118
helps prevent slips and falls
contains spills (your spilt soda won't ruin your neighbors bag)
more easily removed and replaced
helps reduce cabin noise
57
consider if you Google a flight number you can see the flight status, imagine if the number was from a past crash, you might for a moment think the one you're looking up had crashed
57
Interesting question!
In the background, a Lufthansa Boeing 747-400 can be seen. Therefore, I assume the airport is a Lufthansa destination. Since the 727 is not exactly a long range aircraft, but the 747 is, my first thought would be that the airport is in Germany.
I couldn't really see what livery the 737-200 in front of the LH 747 was, but soon in the ...
56
My experience, speaking as a pilot who had to retire in 1999 from a small 747 carrier when the US age 60 rule was in effect, was that NONE of us close to retirement wanted to retire. More often than not, the attitude was, "It's hard to believe they actually pay us for this." We didn't want to quit; we were at the top of our game; the world was our playground....
54
Airlines do care about your carry-on weight and even your weight. Many have carry-on weight limits, which low-cost carriers usually enforce, weighing the carry-on and tagging it as cabin luggage. Full-service airlines rarely bother.
One reason they don't measure your weight is that most people wouldn't feel comfortable getting weighed in front of strangers, ...
47
Ordering an aircraft is a very complex business, and implicates a number of matters that don't actually (on the surface, anyway) have anything to do with the aircraft itself. Consider this from the point of view of a western European or north American airline.
Broadly political obstacles
These could include:
international trade agreements and disputes (...
45
To answer the questions as asked,
We won't depart over the maximum takeoff weight. We'll do something to bring the takeoff weight down to not exceed the limit.
Generally, people fly as scheduled if at all possible, and as much as possible their bags go on the same plane that they do, and other cargo is a lower priority. There are exceptions; passengers ...
45
There is an easy way to get an idea of what magnitude the savings are: The Breguet equation can answer this. You first calculate a reference aircraft and then start all over with one that weighs 1% less. The difference in fuel consumption shows how much fuel is saved per flight.
Our reference design is the A320 which has an L/D of 18 and we let it fly a ...
42
Retiring flight numbers after crash is mainly done to prevent the flight evoking negative emotions among future passengers. You don't want the flight number to conjure up images of crash while booking tickets, especially in when you type the flight number and google shows up the wreckage just below the flight data.
Also, it would be quite insensitive, with ...
36
Yes. Ignoring companies that used to exist but are now bankrupt/merged into Airbus or Boeing, you have companies from countries that aren't historically too friendly with the US and Western Europe. For instance, Tupolev makes the Tu-204, which is currently in production and seats over 175 passengers. The Ilyushin-designed Il-96 is a widebody in current use ...
36
Quite a few, actually.
British Airways is the largest operator of B747-400 and flies a number of routes:
Where does the Boeing 747-400 fly?
The aircraft operates on a variety of routes, including:
Beijing Boston Cape Town Dubai Lagos
Las Vegas Mexico Miami New York (JFK)
Phoenix San Francisco Toronto
Air China operates both 747-...
36
Note that 747's and other jumbo jets operating out of Bradley could not have produced sonic booms because they do not fly above the speed of sound (they only do 500 to 550 MPH at high altitude cruise) and, in any case, far slower than that (~250 MPH) when near the ground as for landing and takeoff.
Therefore, whatever it was you heard, it was assuredly not a ...
34
X-Plane offers a "Professional Level" which is mostly about licensing. However X-Plane also has an FAA certified version that if paired with proper controls is legal for certain training/instructional hours. You can find more info on the FAA's approved simulators here and here. The flight school I trained at had a certified sim from the 80's that was pretty ...
33
The answer: High heels!
The local pressure of high heels would punch a hole in the aluminium or composite flooring, and a carpet is the lightest way to distribute the loads such that the local pressure from high heels can be tolerated. This is the real reason.
From Aircraft Structures Summary
On the floor of the fuselage also very high localized loads ...
31
The masks are connected to a chemical oxygen generator by a lanyard. Pulling the mask pulls the lanyard, which pulls a pin from the generator and starts the reaction. They typically last betweeen about 10 and 20 minutes, more than enough time to get down to 10,000 feet where additional oxygen is not required.
There is no need for a % of flight time since ...
