial.
