True, but I was thinking less about the load bearing of the surface but more about whether an aircraft "hull" is suitable for landing on snow, especially if the surface has hidden rocks.
I was in the very last row. Also took off late bc the incoming flight had someone on a stretcher and had issues offloading them. But I ended up sitting across from the giant metal stretcher.
20 min into the flight captain comes on and has everyone sit down and buckle in - flight attendants included. Can barely understand him even in English bc of the heavy accent.
Flight attendants start getting antsy. Speaking in French (no clue what), not allowing anyone to move. This lady came back to potty and they made her sit in the open seat next to the stretcher and buckle up. Wouldn’t let her pee or go back to sit with her husband. She and I are now trauma bonded. We cried out of sheer stress when we landed safely.
I put some smell good lotion on and they freaked out wondering where it came from. I told them and she even smelled my hands to make sure it was the right scent.
All the sudden the attendant stand up and start almost running down the aisle telling everyone to tighten their seat belts and start handing the passengers in the emergency exit rows pillows.
They sit back down and buckle in their 5 point harnesses and the lady I could see behind me was basically bracing herself under her legs with her hands and tapping her foot super nervously.
Absolutely terrifying.
We landed safely. Technical support people came out, fixed the window - and fixed the bathroom door, bc it kept falling off when someone opened it. And we left. And everything was fine. Like it never happened.
Are you sure about that flight number? According to FR24, that ties to AF7320, which is a Paris to Nice flight, and didn't happen on the 16th.
First thought would be that a window cracked. There are multiple layers to coughpit windows, and cracking of the outer layer is a non event. But, any cracking of an inner layer can compromise the window's strength. Issues with the window heating can lead to this.
QF142 AKL - SYD (18/10) took a more northerly route. Would this be indicating a MEL or something similar that required a longer route to stay within ETOPs limits?
Non-ETOPS is one hour of flight time, and it does look like that flight path would given them that using Norfolk Island. Previous flights of the same aircraft have had normal tracks. U/S APU perhaps?
I don't have the MEL available, so I can't say whether you'd even be able to get relief for a cracked outer pane. Any inner would definitely be a no go.
Yes, indeed, a very warm welcome to @Buckshot10. It would have been interesting to add up the flight hours, number of aircraft types flown (some overlap there of course) and years of military service sitting at your table at AFF#17 dinner last night.
Likewise by their employees. My wife worked at La Guardia working the Pan Am Shuttle (NY-DC-Boston I think it was). The job itself was great, she said, including the ID90 discount perks. But management, even down at her level, left a lot to be desired.
It's whatever the airline feels like calling it. Most don't have SOs, but they have new pilots who are immediately FOs. But, you'd never dream of leaving them by themselves, and they are very restricted in what they're allowed to do. QF's long haul FOs all needed to have a command endorsement for the aircraft on their licence, and that then let the company put them in charge whilst the Captain had a sleep. My guess is their senior FOs would have ticked the same sort of box with their regulator. There is no uniform differentiation. Other airlines have 'cruise Captains' who fill the same sort of role.
Not all airlines have SOs. QF is probably unusual in the way they do it, but it does work quite well.
And sometimes you don't see the runway until it's only a few feet away.
A while back I met a very enthusiastic SO and we had a chat on the flight. His descriptions of the 747-400's quirks, like increased thrust pushing the nose up due to the low centre line of the engines, as well as the ground effect on the tail plane during rotation and landing have stuck with me to this day. I think he was quite new and was keen to talk to anyone who knew less than he did.
Actually the 400 pitch effects were more gentle than those of the 200/300, especially the rotation effect. If you wanted to see pitch couple, then the 767 was the aircraft to fly.
I'm sure the system bashed that out of him.
When I joined it was 1,000 hours, but they weren't all that hard on it. I'm not sure what it is now, but I think we've had cadets with around 200 total hours. Bear in mind that SOs aren't even allowed in one of the front seats below 20,000 feet, so their total time doesn't matter all that much. They'll have plenty by the time they get a front seat. Again, back in my day, SOs were given much more opportunity to fly, with no arbitrary altitude limits.
I honestly don't know about that. I haven't heard anything like that happening before. The spoilers on the ends (closest to the fuselage and outboard near the ailerons) are the ground spoilers. After landing, the captain initiates the scan for the FO by retracting the speedbrakes. We don't have any idea of the individual panels, only if they are extended against thrust above a certain lever angle, and if they are armed.
