Free Flight Video Magazine

Will the future cockpit have a Nintendo Wii?

With recent stories of pilots being distracted while flying, one might think a Nintendo Wii is a bad idea to have in the cockpit. However we aren’t talking about playing Mario, it is for the health of the pilots. Most airliners are designed for the comfort of the passengers, but don’t think of the pilots. Each year airlines lose productivity and money due to pilots taking time off the job from back injuries. Graduate student, Nicoline van der Vaart, took a look at what future cockpits might look like to increase pilot comfort and reduce airline costs.

The concept is not just about improved seats, but also improved habits of pilots. Some of the suggestions are:
* Have personal sitting instruction
* Reference book with information and exercises
* Let pilots know about fitness opportunities at destination hotel
* Have a back review for pilots every six months

Van der Vaart looks at the present, 2nd generation and possible 3rd generation of cockpit comfort. The next step is to provide pilots with a better seat and instructions given above. The 3rd generation gets into some pretty cool stuff (ie: Nintendo Wii). In the future they will have super comfortable seats that will be able to be customized. The cockpit will remind pilots to change position and Nintendo Wii-Fit programs will keep the pilots active during long flight.

So next time you think you are in a cramped seat for a few hour flight, think of the pilots who are up front all day long. Hopefully in the future, pilots will have more comfort, less injuries and airlines will have lower costs and happier employees.

I found this interesting story on Mary Kirby’s Runway Girl blog, check it out! To see Van der Vaart’s entire presentation go here.

Source: David Parker Brown

I love plane spotting at the airport. Got 2 Delta A330's, 1 Korean B777, 1 Hainan Airlines A330, Tail of Air France A340, 2 Southwest B737's and a US Airways A321

I am currently at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for another adventure (I love their free Wi-Fi). Last weekend I was able to fly on a personal trip, but today’s trip is for the blog. Virgin America has recently announced new flights from San Francisco to Toronto, Canada.

The airline is having a special shin-dig early tomorrow morning and I am flying to San Francisco today, the on to Toronto early tomorrow morning. The flight to Toronto will have other invited guests, media peeps, CEO of Virgin America, David Cush, and the man himself Sir Richard Branson. That’s right. I will be locked in an airplane with daredevil, highly successful Sir Richard Branson…how cool is that?

You can join in on the fun with following my blog, Facebook and Twitter. If you normally use Twitter, be sure to follow the #VXToronto tag.

I have a few emails to get through before my flight boards, so I am off!

Source: David Parker Brown

Avianova Airbus A320-200 (EI-ELE)

If you haven’t heard about Spirit Airline’s new (and “omg shocking”) advertisements, they are causing quite a stir. They are once again stealing right out of the Ryanair hand book on how to get a load of free publicity.

What do I think about their ads? Well any airline that gets me blogging about their ads are doing something right, and I will leave it at that. If  Spirit’s new ad is too saucy for you? Well maybe you shouldn’t take a look at the Avianova ad found by Matt Molnar with NYCAviation.

Sure, advertising 101 teaches you that skin sells, but come on. Anything about routes? Amenities? Costs? Nope. Does this sort of advertising work? Well the airline industry has had a history of sexy advertising. This shouldn’t come as a surprise that both Spirit and Avianova have risky advertisements, they are both partly owned by the same company, Indigo Partners.

What are your thoughts? Are the ads going too far?

Source: David Parker Brown

Virgin Atlantic Airways Airbus A340 (G-VRED)

I wasn’t going to write on this topic, but seeing all the airline-hate out there, I just can’t help myself. Once again, passengers get stranded on a plane and all hell breaks loose in the media. Calls for stricter regulations and people saying “I told you so,” with the three hour tarmac delay rule being “right,” and wanting to expand it to international flights. Okay, let’s all take a deep breath and look at the big picture here.

