I find it just really endearing that at companies, regardless of how many other issues they have or the dysfunctions and bland corporate culture, there are people who keep the pride of purpose and "olden days / traditions" in their memory and do things like this. Or are able to call on institutional memory of something bygone, that reappears once in a while. (whether it's a big gesture like this or small cultural day-to-day manifestations).
You wonder how pockets of this survive when top management comes and goes, who sometimes only know the company as just some logo or another corporation to be managed, and when workforces go through rounds and rounds of potential layoffs where such knowledge and initiative is generally lost.
Maybe it also helps to be a company that has at least something to do with hardware that leaves a physical history :)
This goes for human organizations and communities in general. If you want something to persist and excel, find a way to empower the people who truly Give A Shit.
Pain ensues when you have two or more people/camps of people who Give A Shit but are in conflict with each other. Then often the organization just rips itself apart or collapses.
The tricky bit is how to empower people who Give A Shit while maintaining alignment.
Seriously, I think the answer to this isn't about intensity of feeling (although 100% is never healthy for anything, ever).
It's about channelling the GAS into principles, tightening them up, and agreeing on what matters. Then putting that energy into being flexible about everything else.
I think it's more that most people are basically trying their best and that includes managers and top brass. Sometimes we get a glimpse when that shines through from the whole group.
I don’t mean to be negative, but most people certainly don’t try their best. Many are only working for the paycheck and don’t attach their sense of success to their professional output.
I don't think "working for a paycheck" necessarily implies one is not trying his/her best. Also the sense of success may not even depend on "success at work". Being successful and trying their best is far more nuanced than usually made out to be.
Agree. I've said for ~10 years now, that it seems the American Dream has transitioned from "Anything is possible as long as you work hard enough." to "Do as little as work possible to get the same paycheck." Something has definitely changed in the culture.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but it is very frustrating to see people standing around wondering at this change as if it's a moral failing when people have been pointing out for decades that those at the top broke the social contract and that there would eventually be consequences.
The moral failing is definitely in how corporations are lead and how work is rewarded. I don't blame anyone for not being passionate about a job that barely pays a living wage. In fact, I think it's incredibly harmful for a country when work is not properly rewarded.
I wonder if the tide will ever turn? That it would become a competitive advantage to build enterprises with values other than maximizing the returns to their shareholders.
Companies no longer reward loyalty or working hard on the whole, so I'm surprised that you are surprised. Those at the top reap entirely outsized rewards, the company does stock buy-backs, and the workers get table scraps.
We're insulated somewhat from that in our industry, we're well compensated, but I don't blame others in other industries for responding to how companies focus their resources today.
I think majority of jobs are low wage with no future prospects, and quite a lot of jobs have bosses or—worse—shareholders taking away the profits for their own private climate devastating opulence. Why would you work hard for these people? Why would you do anything more than the absolute minimum?
I think this supposed American dream was only ever a ruse, a Hollywood propaganda. If it ever existed it only applied to a certain demographic and was never actually a possibility for majority of Americans.
In the past decades (since the late 70s at least) Hollywood has slowed down it’s propaganda machine in favor of more independent film making (or the propaganda has shifted elsewhere; mainly the military during this century), so the illusion of the American dream is slowly but surely wearing off. In the meantime our jobs suck just as much as before, possibly even more, and are paying even less.
> Why would you do anything more than the absolute minimum?
For personal satisfaction? You are going to be there anyway, you might as well do a good job.
I’m not saying to put in more hours than contracted, but those hours should be high quality (or as high as you can make them, under the circumstances).
While this is obviously true, the long term effects of a positive, growth mindset are more likely to have an effect on your net worth than if you cannot or will not take pride in working hard and doing the best job you possibly can.
Keep in mind that this "positive, growth mindset" means quitting your job for a better one if you're not going to get promoted in the job that you have. That, or starting your own business. Many companies have made it abundantly clear that there's no positive growth inside their company for ordinary workers. Only for the wallets of the managers and shareholders.
This reads like its from a questionable research paper funded by an HR group with the sole aim of gaslighting workers into working harder for less money. I’m not buying it.
It is certainly questionable research, but from the lived experience of a superannuated engineer (me!) not an HR group.
As for gaslighting? Well, my aim is indeed to make you work harder. Not only that, but for you to have more money not less. At all levels — our society, the sector in which we work, our businesses as a whole and each team in those businesses — your success has a positive effect on everyone else as well as on you and part of that success will come as “legal tender”.
