Blog Post #6 United Breaks Guitars

Back in 2008, the band Sons of Maxwell were on a plane trip from Halifax to Omaha, by way of Chicago, flying with United Airlines. Upon landing in Chicago, a woman sitting close to the band looked out her window and exclaimed "My god, they're throwing guitars out there!" Sure enough, they watched a bass being heaved from one place to another without any regard for the contents of the case. Dave Carroll's $3500 Taylor guitar had already been thrown around previously. Once Carroll had his own guitar back, he examined it to find that the base of his Taylor had been smashed. This led to a series of long and drawn-out phone calls, being referred to someone else because "it's not my problem", e-mails, and complaint letters, taking many months. Finally, Carroll just gave up and decided he would use his talents and position to warn everyone about the horrible care that United gives when handling luggage, even instruments. He put together a series of three music videos, which poke fun at United and give everyone else a satirical warning about them. The first of the videos is shown below, check it out!

So, does this mean that we need to live in fear whenever we take our musical instruments with us on planes? Nay, fear not! In 2012, President Obama signed a law that, among many other important airline-related things, allows a person in America to take a guitar as a carry-on item. This had previously sometimes been allowed, but only if there was room for your guitar after all the other carry-on luggage was in place, and you were almost always required to purchase a whole extra ticket so you could place the guitar in the seat next to you. So this new law states that at the moment when you board the airplane, if there is room in the carry on section for your guitar, it gets to stay! If it fits, it ships! If your instrument is too large and truly doesn't fit, you will have to purchase an extra ticket for it, but the airline can't charge you extra fees or make you hand it over to them at the last moment to put with the rest of the stored luggage, as they are often wont to do. So next time you fly with an instrument, keep that law in mind! Oh, and, don't fly United.

Blog Post #5 Most Expensive Plane Trips

I thought it would be fun to search for all the most expensive plane trips and see what made them so special. Just in case you guys all had thousands of dollars and felt like blowing it all on one fancy plane ride!
So, if you wanted to make a trip from Los Angeles to Melbourne (that's in Australia), you could do so with Qantas, with a ticket started at $14,974! What does this fancy flight get you? Glad you asked! First off, you get to wait in the airport in a fancy lounge, complete with leather seats and an open fireplace. Once on the aircraft, you get your own six-foot bed with a sheepskin mattress. You also have touch-screen entertainment systems, along with an endless supply of bubbling champagne and Australian wine.
Moving on, perhaps you wanted to fly from New York to Beijing? You could spend about $27,000 and do so with Korean Air! This flight boasts "First Class Kosmo Sleeper Seats" which means you have a touchpad at your disposal that you can use to get a fully reclining seat, along with your own private partition in the airplane. You also receive exquisite Oriental dishes and fancy wines, what more could you want?
Lastly, perhaps those trips seem not quite to your liking. Maybe you want to waste even more money? $43,535 (or, about the cost of WSU tuition for four years for you and me) will take you from New York to Hong Kong. You receive a stand-alone seat and bed setup, in-flight air humidifiers (seriously, the air on planes gets pretty dry), a fancy toiletry kit, a selected wine list, and Michelin-starred culinary! On-ground personal attendants are also available to help you in any way you need.

So there you have it! If you happen to fly between one of these cities, make sure to check out some of the most expensive plane tickets out there!

Blog Post #4 - Icarus!

I know we briefly talked about Daedalus and Icarus not too long ago in class, but I've always liked mythology, so I wanted to write a post about them.
Their story starts when Daedalus angered a king and was exiled to the island of Crete. While there, he had a son named Icarus. Daedalus was a brilliant inventor and architect, and so King Minos had him design and build the labyrinth of Knossos to house the Minotaur. All was well and good until years later, when Daedalus told the secret of the labyrinth to Princess Ariadne. She then told Theseus, who she was in love with, and he used the knowledge to escape the labyrinth once he had killed the minotaur. When Minos found out, he was angry and threw Daedalus and Icarus into the labyrinth and wouldn't let them out.
So here's where the actual flying part comes in! Daedalus knew that they would not be able to escape on foot, nor could they leave by sea since Minos would have the shores guarded. So he figured the only way they could escape the labyrinth was to go build a pair of wings and fly away! They would then fly away from Crete and make it back to Greece. He fashioned together a pair of wings for himself and Icarus, and held them together with wax. Before they took off, he warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, or the wax would melt and he would fall. Since Daedalus was a genius inventor (and the story is a myth), the wings worked perfectly and they flew! They were well on their way to Greece, but Icarus was too enthralled with his new-found freedom and wasn't paying attention. He kept flying higher and higher, and eventually got too close to the sun. As was predicted, the wax melted, and his wings fell apart, leaving him to fall to his death in the sea.

