# "How was your flight?" - "A bit bumpy above the Azores, but fine otherwise." **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 2, 2017, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-your-flight-a-bit-bumpy-above-the-azores-but-fine-otherwise/803320 "2017-12-02T08:55:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-your-flight-a-bit-bumpy-above-the-azores-but-fine-otherwise/803320/41 "2017-12-04T16:31:36Z")
When I ask people this I’m looking for travel tips, to be perfectly honest. Did the food suck? Was the security screen a nightmare because you weren’t informed about…? Did you not realize you could get to terminal four from…? Parked in totally the wrong place! Definitely should have got there earlier, the lineups were a nightmare! Stuff like that. Although I am equally amused to hear about the old lady beside you who couldn’t speak a word of English but keeps trying to get you to fix her phone, for some unknown reason! (My last flight! Fortunately a young man across the aisle fixed it, she wanted to take a photo, even though he wasn’t really sure how he did it! Still fun!) Plus, I want to know if you really could use a drink, or desperately just need a cup of tea, are ravenously hungry or need to stop for Tylenol. Like, please, please, right NOW ! Ima def help you with that, so I’m gonna ask for sure! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-your-flight-a-bit-bumpy-above-the-azores-but-fine-otherwise/803320/42 "2017-12-04T18:29:57Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > I gotta disagree with this. These days every seat has a video monitor that feeds a constant stream of visuals and info about the flight, it’s path, speed, altitude, time at destination, time to arrival, even the view from the nose for take off. And people watch them. A lot. > > (I personally find the take off view unsettling but can only avoid it by closing my eyes because it’s on almost every screen!) Of course it’s not a real vid out the front. Just a perspective overlay on Google maps or whoever vs the airplane GPS position, minus some time lag. I like watching the landing on the vid screens and seeing the video touch down 100 yards short & 20 yards right of the runway image. The usual cause is the GPS-derived altitude is sloppy, and the surface geoid of the map is low resolution, so the computed descending flight path intersects the computed surface level in the wrong spot. Looks bad on the vid, but somehow the pilots don’t fall for that old gag and the airplane is really in the right spot on the runway. Such fun. > [@Cabin\_Fever](#): > > Try a C-130. Not only do they have a serious lack of in-flight entertainment, good luck with finding the restroom. 🙂 They have a perfectly adequate shitter. The infamous “$600 toilet seat” (which was really a large fiberglass housing for all the toilet tank & machinery) is/was a C-130 part. > [@elbows](#): > > When I ask people this I’m looking for travel tips, to be perfectly honest. Did the food suck? Was the security screen a nightmare because you weren’t informed about…? Did you not realize you could get to terminal four from…? Parked in totally the wrong place! Definitely should have got there earlier, the lineups were a nightmare! > > Stuff like that. > … # Sounds like your idea of travel tips is really “airport tips.” To each his own. In movies of a certain era, the point of the OP dialog is entirely to add a touch of glamour to the jet-setting characters. Just as it was commonplace to show a quick bit of stock footage of a Pan Am 707 lifting off or touching down. Or, ref [this old post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5214347&#post5214347), some B-52 landing gear. 🙂 Nowadays the flying part is so humdrum no movie or TV show would waste even 10 seconds talking about or showing the transportation. Ref \*\*elbows \*\*just above, if they say or show anything, it’ll be something referencing hassles & crowds at airports. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-your-flight-a-bit-bumpy-above-the-azores-but-fine-otherwise/803320/43 "2017-12-04T18:48:47Z")
Sorry, but it is a real video out the nose, on the flights I’ve seen it on. There’s no overlay, it’s pretty clearly actual video of the view out the front, you can see the runway speeding up beneath you, and the runway sink away as it lifts, and the surrounding landscape. It’s very clearly an actual video, (Long haul, big planes, usually Asian carriers) Since I’m travelling through airports I count airport tips as travel tips, they save me headaches so I’m very happy to have them.😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-was-your-flight-a-bit-bumpy-above-the-azores-but-fine-otherwise/803320.md?page=2)