The flip side is that if we all drag our heels, everyone is worse off. I have sadly met many people in my life who seem to want everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
(Your comment way up this thread talks about jobs with low wages with no future prospects. You make a good point and those jobs really are different — one is unlikely to innovate oneself to greater wealth as a coal miner. Lots of us here on HN don’t fall into this category of work though, and yet, alas, I see the mindset of the low pay / low prospects worker more and more in the tech sector.)
If your boss or—worse—your shareholders are making significant money from your work, and spending it on furthering the climate disaster (like most bosses of large companies do) then I would argue that, no, your work is actually making the world a worse place.
This wealth gap that keeps increasing is not good for anyone (except for bosses) and it is literally destroying our climate, even if it makes your personal net worth increase, that isn’t good enough if it increases your boss’ net worth 100x that.
Working smarter and for better companies also got me working harder. I simply work harder when I'm working for a company I care about, on a job I care about, when I feel appreciated and have the freedom to contribute in a way that works for me.
If you make me care less about the job and worry more about money, that's not going to help my productivity. If you want passionate and productive workers, you've got to give them something to be passionate about, but you also have to make sure they don't have to worry about money. If they're thinking about how they'll make rent or how they're going to pay for some unavoidable expenses, they're not thinking about how to solve an interesting problem for you.
If the tasks or people suck, giving shit is tiresome. Way better to do half assed job and spare some mental energy to use on your terms in the evening.
American Dream made sense when one person in the family worked for corporations. When everyone flooded the labor market, and automation made workers much more productive, wages got depressed. Now the American dream is propaganda for getting 30 year mortgages from banks and working to pay off the money you rented.
Sorry but this sort of drive is a two way street. If the company's not going to promote me and will drop me as soon as they've burned me out, I'm most definitely not going to "give my all" to the company.
The company needs me, I don't need them for my self gratification. I just need a paycheck.
MBAs instead of promote-from-within. Bringing along egotistical bean-counter superiority with typically vastly inferior performance. Seeing this trend in big tech has me very bearish - the non-tech MBAs just can't execute on long-term big bets that require the deep understanding/cross-cutting coordination that comes with career insiders.
Is the problem of outside MBAs their lack of deep understanding? Others here have argued that the promotion of outsiders erodes loyalty and passion of the workforce towards their jobs.
I could imagine good outsiders who have the skills for long-term big bets are quite common. But then the erosion of the community inside the company could still foil such bets.
As an aside, this alternative narrative seems more palatable to MBAs then your version. Hence it might be more easily accepted.
Executives from corporate America led by people like Welch treated workers like cogs, which eventually taught employees to treat employers transactionally.
For sure. Whatever happened to hired guns putting their hearts and souls into maximizing profits for the shareholders? I mean, not to be negative or anything.
I know a Japanese expat who moved from America to Europe because he didn't want to work himself to death.
There is more to life than career and money. Sure he earns less now but he actually has the opportunity to spend it!
It happens with a lot of people who get burned out and just want to put their kids through college. There's nothing inherently wrong with that outlook, and those people can do good work keeping the lights on. But if you're at all driven or ambitious, it can be seriously frustrating to work with (or especially for) someone like this.
i highly doubt an IC could make something like this happen without approval from somebody. It would be a huge risk.
Also relating to easter eggs, anecdotally I think there are far fewer of them in software these days for just that reason: when a developer puts in an easter egg, it's hard to prove categorically that its addition wouldn't have some unintended effect, and possibly very embarrassing to the company if a major issue was traced back to some joke added by a developer for lulz. Uncomfortable questions would be asked. Imagine if adding an easter egg to Windows ended up leading to the grounding of all flights, or caused a life support system to behave improperly. etc.
I know MS specifically banned easter eggs a long time ago on these grounds, I think it's a fireable offense but could be wrong.
> i highly doubt an IC could make something like this happen without approval from somebody. It would be a huge risk.
I'd bet at least beer money that this was some "IC" career 747 guy (or bunch of guys) who organised, planned, and authorised this without actual authority, because he was "a 747 guy" and he tendered his retirement 3 months ago and today was his last day. And a delivery pilot who was either in on it or was prepared to claim plausible deniability and that he was just following the autopilots pre-planned route, which he assumed was fully authorised.
My manager sends me videos of particularly challenging video game things he's accomplished. And links to fun games. Managers are people, too; there's plenty of good ones.
The pilot just took off in Seattle, engaged autopilot, and sat back watching for warning lights until it was time to land.
I'll bet he knew exactly what was going on, because the perpetrator clued them in, and made sure they had suitable ass covering paperwork to show they were just flying the flight as per the delivered flight plan.