Don’t get me wrong. That experience would bite. The London to Newark (EWR) flight is almost eight hours to begin with. When they got close to EWR, a storm caused them to circle over for about an hour, hoping the weather would clear. It didn’t, so they diverted to Bradley International Airport (BDL) in Hartford, CT. Virgin Atlantic doesn’t normally fly into BDL and the airport doesn’t have a 24hr customs staff that can handle a load of 300 passengers at 8:30 at night.

International passengers are not allowed to be unloaded with out being escorted and processed by customs.  So passengers were on the A340 for another 2.5hrs before customs staff could get there to assist.  This means passengers were on that plane for 11-12hrs before being allowed off. That is hard. Very hard. Especially when you are expecting to be on the plane for eight hours. I can see why people might be angry and upset, but it doesn’t mean we need to change how the whole industry works.

In this instance, Virgin Atlantic had very few options. They wanted to land at EWR (and I am sure so did the passengers), so waiting for the weather to clear was a good call. They couldn’t have let passengers off at BDL since it was against rules that are not set by them. They could have tried another large airport with a full customs staff, but weather was moving in and fuel had to be taken into consideration. I doubt the pilots wanted to be stuck in the cockpit any longer than they needed either (at least passengers get access to Virgin Atlantic’s sweet entertainment system).

There are reports that the Airbus A340 didn’t have air conditioning and passengers were not being fed. I suspect that there was some reason for the A/C not working and people were fed on the flight over. Again, these are not fun experiences, but nothing close to life-ending.

Unfortunately this just gives ammo for people to demand for stricter rules for international flights. The airline business is extremely complicated and things like this will just happen. It is a risk of flying and a risk of being in this business.

I am all about looking at this instance and seeing if there is anything we can learn about it, but jumping to conclusions and adding regulations that won’t help is not the solution.  Let’s say the three hour rule was in effect for this flight. Then what? Either the airline would have gotten a whopping fine or the flight would have refueled and fly back to London.  I doubt that passengers would have liked that outcome.

This is very rare when an international flight has to divert to a facility that is not prepared to handle them. There are thousands of international flights that happen all over the world each day and most go flawless. Let’s all take that breath an realize how amazing and efficient our air transportation system is the large majority of the time and how nice it is we don’t see this happen more often.

Source: David Parker Brown

I may not be flying at the moment but Vincent from PlasticPilot and Jason of www.m0a.com are doing astounding things. I’ve mentioned their Flying Across America project before: they’ve teamed up for a flight across the US to promote General Aviation.

We will fly from Daytona Beach, on Florida’s Atlantic coast to Catalina Island, in the Pacific, about 25 miles west of the Californian coastline. Our planned route is Dunnellon – Daytona Beach – Destin – Baton-Rouge – Houston – Sweetwater – El Paso – Prescott – Chino – Santa Catalina

On the way home we’ll fly Whiteman – Santa Maria – Las Vegas – Sedona – Roswell – Georgetown – Lafayette – Pensacola – Daytona Beach – Dunnellon.

We will organize events at our stops to promote General Aviation and pass our message. Contact us if you’re anywhere near one of our stops and want to meet us or help us with local organization.

And the exciting news is they’ve started! They took off from Dunnelon last week and did a videolog recapping the first day:

They are in Houston now and updating Flying Across America as they go. There’s a write-up of each day so you can tag along vicariously and there’s a Facebook page you can follow Flying Across America’s Photos which has dozens of photographs of each day.

Do I even need to mention how insanely jealous I am? But it is so much fun to follow along with all the details. Vincent and Jason are posting a wide range of great content, ranging from planning and weather to flying experiences to photographs from all over the US and visits to interesting museums and air shows.

Here’s my favourite shot from today, Day 4 of their journey:

How can you not love these guys.

I hope they are having a great, great time and I will be following the rest of the trip on the Flying Across America site and the Facebook page.

If you happen to be located at one of their stops, be sure to arrange to meet them – and tell them hello from me!

Source: Sylvia