Official Aviation Thread...

[Mtriple]

Did I mention I work for an airport?

U2's plane when they were on tour a couple years ago. This is directly out my window.



Flew on this recently, nice plane.

[Maluco]

Did I mention I work for an airport?

U2's plane when they were on tour a couple years ago. This is directly out my window.



Flew on this recently, nice plane.

damn, that's cool.. I swear I would probably be happy for the rest of my life just waving planes into their gates or something that would allow me to watch planes land/takeoff/taxi around and smell jet fuel.

[Maluco]

Scare of a lifetime!

Air passengers' mid-flight terror as hole is blown in Qantas 747 fuselage; 20,000ft drop...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4395076.ece

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From Times Online
July 25, 2008


Air passengers' mid-flight terror as hole is blown in Qantas 747 fuselage









Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney


div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}Passengers on a London to Melbourne flight have described their terror after a faulty door "popped" in midair blowing a hole in the fuselage.
Qantas flight QF30, with 300 passengers and crew on board, plunged 20,000ft after the faulty door caused an "explosive" depressurisation.
The Boeing 747 had just taken off from a stopover in Hong Kong when the incident happened. As the plane dropped from 30,000ft to 10,000ft, oxygen masks fell from the ceiling.
Debra Manchester, a passenger in first class, said there was a "huge bang" and a "massive rush of wind," with debris swirling around the cabin. Mrs Manchester, a housewife from Buckinghamshire, said there was an atmosphere of chaos as passengers struggled to put their oxygen masks on.
"Newspapers and what looked like part of the ceiling flew past me. We didn't know what was happening to the plane. After a while things calmed down and there was a deadly silence. There was still debris all around our feet but we all started to feel a bit safer when we could take our masks off," she said.
Brendan McClements, an Australian businessman, said that when the passengers disembarked, they could see a large hole in the side of the plane on the "driver's side" - or right hand side of the fuselage. "We could see it from where we were standing and you could see straight through into the hold of the plane," he said.
Mrs Manchester added that luggage was "hanging out" of the hole where the hold had been, and that the emergency door above appeared to have come loose.
The passengers praised the actions of the pilot and crew. Mr McClements, 45, said: "The crew were terrific, they were really good, they kept everyone calm and told people what to do and helped people with their masks and things. Their reactions had a very calm effect on the other passengers.
"When the crew came off everyone applauded and when the pilot came off he got a round of applause too.
"The pilot said to us: ‘Look, we don’t really know what happened. There is a hole in the side of the plane and the cabin depressurised so we had to come down.’”
Mrs Manchester claimed that 20 minutes after the plane first took off from Heathrow, she heard a loud bang near the faulty door. "You have to wonder if that explosion could have caused the second one," she said.
Ding Lima, Manila airport operations officer, said: “Upon disembarkation, there were some passengers who vomited. You can see in their faces that they were really scared.”
Octavio Lina, the airport's deputy manager for operations, said the cabin’s floor gave way, exposing some of the cargo beneath and part of the ceiling collapsed. “There is a big hole on the right side near the wing,” he said, adding it was 2.5 to 3 yards (metres) in diameter.
Qantas is still trying to establish how the large hole came to appear in the fuselage. An emergency room has been set up at the airline's head office at Mascot airport in Sydney, where senior airline executives are being briefed by aircraft engineers.
A Qantas spokeswoman said: "Qantas can confirm that Qantas flight 30 from Hong Kong to Melbourne has been diverted to Manila . The aircraft is on the ground and is currently being inspected”.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been notified of the incident and its director of air safety is being briefed by Qantas officials.
Qantas 747 incidents:
March 30, 2008:
A cracked window forced a Boeing 747 from Perth to Sydney to make an unscheduled stop in Adelaide after the window ‘popped’. No-one was injured
March 26, 2008:
Qantas Flight 12 from Los Angeles to Sydney had to be stopped mid take-off following a ‘cockpit alert’. Many of the 217 passengers were thrown forward, but no-one was injured.
February 20, 2008:
Three of four electrical systems on a Qantas Boeing 747 approaching Bangkok from London were lost due to water leakage in the forward galley. Cabin crew used blankets to mop up the leak, and the jumbo was forced to land on battery back-up.
October, 2004:
A Qantas jet suffered engine failure shortly after take-off from Sydney airport. Smoke was seen belching from an engine after the 747 levelled out a few minutes into the flight. The pilot was forced to head out to sea to dump fuel before making an emergency landing.
July, 2003
Qantas passengers were injured after hundreds were ordered on to inflatable escape chutes to evacuate a jumbo jet the pilot feared had caught fire as it landed at Sydney airport from Frankfurt and Singapore.
1999
A Qantas plane aquaplaned off the end of the runway at Bangkok airport, crashing through navigational equipment and finishing across a perimeter road. The crash was the airline’s worst in 40 years and caused $A100million damage.