There may have been, maybe even probably was, a middling-senior manager involved here, but he was a "747 guy" as well, and today was his last day before retirement as well. And I'd guess all the "747 guys" have been there long enough to know exactly how to bury this paper trail, and possibly one guy who's prepared to "take the fall" if a board member or the customer bursts a coronary artery and demands a full forensic blame storm investigation - "Oh yeah, Bob signed off on that. He's got cancer, probably only a few weeks left, he was so happy to see the last one ever built fly, he started on the tools building them in the 80s. Last I heard he'd just sold up everything and spent his entire life savings paying off all his kids and grandkids houses and college loans. What a guy, huh?"
How true is this? In civilizations past such as the Romans you could cut off the heads like the emperor and it would be unchanged for millions. In china when the communists defeated the Manchus, some villagers were amazed these people defeated what they thought was the Ming dynasty.
Khomeini was killed, Trump isn't president anymore and Iran's military and the right haven't died. In tech, Bell Labs is 'demonopolized' yet it's parts have become stronger.
I disagree that the it dies with true believers. It decays and reforms and even gets stronger.
Khomeini was killed is news to me. It's been a long time and I don't remember the details so I checked Wikipedia. It seems he died by hearth attack in hospital at age 89.
Why do you think top management isn't part of this? Many times it's top management itself that makes sure these traditions continue. Maintaining company culture is something incredibly important to a lot of executives, at certain companies at least.
And judging from the press, this was a highly coordinated event including thousands of spectators and John Travolta. [1]
Top management can love having fun and maintaining traditions too. They're people too.
> Why do you think top management isn't part of this? Many times it's top management itself that makes sure these traditions continue. Maintaining company culture is something incredibly important to a lot of executives, at certain companies at least.
It sure as hell wasn't the "out source the 737 Max 8 avionics software to some low cost of living $8/hr contractors" beancounter management.
Nor the "lets make the secondary angle of attack sensor part of the 'premium package' and blame the cheapskate customers when their planes crash" MBA bro management.
And it definitely wasn't the "Lets put 'undue pressure' on our ODA-certified staff and make them lie to the FAA about the MAX8 program" assholes either.
But maybe you're right, maybe it's not an entire barrel of bad apples yet...
I basically wear zero visible labels on my clothes because why would I wear advertising? I own a t-shirt with 747 on it and a picture. It's one of the great pieces of human engineering. Many of us, even those who have never had anything to do with it beyond seeing one in the sky and occasionally riding on one love it like any other great work of creation.
There would be people who think like that who joined boeing in the past couple of years...
This should be the top comment, and the title should probably be set to "Planned ceremonial flight path of last 747 delivery path".
There a now hundreds of comments arguing about how this "Easter egg" got pulled off, when it is in fact nothing else than a well organized publicity stunt (typical HN discussion, though, I suppose ? Fontenelle, golden teeth, etc..)
Good for the 747 folks, though, it's always nice to get some form of recognition.
And good luck to all the people trying to make planes fly with less GHG emissions - hopefully they get a ceremony, too, someday.
As this involved an extra hour(?) of flight time, it cost thousands of dollars. It also required filing a particular flight plan, and probably coordination between Boeing and Atlas. So it seems safe to say that it required approval at a pretty high level. And given everything else that happened surrounding the delivery, that doesn't seem strange at all.
The drawing started at 16:50 UTC and ended at 19:30 UTC, so 2 hours and 40 minutes of the 6 hours and 20 minutes long flight.
In any case, this most likely required approval from the FAA, but the cost per se should be neglectable, considering that they have been produced since 1970s.
I revisited the flight data and if flies below 13,000 ft until it finished the drawing. Then it rose to 41,000 ft and increased the speed from ~200 knots to somewhat over 500.
It blows my mind to think that an 747 is allowed to use the uncontrolled airspace as if it were a Cessna.
Ah! This explains the 2:40 time for the drawing. Just eyeballing it, I guesstimated an hour, but I was assuming a constant flight speed. So if it was flying at ~200 for the drawing and ~500 otherwise, that would account for it. Thanks!
"thousands of dollars" may seem like a lot to an individual, but to a company like Boeing, it's tiny. They probably spend far more on explicit advertising than this.
What's cool is that aviation can be so stifling at times with training, rules, regulations, etc, that it seems that certain very cool traditions are either set in stone, or born and survive relatively intact.
