My FIL flew “over the hump” as he called it many times during WWII. His hearing loss dated from about that time, too. I think his plane was pressurized, but not very pressurized. If they could do it 70-some years ago I would think they could do it now, even better. Obviously though my FIL was not on any kind of commercial flight.
1/2 price if it’s not an emergency.
But they lost a lot of planes flying the Hump. Mostly to weather, since the cargo planes of that era couldn’t fly high enough to get above the monsoons.
That’s fascinating and terrifying. I wonder how they choose the first pilot to try it? Do they have commercial jet test pilots?
I recall reading about the time when China was first opening up to the West in the 1980’s. Boeing went there to sell jets to replace/supplement the Soviet models. They were discussing weight/take-off run calculations for Tibet airports to determine what the airliners performance requirements were. There was a bit of confusion, but what they eventually figured out that with the Soviet passenger jets, the pilots had a mark on the runway. If they passed that mark not yet airborne, they had room to jam on the brakes and go back to the terminal and remove some passengers and baggage and try again.
My WAG is that the reason not many passenger flights go over there is because they don’t need to. There are not a lot of flights from India to China at this time, nor from Indochina to central Asia. Flights such as Thailand to Europe can probably just as easily fly along the Ganges valley. So not because they can’t but because there’s no need to take the risk if they don’t need to.
In the discussion about the missing Malaysian Air plane - one theory I’ve seen is that the pilots’ oxygen cylinder failed, spraying pure oxygen in the electronics bay and setting off fire alarms, before puncturing the fuselage (a similar oxygen tank failure and depressurization hole happened on another plane a year or two earlier.) The pilots put on oxygen masks and turned back while turning off circuit breakers (standard procedure in a electrical fire). By the time they finished this and realized they were not getting oxygen, they pass out and the plane carries on with autopilot. The passengers, said this theory, had about 15 minutes of oxygen from the drop-down masks before they too passed out. the only question is whether they froze or died from hypoxia, or regained consciousness hours later as their jet glided down toward the sea in the middle of nowhere… And supposedly it went in a straight line, all the confusion about direction changes is attributed to the local armed forces being unwilling to admit how poor their radar coverage was.
I assume that is only if the oxygen is used, not for every flight?
I’d guess that they started with smaller turbo prop planes that are easier to guide in. Fly them as though they have the handling performance of a jet, but actually have a bunch of margin in case things aren’t going well.
That is pure speculation on my part, though, if anyone knows better, I’d enjoy being corrected.
That’s sounds like how my dad determined if we were overweight on our vacation trips.
WTF are you talking about? There are multiple flights to China from half a dozen Indian airports and 3 Pakistani ones.
In addition flights to China from the Gulf hubs (Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai) of which there are multiple per day all fly over the Himalayas.