29
Some reasons for an airline to sell some of its fleet:
they need quick cash (as ratchet freak points out). This usually means the company is in serious trouble
they're changing their route network and there's no more need for it (e.g. KLM dropped a lot of very short flights in the 1990s and early 2000s, and got rid of the aircraft that were operating them ...
29
I think Oceanic Airlines is well known fictive airline. It is used widely in Lost and also Alias, Castle, JAG, Category 6: Day of Destruction and in Executive Decision (the material from this movie was reused in a lot of low budget movies).
28
Being used but out of production:
Ilyushin Il-62 (up to 195 seats): last one built in 2010. Totally built 287, 13 remain in service
Tupolev Tu-154 (up to 176 seats): last one built in 2013. Totally built 923, 61 remain in service
Ilyushin Il-86 (up to 350 seats): last one built in 1995, since 2011 only in military use. Totally built 106, 4 remain in service
...
28
There are many airlines still operating the 747 in passenger service. Lufthansa has bought the 747-8, the last delivery was in April 2015, so I'd expect that the 747 will be in passenger service for at least another 20 years.
Here's your choice:
KLM
Lufthansa (both the Boeing 747-400 and 747-8)
British Airways
Thai Airways
Virgin Atlantic
Iran Air (747-...
28
There are still lots of 747's in scheduled passenger service and at least a few dozen of them will almost certainly remain so for the next 20+ years.
747-400
British Airways has 36 of them with retirement scheduled for 2024.
Virgin Atlantic has 8 of them with retirement beginning in 2019.
KLM has 14 of them
Qantas has 10 of them
China Airlines still has ...
27
There's also the "Snowbird" model, like Sun Country and Allegiant Air, which primarily fly vacationers and snowbirds between sunbelt (San Diego to Florida) and the Carribean, and the Northern snowbelt states (Maine through Washington State, and Canadian border cities). They are low-cost carriers, with few or no code shares, no connections, no free amenities, ...
26
Generally speaking:
They operate a limited number of airframes if not a single one (for example Ryanair operates 420 737-800's and only a single 737-700 for chartering). This allows them to buy planes in bulk as well as cut down on spare parts reserves, pilot proficiency training in multiple airframes and overall maintenance costs by only needing to hire ...
24
Actually, for all but very long haul flights, airline aircraft only require two pilots, a Captain and a First Officer. For those long haul flights that exceed the duty time in a pilot seat, a relief pilot is also carried.
Older aircraft often also had a flight engineer. Technically speaking the f.e. wasn't usually required to be a pilot, but he was a very ...
24
The main reason why turnaround times can be that short is that pilots brief all flights of the day in the morning before the first flight.
This briefing is typically done in the crew room at the airport where the pilots are based. It typically starts about an hour or more before the first flight since there is a lot to cover:
Routes: the flight routes for ...
23
One % of takeoff weight is huge. On a B747 with MTOW of 300 tons, that is a weight saving of 3,000 kg, weight that needs not be lugged around for the couple of decades that the aircraft will be flying.
At the aircraft factory where I used to work, there were Idea Boxes everywhere where one could deposit suggestions for weight savings, every kg saved adds to ...
22
The situation you described actually happened recently in flights to India from the Middle East. Many bags were simply left behind and carriers were making arrangements to transport them at the earliest. Reasons ranged from avoiding overweight and also the inability to reduce fuel being carried due to monsoons (implying more hover times) in Southern India.
...
22
Computer games try to model the aircraft based on generalized aerodynamic and physical principles and at best "feel". FAA and EASA certified full flight simulators are built with a data package purchased from the airframer, which uses their developmental models coupled with actual flight test data.
On top of that, full flight simulators do not simulate ...
20
You answered your own question, they retire numbers because of the emotional context. Some people think that using such a number again shows a lack of sensitivity to the dead and their families, others might think that getting on a flight with the same number would be bad luck. It's irrational, but many people would feel uncomfortable getting on a flight ...
20
IATA issues duplicate airline codes to regional airlines where the codes are not likely to overlap, from Wikipedia:
Controlled duplicates are issued to regional airlines whose destinations are not likely to overlap, so that the same code is shared by two airlines.
This happens because IATA uses a 2-letter code for for airlines which has a limited range ...
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