ADSB reporting, which powers these flight tracking sites that are available to the public, is (relatively speaking) a very new thing to aviation and the general public. And the fact that these maneuvers are absolutely fantastic training and aviation problem solving and you've got the perfect storm for a newly born tradition that will continue to survive and evolve.
(The only real alternative option is that it's spoofed ADS-B transmissions, which is way way more likely to mean jail time for whoever was involved than a few extra tons of jetfuel and an un-management-authorised mission plan uploaded to the nav hardware would result in...)
(It shows on other ADS-B tracking sites, so it isn't just some FlightRadar dude having fun or getting a kickback.)
(Actually, there's a _very small_ possibility it was a large enough group of pissed of ADSBExchange feeders who all collaborated to use their gear to send spoofed data to the various flight tracking services? When some guy sells out an "open community" for $20mil, trolling the entire industry isn't a super surprising result...)
With there being no obvious deviations from the pattern there’s no doubt it was done on autopilot. That said, a skilled pilot who wanted to deal with the nuisance of hand flying that would get pretty close just by following the flight director (But at that point you’re just manually moving the yoke on behalf of the autopilot, given the FD is essentially just showing you what the autopilot wants to do).
This particular level and visibility of sky writing is new, but "drawing things in the sky" dates back to the 1920s or so. That sort of skywriting uses oil to cause the airplane to leave a trail of white smoke, visible against the blue background of the sky.
The precision we see in this route is fairly new, but, especially on proving flights for new aircraft, which needed hours and hours of flight time and would take off and land at the same airport, and even before the public could see it on a website, filing flight plans that contained (much cruder) drawings of "747" or otherwise certainly exist.
I'd say this is a very different type of drawing, because you only see it on a tracker. Someone watching in real live from the ground wouldn't see the pattern, because I don't think jet trails stay in the air for two hours.
This seems more like people using run/cycle trackers to make drawings on a map. (Strava Art)
We can only see it on a tracker. My claim is that sort of flight route drawing predates modern tracking on the Internet by decades. GPS was released to the public in the 1980's.
Drawing stuff on a map with a GPS track is a rather beaten path in the world of Strava and similar [0]. Not being bound to the road network graph just makes it easier. I don't want to think about the fuel burned for this stunt, but if I were in some position that is required to sign off that flight path I'd sure congratulate whoever came up with this. Wouldn't even be all surprised if tomorrow some Airbus ferry flight would respond in the same medium with a respectful salute to the old lady.
([0] but relative to anything that would be considered a tradition in aviation, the entire concept of GPS is rather newfangled, despite it's surprising age, I'm not disagreeing)
I don't think this uses GPS, at least not directly. This data comes from ADS-B and radar. ADS-B involves the plane itself broadcasting where it (thinks it) is. That may come from GPS onboard but is probably more sophisticated than that in a modern 747.
The ADS-B out data is fed from the aircraft’s ADIRU (air data inertial reference unit), which, yes, just uses GPS unless that fails for some reason. There’s a fallback based on accelerometers and laser gyros to provide shockingly accurate positioning should such a failure occur, but it does lose some accuracy (enough that you can still fly autopilot on it for an approach at max range, but it’ll be drifting by some number of meters) over long flights before it needs to be reset from GPS data on the ground.
> You wonder how pockets of this survive when top management comes and goes, who sometimes only know the company as just some logo or another corporation to be managed
This makes me so sad, all of our traditions which make companies unique will actually be eroded away by market forces. No wonder no one stays at a workplace anymore.
The market force putting a stop to this is legal liability that can arise from undocumented or unauthorized behaviour. That's more an issue of an overly-litigious society.
I’m sure culture/traditions play a role in employee retention, but it feels like “the 20-year tenure company man/woman” of the 90’s was likely driven by less optionality in the job market compared to today, and also fewer benefits to staying with a company long-term (e.g. no more pensions, unlimited vacation for both new and old employees, etc).
Heh, the last time two Marine aviators drew a suitable shape often doodled throughout the Corps[1] it was not as well appreciated! Though they were certainly keeping pride of purpose alive.
I read your perspectives on intellectual loneliness and wondered round for an embarrassing period (this is my first encounter with this site… I’m also a dinosaur) in an effort to thank you. It did a great deal for me, not because I’m a genius, not that I have a sob story, not like some genuinely have.
I realised young that it was strange to ask why it was so important to seemingly everyone else that this ball, this fecking spherical sack of air, went over there. Fame fortune and sex if I was the cause of it resulting to be ‘over there’. Hahaha I didn’t hate it, it was fine. Still not 100 convinced that people can love it as much as they say they do though. Other authors are available :)
As I say though. Thank you for spending the/your time. It’s made a difference
> there are people who keep the pride of purpose and "olden days / traditions" in their memory and do things like this.