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[uofom3]

^
you beat me to it! should be interesting to see what they find out about that. glad everyone was ok.

[Maluco]

^
you beat me to it! should be interesting to see what they find out about that. glad everyone was ok.

haha, yes though, finding out the details is always interesting. It's always a sequence of events (yes, those damned events that happen in a sequence) which is what makes it crazy interesting. It would be awesome to be a crash/incident investigator for the NTTB! Air Disaster and Seconds From Disaster are awesome shows.

On a side note, with all respect to crash victims and their familes and those who suffer through these insane incidents, I have to say personally, it would be awesome to experience something like that and live to tell about it.

Without any trauma or post emotional symptoms of course.

[318kid]

Hey I'm bumping this, but Maluco did you see the P38 down in Dallas?

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/5957295_WJF8s#371458983_Tf7a4

Pretty Awesome... Although when I saw it, it wasn't stationary! Too bad it's going to Australia.



So Badass

[h0lmes]

damn, that's cool.. I swear I would probably be happy for the rest of my life just waving planes into their gates or something that would allow me to watch planes land/takeoff/taxi around and smell jet fuel.

I work line service at an airport. It was pretty awesome at first but it got boring after a while because it was mostly just the same planes coming and going. There is a p-51 based at the airport though which likes to show off once a month or so. God it gives me a boner every time.

[whiltebeitel]

Wow, just found this thread. My dad used to fly (sold the plane for medical bills)and I'm renting out a hanger to live in for the rest of the year. My neighbors are badass to say the least.

[Maluco]

Hey I'm bumping this, but Maluco did you see the P38 down in Dallas?

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/5957295_WJF8s#371458983_Tf7a4

Pretty Awesome... Although when I saw it, it wasn't stationary! Too bad it's going to Australia.



So Badass

wow, timely post, I just watched a show on, I think, National Geographic last night about how they excavated that plane out from underneath 20+ stories of glacier in Greenland. Awesome shit.

They had the Red Baron Fokker out at Oktoberfest in Addison over the weekend. Kaboom Town was ridiculous!!! Mad WWII planes in the air! I was fkng tripping! Seeing and hearing them fly by was one of the most awesome experiences I've had. All in my backyard! Addison frequently has insane vintage planes fly in on certain weekends.

[Maluco]

Wow, just found this thread. My dad used to fly (sold the plane for medical bills)and I'm renting out a hanger to live in for the rest of the year. My neighbors are badass to say the least.

I will pack my car to capacity with beers and head down as soon as you get the hanger!

[SpecM]

that p-38 is the hottness

[318kid]

that p-38 is the hottness

Ya too bad I only had the camera for the second run...






Maluco that Fokker is amazing... My neighbor just restored a Steerman... The sound it makes is so nice!

[Maluco]

riding around in the TRE before hopping on a flight to Paris...

[Maluco]

[Maluco]

Our bird, the 767 on the tarmac at Charles De gaulle airport. No 777 on this leg unfortunately. Once you go 777, everything else kinda sukz.