Priceless Paintings from W7

Modern flying machines are incredible high-tech machines. We all heard news of some flight computer taking over from the pilot, or pilots being overwhelmed by the complexity of the in-cockpit displays, the board computer having shut down, being lost, being too firmly in control, etc.

How fascinating that the switch panels in the service areas still look as if they were designed and made by the time of the Apollo 11 mission: big mechanical switches, secured to the aluminium front panel with thin 14mm nuts, simple lamps in different colours, engraved labels.

I guess there just never was a need to upgrade those panels, and it is probably just fine to control the cabin lights or the coffee machine with a good old switch which doesn’t need a reboot, and comes without the ramifications of computerized equipment in safety gear.

I just like the discrepancy in style, and always admire those 1960s panels.

Thoughts, Travel flying

Quantas Airway’s brought me back fro Singapore to London with flight QF31, on board of a brand new Airbus A380.

I was seated in row 81 of 88, all the way back in Sardine Class. Even though the Business Class (upstairs) is probably much nicer, it’s too bad I can’t always fly A380 – even in Economy. It’s better in every aspect. Only a little bit better, but the sum of the small improvements make the whole experience nicer: it’s a little quieter. It offers a little more space in all directions, and it’s generally nicer (if you ignore the fact that 50% of the toilets were out of service). The reading lights are nicer, and so is the seat. The video system has a touch screen, so the remote control can stay parked in the armrest. Only little things, as I say, but the whole is nicer than your standard 20-year old aeroplane.

You’d expect that from a brand new shiny plane.

You wouldn’t expect that it can fly, though. Just consider the essential statistics:

450 passengers. 72 meter long, 24 meter tall. The cabin width is 6.5m, and the wingspan is 80 meter. Eighty meter, yes. A flying range of 14,800km and a weight of 560 tonnes. Man-made.

You’d think it impossible that this thing, this huge and heavy contraption of steel, aluminium, glas and plastic, can fly.

Yet it can, and wonderfully so. A-m-a-z-i-n-g.

Thoughts flying

Further on the subject of numbers and how they add up: For work, I travel fairly regularly between London and San Francisco. About 4 times a year, approximately 10 hours per leg of the journey, over the last 7 years. That makes it

4 trips/year x 20 hrs/trip x 7 years = 560 hours = 23 days 8 hours = 3 1/2 weeks

3 1/2 weeks, approximately, spend in total limbo, just in the air between London and San Francisco, neither here nor there. I am endlessly fascinated by this rather depressing fact.

More so: Orbitz reports 10 daily, scheduled, non-stop flights on that particular route alone. Some are code-sharing, so let’s say 8. Each flight takes approximately 10 hours, and each scheduled flight has a return flight in the opposite direction. Thus, there are 4 big planes, or over 1,000 passengers, in the air at all times, any time of the day and any day of the year, on that particular route alone. Isn’t that amazing?

Reminds me on the question how we’ll propel those aeroplanes in the not-so distant future. Still unanswered.

Thoughts flying, london, San Francisco