My inner cynic cannot ignore the fact that this was a planned flight, with several layers of approvals, not something a small group of enthusiasts did as an homage to the olden days. I bet this is a PR stunt and nothing else. Yes, I am very fun at parties.
Your inner cynic might be warmed with a reread this classic anecdote, as a reminder that even the glossy PR-ified output of a huge corporation can be the work of a few passionate individuals with human motivations:
Interesting narrative - all we need is Bruce Willis at the controls and we’re gold ;)
I’m sure it was all planned and coordinated with their marketing team. After all, they need to figure out important things like how much fuel, time to arrival, etc.
While I certainly appreciate the passion and artistry to design and fly a path like that, I also wonder if it's not incredibly wasteful to do that with a kerosine-burning 747.
Of course, it is. And you don't wonder; you know that ;)
But it is also deeply human. Humans are designing this aeroplane and building this aeroplane. It's a piece of human history and a significant one in recent times.
So it is well worth ignoring efficiency and commemorating it for the sake of the humans involved. After all, our entire human existence is incredibly wasteful.
This is bad but I’ve seen worse. One of the bigger networks has a ~20second “processing” stage when you opt out of these, as a punishment for not clicking “accept” (which works instantly)
They chose adhering to the legal requirements over the users, putting them right in the middle of the pack of literally all websites and companies run by more than an individual. You don't have to continue on to their site if you don't wish to.
The popup is, yes. But the legislation they are pretending to be compliant with isn't.
For basic session-level cookies that are essential to the operation of some sites, no legislation requires consent. The issues are third party tracking, long term use stalking, etc. But those that want to stalk you want you to believe that the legislation is against even session maintenance & similar cookies as well so you'll be against the legislation and not them. And that is apparently working on you and some others commenting in this thread.
Unfortunately it's not always reasonably possible to convince the client / legal team that a cookie banner is not needed in such case and the decision makers would rather be sure than care about the UX. Or so I heard.
This is understandable, though it shows a lack of legal understanding which could be worrying from a legal team, as there was a lot of scare-mongering when cookie-and-other-tracking legislation was a significant talking point.
Also, largely due to the same anti-anti-tracking voices making spurious claims of what would happen, some put the warning up not because they think they need to, but to avoid having to argue that they don't need to if a complaint is made.
It might be just them refusing to look into it and covering their asses, because they don't care if there is an unnecessary cookie banner.
But to be fair the stories I have heard were something along the lines of: a freelancer making a website for a local restaurant and being unable to convince the restaurant owner, because the owner's nephew said that the cookie banner must be there.
And you can just not use the website. Then no data is hoovered. I actually think this is probably the best system. It's double opt-in. If you both commit to your sides, you both sign the deal and get what you want. If neither of you wants to do it, you can both just not sign the deal.
The trouble is that popups like this don’t even comply with the relevant legislation. (Which is the ePrivacy Directive after the 2009 amendment, though people largely ignored this part of it until the advent of the GDPR which came into force in 2018. Simplified, ePD says “most cookies must be opt-in”.)
If anything, putting such wildly non-compliant popups should make you more liable to punishment, because it undermines an argument of ignorance.
I suspect if you access the site from an EU IP address you’ll see an option besides “Accept All”. The layout [0] even seems to leave room for where this other button might be.
edit: looking at the code I even see references to a “Reject All” button as well as an XHR request to a geolocation endpoint.
I walked away from the site on first visit due to "accept all" being the only option. Nipped back just to check after seeing your post while checking replies to my earlier comment, and wondering if the site is deliberately treating the UK differently. It turns out only-accept-all is the default and if the geolocation lookup fails (apparently that service is blocked by my pihole, it works if on mobile without home VPN) no reject option is present.
A bit of bad design there, not failing safe, if there intention is to be compliant with stricter laws, because a failure in an external dependency makes the site less compliant.
so apparently they only care about your privacy if you are a citizen of the EU?
And that just brings up the question again: why show the popup to non-EU viewers if the only option is to accept the cookies. It isn't even effective as a form of protest because those viewers have even less influence over EU regulations than EU citizens.
> so apparently they only care about your privacy if you are a citizen of the EU?
No, they care about being minimally compliant and laws vary.
A number of places have legislation that just says "users much opt in" but the EU has legislation that says "users must opt-in, but cannot be forced to opt-in by there being no opt-out option".
