Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts
These aviation acronyms come courtesy of Genghis the Engineer who recently posted them on PPRuNe (Professional Pilots Rumour Network):
GPS – Grown-up’s Playstation System
IFR – I Follow Roads
IMC – I’ve Mucked up and can’t C
NOTAM – NO you Twit! Another Mistake
VMC – Virtually Meteorologically Clear(One from my military past)
NIMROD – NIcompoop Management Ruined Our Design
Christoph Niemann, whose illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration, has created a hilarious visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a short layover in London). We are only posting the first installment but you can see the entire visual diary on his blog here.
Fitting and oddly moving tribute from Jeppesen to the US Airways Flight 1549 crew. Hat tip: Fly with Blake.
In these tough economic times, the Onion has recently reported that Boeing has laid off the only guy who knows how to keep wings on an aircraft:
Boeing Lays Off Only Guy Who Knows How To Keep Wings On Plane
CHICAGO—With the airline industry continuing to suffer under the ongoing recession, the Boeing Company was forced Monday to lay off Al Freedman, the only guy left at the corporation who knows how to keep wings from falling off planes. "We used to have a whole team of engineers who knew how to make the wings stay on, but those days are long gone," Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. said. "We’ll make it work, though. The wings are not necessarily the most important part of the plane, anyway." McNerney added that at least they were able to save the job of the guy who knows how to prevent jet engines from exploding.
Last year, Skyscanner.com, a discount flight website, scoured its database of more than 10,000 airports around the world and picked a few of them that were found to be the funniest, rudest or weirdest sounding airport names. On the list are:
Batman Airport (BAL), Turkey
Useless Loop Airport (USL), Australia
Mafia Airport (MFA), Tanzania
Moron Airport (OZP), Spain
Desolation Sound Airport (YDS), Canada
Deadhorse Airport (SCC), USA
Atlanta Beaver Ruin Airport (JAO), USA
Hence, we would like to ask our readers: Are there any other airports that you can think of that were left off of this list?
Hat tip to Ted for posting this joke on the Plastic Pilot blog last year:
A USAF C-5 Galaxy is being escorted across the Atlantic by an F-16. The F-16 pilot is feeling rather proud of himself and executes a roll just off the wingtip of the much larger C-5. The conversation that followed is priceless:
Fighter Jock: “What’dya think of that?”
C-5 Pilot: “That was alright… but just watch this…”
Ten Minutes Elapse…
C-5 Pilot: “What’dya think of that?”
Fighter Jock: “Like what?”
C-5 Pilot: “I just got up, stretched my legs, took a piss and grabbed a cup of coffee…”
Fighter Jock: “Oh…”