#1: BOEING 777 LANDS: While the Boeing 787 waited to takeoff, a Boeing 777-200, not yet painted and on a test flight, landed directly in front of it.
#2 BOEING 787 SPOOLS UP: Testing the engines out, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner starts its engines allowing one to hear the jets in action (make sure you have the sound up). Notice how this is quite a bit louder than actual take off and the horizontal stabilizers and wing-tips shaking.
#3 BOEING 787 ZA002 TAKING OFF: What a beautiful day to watch the Dreamliner lift off. From the Future of Flight’s Strato Deck, one can see Mt Baker to the north and Mt Rainier to the south (sorry it is a little jumpy — first time with new tri-pod).
It is hard to believe it has been over a year since US Airways flight 1549 hit a flock or birds and successfully landed in the Hudson River. Now a time-lapsed video has been posted showing the Airbus A320 being taken out of the river. The video was taken by David Martin, who lives right above where the plane was extracted (check out his blog for photos and more information).
Now the plane is waiting to find a new home and if you have enough money you can place a bid on it. It is being sold “as is” and most likely won’t be flying anytime soon.
This Saturday I was at KPAE (where the Boeing 747-8 is built) and saw one of the jets with its strobes on, doing testing.
To most, seeing two jets sit there and only one with strobes on might not be the most exciting thing, but to me it was awesome. It is a great sign for the things to come, hopefully very shortly.
Matzelle also caught a picture of Boeing re-painting registration numbers on one of the Boeing 747-8’s. Boeing had accidentally painted the same registration number (N747EX) on both aircraft. Hey if that is the only thing that goes wrong — I am ok with that!
Flight Blogger points out the Boeing 747-8 to fly first (RC501) is the 1420th 747 that Boeing has built since 1966. Hopefully we will see RC501 completing taxi tests later this week and a having her first flight as early as January 31st.
If you haven’t caught this video yet, it is a must see. Every airline has a few maxi-pads on board and one creative flight attendant, Heather Poole, came up with 20 interesting ways you can use one.
I talked to Poole about her inspirations for making this video. She told me that she has heard stories of her co-workers using maxi-pads to stop a passenger’s bleeding, for shoe padding and for soaking up condensation. Hearing these stories made her think, “man, we’re a pretty clever group of flight attendants. I should write something about this.” And that she did.
She started with the first ten and some of the crew asked what she was up to. When she told them about her plan, they kicked things into high gear, game up with 20 great ideas, broke out the ‘ol flip video camera and got to work! Not only is the video awesome entertainment, it can also bee seen as an educational video. Poole told me that people have emailed her saying they’ve put some of the ideas into action.
“Another person mentioned that one day at work an office coworker started bleeding, he thought of my video, and ran to the ladies room for a maxi pad! I saved the day,” Poole told me. She also had a passenger recently who was upset that red fuzz from the airline blanket got on her white shirt and she had and important meeting. Poole handled it like a pro, “I smiled, entered the lav, and said, ‘I have got an idea.’ It worked. The passenger was thrilled.”
I was curious how many maxi-pads were destroyed in the making of the video. Amazingly only three. Two for mopping the floor, and one for everything else. Now that is resourceful!