They don't care about your privacy at all, no matter where you are, if any claim otherwise is made it is a lie.
I was being sarcastic. I was referring to the fact that the on the EU dialog it said "we care about your privacy", but in the dialog I got in the US it didn't. And was thus implying that despite their claim, they do not care about anyone's privacy.
I recently realized you can bypass cookie auth requests by toggling reader. Led me to wonder what the EU plans on doing to enforce compliance if JavaScript isn’t enabled, for example. Kind of makes the legal obligations of sites more or less impossible to fulfill under some limited circumstances.
There has never been a point to cookie popups, as with most things resulting from technically-illiterate politicians trying to help with technology matters.
Their ideas are at best slightly lower-quality than the results of letting my 2-year-old wash the windows.
many years later, Boeing Chief Test Pilot John Cashman stated that just before he piloted the maiden flight of the Boeing 777 on Jun. 12, 1994, his last instructions from then Boeing President Phil Condit were “No rolls”. -- anecdote from https://theaviationgeekclub.com/that-time-tex-johnston-barre...
I wonder why "the suits" at Boeing are so against the barrel rolls? The pilots all agree it's not that big a deal, not dangerous, and anybody watching is going to love it.
this article https://www.straightdope.com/21341407/is-it-possible-to-loop...
says that the bigger the plane, the more dangerous because it will roll more slowly, and during parts of the roll particularly 90 degrees off "flat" there is no lift and you're going to be falling.
I'm reminded of the tragic crash of a B-52 illustrating a similar circumstance, and this was the pilot's last flight before retiring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6io8Tjv7xk
A barrel roll is one thing to perform in a transport category jet, it is a ~1G maneuver when performed correctly. A loop is altogether different. My good friend Bernardo Malfitano, https://www.understandingairplanes.com/Bernardo-Malfitano.ht... , when he worked as a Structural Methods & Allowables engineer at Boeing, was also an aerobatics pilot on the side and put on a fantastic brown-bag lunch presentation entitled "Can you loop a 747?" where he demonstrated how he calculated the weight, altitude, airspeed, and configuration points to theoretically loop a 747 while staying within the certified load limits, then did a stepwise simulation of the results. It would theoretically be possible, but it would be very close to the limit of the airplane's capabilities.
Found it - "Aerobatic Capabilities of “Marginally Aerobatic” Airplanes" - scroll down to "The Physics of Aerobatics" and click "Paper", toward the end there is a detailed summary of how a transport jet could just barely do a very ugly loop. https://www.understandingairplanes.com/online.html
§ 91.303 Aerobatic flight. No person may operate an aircraft in aerobatic flight - (a) Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement; (b) Over an open air assembly of persons; (c) Within the lateral boundaries of the surface areas of Class B, Class C, Class D, or Class E airspace designated for an airport; (d) Within 4 nautical miles of the center line of any Federal airway; (e) Below an altitude of 1,500 feet above the surface; or (f) When flight visibility is less than 3 statute miles. For the purposes of this section, aerobatic flight means an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft's attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.
The Dash-80 roll was a 1-G maneuver that didn't strain the airframe at all. Local legend says that single barrel roll was enough to convince an airline industry skeptical of jet aircraft to open their checkbooks. Boeing -- in the person of Tex Johnston -- changed the world that day.
The only thing I can think is that it looks dangerous to casual observers, and that's the furthest thing Boeing and the airlines that purchase from them want potential passengers thinking.
Based on my “flight” experience in MSFS and various other games, you have to start high enough to complete a barrel roll, and you have to have good control surface authority that allows such deep rolls. At some scale it becomes hard to start high enough and finish it quick enough.
It’s not a big deal in a clean F-15C to start a barrel roll, change minds, and add a full right deflection for 1s to recover to a level flight. But in a larger and non-manauver-oriented planes like a 747, you might find out that the aircraft under present circumstances cannot command more pitch or roll rates to transition from a high-speed inverted descent to a desired positive climb situation before the altimeter indication would reach zero or below. The latter was not so fun.
Overall, I think it’s reasonable that “the suits” were not embracing it. The test pilots made their point, the world witnessed it, any further attempts weren’t strictly necessary, and frankly would have been scary.
Thank you for sharing this, I had never seen it even though I knew the story. I love how excited Tex is describing the 707. "We had an airplane that was going to shrink the world by a factor of two." the whole idea drips with 1950s techno-optimism.
The Fairchild B-52 crash isn't really comparable to the 707 roll. That was at a much lower altitude and a far more aggressive maneuver.
