The video is made of of a combination of Air New Zealand cabin crew, some fitness instructors, Mr. Simmons, Amazing Race presenter Phil Keoghan, New Zealand TV personality Paul Henry, Silver Fern Temepara George and even Air New Zealand’s CEO Rob Fyfe. With over 1.1 million views at the time of posting, I would say love it or hate it, the video has been successful.
Some feel that “fun” safety videos and presentations are not appropriate for such a serious subject. However, it will get people’s attention. ’œSafety is paramount and non-negotiable at Air New Zealand, and Fit to Fly will again get our passengers sitting up and taking notice of these important pre-flight messages in an engaging and fun way,’ says Mr Tod. ’œSimmons’ fitness moves will definitely ensure that all eyes are on the safety briefing.’
It appears that they used a mock Boeing 787 Dreamliner to film the video. If you think the actual video is fun, be sure to check out the behind the scenes video which is even a bit more fun.
Cockpit of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Uh oh, is that electronic device authorized?
“Sit down, shut up and turn off your electronic devices!” Okay, it is not really that bad, but sometimes I get pretty annoyed when I have to turn off my personal electronic device (PED) during taxi. I am a spoiled American and if we are delayed on the tarmac for take off, not having access to my precious electronic devices is difficult. So why the heck are you required to turn your devices off anyhow? And can they really bring down a plane?
If something happens to the plane and you are on above 10,000 feet, you have time. Time to try to navigate to an airport, time to put your toys away before landing. When you are below 10,000 feet things need to happen quickly and it is more dangerous.
One of the important reasons you have your devices off, is to make sure you are paying attention. First you need to pay attention to the flight attendants giving their safety announcement (they don’t do it for fun). Secondly, you should be paying attention to your surroundings. If the plane catches on fire while taxiing out, you need to be ready to react, not listening to the newest Justin Bieber song (is he still “cool” — I dunno). You also need to be able to get out of the plane as soon as possible. If there are cords and cables in the way and your neighbor is distracted, that can slow things down, causing people injury or possibly death.
Next are those pesky electronic signals. All electronic devices give off some sort of signal that could interfere with the cockpit. Even the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t too sure how much these signals affect the avionics in an airliner, but are playing it safe. The FAA’s website states site, ’œthere are still unknowns about the radio signals that portable electronic devices and cell phones give off.’
Airplane manufacturers, airlines and the FAA work together to make sure that any electronic equipment that might go into an airplane will not cause it harm. According to Flight Global, recently on board Wi-Fi tests resulted in some Honeywell avionics to react adversely. This goes to show that yes, electronic equipment can affect instruments, but it also shows that rigorous testing by all those involved make sure that these sort of things won’t happen past the testing phase. Currently all those involved are working together to find the cause and a solution.
Yes, it might be annoying to put your devices away, but I think there are some very valid reasons for doing so. Next time you are on a flight and you hear the call to turn off your devices, be a good sport and do as you are told.
“This aircraft is carrying a “partial” Lufthansa livery, because it will be used for test flight purposes, during which it is still owned and operated by Boeing,” Martin Riecken, Director of Corporate Communications in the Americas for Lufthansa explains. “After the test program (approx. 300 flight hrs) is completed, it will get the missing Lufthansa livery (logotype, crane etc.) in October.”
So there we go, mystery solved. Can’t wait to see the plane in full livery.
The first landing gear for the Airbus A350 has been installed. Photo from Airbus. Click for larger.
Sorry time is making me go super lazy on this one and copy/paste the official Airbus press release with the photo:
The first A350 XWB nose landing gear produced by Liebherr Aerospace has been successfully installed in the A350 XWB landing gear systems test facility in Filton (UK).
In the coming weeks, the main landing gear supplied by Messier-Dowty will be installed and preliminary testing of all three landing gear legs will start. Full integration testing will begin with the entry into service of the facility towards the end of 2011. These tests are carried out to demonstrate reliability and maturity in addition to providing evidence for certification, especially with regards to the extension-retraction, braking and steering systems.
The test facility, called « landing gear zero », is part of a series of integration test benches specifically developed to test the A350 XWB systems in order to ensure that the aircraft meets the highest standards of in-service reliability from day one. Other A350 XWB system integration tests facilities such as this one are ’œcabin zero’ for testing the integration of cabin systems into the cabin structure and ’œaircraft zero’ known also as the ’œiron bird’ for testing the integration of the hydraulic, electric and flight control systems.
Sometimes when things go wrong, it is an opportunity to show what you are made of. On Saturday, Alaska Airlines computer system, used to plan flights, went offline due to a blown transformer. It took over 24 hours to get the system fully running again and there are still passengers who are trying to get to their destination.
From the media’s perspective, Alaska was on their game. During the outtage they posted four different press releases, allowing the media to update passengers. When this sort of thing happens with most other airlines, the media is lucky to get one press release after everything is said and done.
For passengers, both Alaska and Horizon effectively used their social media outlets to not only keep customers informed, but to apologize for the inconvenience. Alaska alone had about 25 tweets about the outage, either providing updates or talking directly to customers who needed assistance. Alaska Air President Brad Tilden and Horizon Air President Glenn Johnson also made a video apologizing for the delay, something that I have never seen an airline do, especially in the middle of the situation.
Now realize, this is all going on over the weekend. All these airline folks were working diligently to get the system back up and keep their customers informed. For me, that is true dedication.
Most airlines are too afraid to have such a public voice when something goes wrong. It takes a risk to be so public when things go wrong, but I think it seperates the good airlines from the great. Even though the computer crash only affected 18% of their flights, it is still a huge impact. Alaska did have to cancel 150 flights, affecting 12,000 passengers. Sure, for many passengers this outreach didn’t mean much help them feel better about not seeing grandma, but just like every other industry out there, airlines are prone to things going wrong. The airline business is extremely complicated and this just goes to show how something relatively minor can have such a large impact.
Cheers to Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air for being so open with the issues and getting them solved.
