Nine minutes of nostalgia from the BBC. Concorde’s first British flight from Filton to RAF Fairford on April 9, 1969 with a commentary by Raymond Baxter who was the voice of aviation for me when I was growing up.
World’s most alienating airport
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Airport was recently given the dubious distinction of being named the world’s most alienating airport by the Onion News Network which reports that passengers can expect an average delay of 31-hours while some unlucky passengers have waited for months to catch their flights. When an official airport spokesman was asked about the “situation,” he urged all passengers to follow “proper protocols” to avoid problems while anyone who wants to complain in writing is urged to send a letter to the hospital that they were born in…
Track head movements in FSX
Here is a cool video demonstrating the TrackIR head tracking device in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. (By the way, the ‘X’ stands for ‘ex’ as in ‘ex-parrot’ as in Microsoft shut down the FSX development team.)
Plane caught in power lines
The aviation video blog recently uncovered a video of an August 2008 incident involving a German couple in a light aircraft who managed to get caught in 380,000 volt power lines some 30 meters off the ground. The couple, who were unhurt in the incident, were left hanging upside down for 3 hours until rescuers safely extricated them from the aircraft. It is presumed that the couple then DROVE to their destination.
Mustangs for PPLs
“Twice the fun, speed and safety.” That’s the promise of flyMustang.com according to its boss, Ruchir Gupta. Offering charters, fractional ownership, low-cost seats on ‘dead-head’ positioning flights and self-fly shares in Cessna’s Mustang VLJ, the company offers PPLs the chance to fly P1 in a light jet without spending millions to buy one.
Most pilots considering the self-fly option will already have plenty of experience operating sophisticated aircraft. For example, a typical would-be flyMustang PPL customer might be stepping up from a Cirrus SR-22 and have 500+ hours with an instrument rating.
Training consists, initially, of a two-week course at FlightSafety in Wichita, Kansas for the $20,000 FAA SIC rating. (“Realistically, we’re expecting most flyMustang pilots to be FAA certificated,” says Gupta.) With additional hours, you can get a crew rating and start to log P1 hours rather than P/UT. Although the Mustang is certified for single-pilot operations, with flyMustang, you’ll always have an highly experienced pilot in the right seat. Like the second engine, a second pilot is a valuable safety feature.
The self-fly fractional ownership scheme isn’t cheap except when compared with the cost of buying and operating your own Mustang. Expect to pay $316,759 for a 1/10th share in a jet and €30,637 a year for fixed operating costs for a fully-managed AOC operator to insure, manage, crew and hangar ‘your’ plane. Hourly variable costs run to €810 plus flight costs such as crew hire, handling, preflight inspections etc. – perhaps another €600-1000 per flying day.
If flyMustang’s scheme takes off, it will give private pilots a rare and exciting chance to fly in the left-hand seat of a hot jet. And while the cost is high, the experience is sure to be priceless.
AVweb’s Mustang preview
Stopped engine aerobatics
Amazing aerobatics by the legendary Bob Hoover. (Hat tip: Arsy.org)