Tex Johnston's first flight was in 1925 with the age of 11 on a "barnstormer". At the time where the first flight regulation appeared in the US.
Back then "flight acrobatics" beside showing off the skills of a pilot was the art of "selling" planes/flying and making it popular after all the "Jennies" were sold off (and the pilots laid off) by the government after WWI[0] for essentially pennies: about $200 (~$4.000); production cost initially at $5.000 (~$100.000). Civil aviation "mass-adopted".
So, by selling a 707 with a barrel roll is as old school as it gets.
Even if intellectually you know it's totally safe, it's still something the plane was not explicitly designed to do and literally will never be used for again. I can understand the "oh my god what are you doing" reaction feeling a lot stronger than "I guess he must know what he's doing".
That very plane is on display at the Udvar-Hazy center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, at Dulles airport. Plane nerds MUST go there!! Incredible place.
It wasn't even a 707, it was a prototype model 367-80.
There were some unusually significant structural differences between the prototype dash 80 and production 707's, for example:
> The 132 in (3,400 mm) wide fuselage of the Dash 80 was large enough for four-abreast (two-plus-two) seating like the Stratocruiser. Answering customers' demands and under Douglas competition, Boeing soon realized this would not provide a viable payload, so it widened the fuselage to 144 in (3,660 mm) to allow five-abreast seating and use of the KC-135's tooling.
It's in the wikipedia article, but just want to call something out: That particular airframe 367-80 is in the Air and Space Udvar-Hazy museum at Dulles. It is gorgeous.
Those two pages disagree. Your quote is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_367-80 has "The Dash 80 fuselage was wide enough at 132 inches (335 cm) for five-abreast seating; two on one side of the aisle and three on the other. The fuselage diameter for the production KC-135 was widened to 144 inches (366 cm) and Boeing originally hoped to build the 707 fuselage with that width. By the time the Boeing company committed to production, the decision had been made to design the production model 707 as a six-abreast design"
The aisle width and/or chair clearance probably changed as well. Indeed, if only 26 cm was required to add another seat to each row, there must have been substantial wasted space with four-abreast seating.
That's equal to the average CO2 emission of one US citizen per year. I don't think this is particularly noteworthy. There is a cost to this celebration, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
Yeah, this can't be some prank by a renegade flight crew, it can only be a farewell celebration act with a kick-off meeting, a budget and a dozen people who signed off. But I'm not criticising, by that measure we'd have to question any resource expenditure that exceeds the bare minimum for sustaining life.
Well this admittedly cool looking stunt represents more than 5 persons worth of annual sustainable co2 budget (estimated at 3T/year), so I‘d say it’s a smidgeon above the „bare minimum for sustaining life”.
That's why you don't do stuff like this for each and every subvariant. This is a once in half a century occasion, it absolutely pales in comparison to the amount of fuel the type has burned for trade show visits, photo opportunities and numerous other nonessentials. Arguably there isn't a single use case for jet aviation that isn't far out of the range of sustainable co2 budget.
Sure, if that is important to you. You are welcome to make sacrifices elsewhere. We will need to make sure you make them though, probably by taxing your petrol through the roof.
The tax fight thing. He’s not going to get gas taxes increased. Anyone who tried would be wrecked in elections. No one gives a damn about “the climate” dude. We’ve got fun to have. And the power to keep that fun cheap.
Sure. Nothing will change unless enough people want it to change. And you are only able to reason with the reasonable. And maybe petrol taxes are not looked on favorably by the reasonable in your region, so you need a different method of fairly distributing costs. But berating people for wanting fun things is not a great way of getting people to see reason.
That’s a fair sentiment, but in this particular case the portion of society that will be aware that this even happened, much let get joy from it, is a rounding error above none of society.
1. For context, this was the final delivery flight of a 747, ever. It's a pretty momentous occasion.
2. If we're going to criticize something like this, then we probably should be criticizing a lot more about the waste in our own lives. Everyone generates a lot of unnecessary waste, even if we don't think about or consciously acknowledge it.
Arguably, the stunt is a symbol. Critizing it for also being a symbol for the inconsiderate waste of co2 budget is fair.
…I mean, building a 747 in 2023 is really not a reasonable thing to do given our remaining co2 budget, even if some techies feel sentimental about that plane.