I think this story is neat because it shows how people have always been entranced by the idea of flight, and have invented myths to solidify that idea.

Blog 1: Aviation Hall of Fame

A few days ago, I was chatting with my mother about how class was going. We talked about the various spots we visited as a class and suddenly she blurts out that she was inducted into the Dayton Aviation Hall of Fame, and her name is somewhere in those halls on a slip of paper. So with my initial shock still in play, I ask how she could've possibly gotten into that area. She tells me how she was a friend of Erwin J. Nutter's wife back in the 80s and that she rescued her from getting stranded in an airport.
To quote her, "she needed a walker to get anywhere, so me and my friend retrieved a wheelchair and got her on board her flight just before it needed to leave. We weren't supposed to be on that flight to begin with, so we had to wait for a layover to catch, but she was really appreciative. One day, she invites me to a banquet and, unbeknownst to me, I get inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame!"

Blog post #6: Airbus, Boeing Set sights on Synthetic Vision.

For my last blog post, I decided to talk about a more futuristic possibility.  There is a possible safety upgrade in the next five years for commercial airliners by giving the pilots the opportunity for virtual reality.  It’s known as synthetic vision and it allows a 3-D rendering of runways, obstacles, and a lot of other debris that can bother pilots.  The synthetic vision offers energy awareness cues that give the pilot flight path vectors, the speed and acceleration of the flight, and this can all be very beneficial for pilots.  It’ll be like the pilots are playing a flying video game, where they know how fast they’re going and how fast they’re accelerating with a big point on the screen of where to land.  This synthetic visions is already available for business jet cockpits, but it is now just being introduced to commercial airliners.  It’s amazing what the future holds for aviation, and how safe this system can make flying.  It’s a great article! 

Article: http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/airbus-boeing-set-sights-synthetic-vision  

Blog Post #5 : Challenger tragedy.

A couple days ago I talked about the Columbia tragedy.  But now, I found another article explaining how the Challenger explosion happen and interesting facts about it.  The Challenger explosion happened before the Columbia tragedy, and the challenger exploded right after it lifted off (challenger exploded when it landed).  One interesting fact was this was the first time a school teacher was allowed to travel in space (Christ McAuliffe), who was also going to be the first citizen in space.  The date for the flight was originally scheduled for July 1985 and after many different delays, was finally ready to be launched on January 27^th (an extremely cold day).  It turns out the disaster occurred because of the cold weather.  The weather caused a failure of the joint seal in the right SRB, this lead to a combustion gas leak through the Solid Rocket Motor and causes the explosion.  However, the Challenger itself didn’t’ actually explode, what happened was that orbiter broke apart from the shuttle.  The crew did not die instantly since the cabin was torn loose from the rest of the space shuttle.  But when the cabin smashed into the Atlantic ocean (which took 3 minutes), it killed all of the members.  I never knew that the crew did not die instantly, I just assumed based of the picture of the explosion, which everyone would die instantly.  This disaster might not have happened if they lifted off on the original time in July, considering it would’ve been much warmer.  This article has more explanation of the people and why the SRB malfunctioned.  I would recommend reading all of it!

Article:  http://www.aerospaceguide.net/spaceshuttle/challenger_disaster.html   

NASA Morphing Wing

I was reading an article that was quite fascinating and thought I would share. NASA and AFRL have successfully flight testing a new wing design that is able to change shape within a 32 degree range.

The goal of the ACTE flaps are to designed to decrease the overall aircraft weight, increase fuel efficiency, and reduce noise of takeoffs and landings. The initial testing was actually like that of the Wright Brothers--wind tunnels! I think it is so fascinating that the brothers were so innovative that the same concepts and text equipment is used today.

I think this technology will have very great impact, and I look forward to seeing it implemented in the aircraft we see flying.



http://phys.org/news/2015-04-nasa-successfully-shape-changing-wing-aviation.html

Blog Post #6