Man attacks C-130 with axe:
Photos of damaged KC-135 tanker transiting Mindenhall in Britain.
That seems like a unit matchup out of some Civ IV campaign.
“Speed tape” is super duper aluminum duct tape. It’ll stick at Mach speeds. Useful for all sorts of minor holes & dents. Doubly so with a little silicone caulk.
“If it’ll start, we’re leaving”.
For those who are curious, AOPA video with the pilot:
link
Because too slow for speed tape?
Retiring Icelandair pilot does an unauthorized low (100m) pass over his hometown in a B757 on his last flight before retiring
At least he didn’t run aground like this show-off hero: Francesco Schettino - Wikipedia.
One might have been able to get away with that kind of silliness in the 1970s and before. Now? Fugeddaboudit. OTOH, unless they can press some sort of criminal charges, there’s probably not much sanction the company or the authorities can actually apply to the guy. Revoke a license he’ll never use again anyway? etc.
The name and reputation he’ll leave for himself amongst his co-workers won’t be improved by this, but he may have the satisfaction of having put one over on the company. If he’s into that kind of thing.
CNN: The double-level airplane seat is back with the ‘ultimate, final statement’ design
Q: What did no redneck ever say?
A: “I can’t fix that with duct tape.”
That looks like a terrible idea for many different reasons. It requires the removal of the overhead storage bins – to be replaced by what? The lower level would feel claustrophobic to many, yet has a great deal of wasted space above it. And if a passenger chooses to recline the seat and stretch out their legs, how on earth would any passenger in any inner seat get past them? And the upper seats would likely not have any usable windows, which also tends to feel claustrophobic. Plus, the lower and upper seats appear to have quite different features, which poses marketing, pricing, and seat allocation complications.
I admire passionate inventors on general principle but I can’t believe any airline would seriously consider this idea.
Apparently not.
Agreed.
It legitimately can be hard to see runway directly below from passenger seats until you’re right down close to touchdown. And for sure they’re not seeing it up ahead or astern. So you might be able to conduct a 300 or 500 foot low pass along a runway and have none of the passengers have a vantage to see that particular runway at any time.
But for damned sure it’s easy to see the rest of the trappings of an airliner airport alongside as you go over it. Hangars, terminals, other runways, other airliners taxiing about, etc. If you’re actually going over such an airport.
Here’s a map of the area:
Here’s a cite of an interior vid shot by a pax looking out the right side of the airplane. Video from inside the Icelandair 757 that preformed an unauthorised low pass over Vestmannaeyjar 2 days ago : r/aviation.
It’s very informative.
The pilot began near the northeast corner of the island flying in a west-southwestery direction. They passed ~1/4 -1/2 mile south of the long inlet and harbor over the northern ~1/4 of the town. As he continued southwesterly just as the town (and vid) was coming to an end you’ll see a soccer field with a set of bleachers on the close side. Which are easy to locate in Google’s overhead map more or less at the northwest corner of town adjacent to those hills.
Notice the plus-shaped airport at the southwest area of the island. Which he was most emphatically not directly over during the maneuver. Further, that airport’s runways are much too small / short to accommodate a 757. Wiki tells me that when that airport has airliner service, which is only intermittently, it’s done with small turboprops, not jets. The island is only a couple of miles offshore from mainland Iceland and there is established year-round ferryboat service.
Another video, an external view of that 757 from far away, claims the plane was “under 2000 feet”. The plane is quite far away which makes it hard to judge the altitude, but the previously linked video filmed by a passenger from inside the plane looks more like the 300 to 500 ft that @LSLGuy mentioned. I’m no expert, but having leaped out of airplanes at 3000 ft I know what that looks like, and this was way, way lower than that.
Another thing that mystifies me is that even if this wasn’t a revenue flight, there would have to be a co-pilot on that class of plane. So even if the captain was retiring and didn’t care about the consequences, the co-pilot would also be implicated. Sure, the captain has ultimate authority, but that surely doesn’t apply to crazy illegal stunts!
The original news articles said 100m ~= 350 feet. From the vids I saw, that’s not too far off, as a point of lowest approach.
My 500 came from a general observation about go-arounds or missed approaches or whatever. Overflying an airport at those altitudes is normal. And passengers won’t be able to see (or video) a bunch of the airport directly under them from that altitude. I was not intending to suggest 500 feet had any relevance to that particular flight. Sorry to confuse.
As to your other point:
The co-pilot there is in a very bad spot. A bad spot the Captain put them in. No great answers there. I don’t know what sort of investigation the Icelandic authorities will do, nor how public their results will be. If there ever is a public report, that part will make especially interesting reading. To the degree there is any follow-up news media interest in this case it’ll be interesting to see what the airline does with the FO. A temporary suspension during the investigation, some ritual retraining, and back to work suggests they did what they could to stop the stupid; which wasn’t enough in the face of determined opposition. the FO being fired suggests they were somewhere between supine and complicit.
I’m reminded of a joke from the 3-person crew era, and especially the pre-CRM era when Captains were unquestioned masters of all they survey.
Q: What’re the three things you never want to hear inflight?"
A: A Captain says “Hey boys, watch this!”. A First Officer says “I’ve got an idea!”. A Flight Engineer says “Oh, oh shit!”.
It’s definitely going to be a bad day at work if any of those get said.
Followed by “I think we’re in trouble” and then, “Never tell me the odds!”
(From here, of course: https://youtu.be/60dFh008LKo?t=48)
Any of you pilots have any views on WTF?
“Meow … meow!”
The animal sounds heard over an air traffic control frequency were not from a cat loose on the plane, but human pilots making animal noises.
The meowing occurred over an air traffic control frequency at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on April 12. The audio was recorded and obtained from ATC.com.
The pilots were quickly scolded, with someone else on the frequency saying, “You guys need to be professional pilots.” The scolding was met with more meows and barks.