I have no clue what I'm talking about but this piqued my interest. If I ask WolframAlpha:
Q:how many carbon molecules in 2.4 tons
A: 1.092×10^29 molecules
X molecules of pure carbon carbon would theoretically require 2X molecules of oxygen to turn into CO2
Q: how much does (10^29)*2 molecules of oxygen weight in us tons
A: 5.827 tons
So 2.4 tons of Carbon + 5.827 tons of Oxygen = 8.227 tons of CO2? Maybe? What am I missing to have 2.4 tons of fuel turn into 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions? I'm not doubting it, and I'm sure it's WAY more complicated than above, but just genuinely curious!*
Hm, does that change anything? Atoms per molecule doesn’t seem important when we’re talking about the total weight. If anything jet fuel isn’t pure carbon so the math works out to create less CO2 than I calculated?
I don't think the number of atoms directly matters. However, the amount of energy that is released when kerosene burns has a _small_ impact. Because that energy was contributing to the mass of the kerosene (E=mc^2). But, that difference in mass will be tiny. Far surpassed by the mass of the non-carbon atoms in kerosene.
No need to ask WolframAlpha; you can do those computations yourself very easily.
Avogadro's number is the conversion factor between grams and "atomic mass units", 6.023e+23†.
1.102e-6 is the conversion factor between grams and tons.
The atomic weight of carbon is 12.01 amu.
So 2.4 tons of pure carbon should contain 1.312e+30 atoms of carbon. The concept of a "carbon molecule" is not well defined; theoretically you could arrange all of these into one big diamond, or a bunch of graphite, or whatever.
The atomic weight of oxygen is 16.00 amu. If you're making carbon dioxide, every 12.01 units of carbon mass will correspond to 32.00 units of oxygen mass, so 2.4 tons of carbon would require 2.4 * (32.00/12.01) = 6.4 tons of oxygen.
There are a few comments we can make:
- "What you're missing" appears to be that the emissions are described as "equivalent to" a certain amount of carbon dioxide by some metric, not as actually containing that much carbon dioxide.
- Wolfram Alpha, at first glance, does not appear to be capable of answering your question correctly, but it's also in the right ballpark. Something is up.
- Could be that your question is posed too poorly to get a good response.
- Could be that the mass of a carbon dioxide molecule is greater than the sum of the masses of the one carbon and two oxygen atoms that it contains. I am told that in fact these two quantities are not equal - there is energy in the molecular bonds which ultimately equates to mass - but I don't know whether the molecule or the independent atoms should be heavier, and I feel sure that, if it's the molecule that's heavier, it is not heavier by a factor of 12, which is what the WolframAlpha answer requires.
- Your second question, "how much does 2e+29 molecules of oxygen weigh in US tons", is perfectly well defined, although it is incorrect given your goals. One molecule of oxygen contains two oxygen atoms, so you only need one molecule of oxygen per carbon atom to make carbon dioxide.
But WolframAlpha should have been able to answer this one unambiguously, and it couldn't. The correct result:
Something went very wrong in the WolframAlpha answer. Mostly it seems to have mistaken molecules for atoms, but I can't explain the difference between 5.855 and 5.827. On the other hand, that difference is small enough that if you said it was the effect of the "mass" of the molecular bonds, I wouldn't just dismiss the idea out of hand.
A larger lesson here might be that just because an automated system (or a human!) claims that it understands you, that doesn't mean it actually does.
† I just checked wikipedia and they have 6.022e+23. This doesn't make a significant difference to this calculation, so I'll ignore it.
Yes. I agree. But it's a joke compared to what happened in Europe during the pandemic [0], when thousands of empty flights happened to secure their airlines landings slots. This could have been a checkmark in an Excel-sheet and did by far not draw the attention and ire of the public it should have last year.
I think you misplaced a decimal point on that fuel tonnage, they probably burned around 27 tons of fuel for that pattern.
If my own napkin math and google searching is correct, the daily worldwide consumption of jet fuel is (in very round numbers) a million tons a day. A bit less than the total daily consumption of gasoline in the US.
I wish to make a climate confession. I drove to the beach yesterday for recreation despite it not being necessary to keep myself alive and paying taxes to the climate gods. How many fraudulent carbon credits do I need to buy from rich people to absolve my sins?
Yeah good question. To add to the confusion, this paper published PNAS says "2.83 ± 1.0 t of CO2-equivalents per capita". Per capita is different from per household but might be a better metric
It also states that using just national energy statistics (this study actually analyzed 93 million households instead) you'd arrive at 3.19 t CO2 per capita which falls in line with their results
And, either way, this maneuver seems like it generated CO2 emissions roughly equal to those that would be saved by 10 people line drying their clothes for a year. Which 10 people are we gonna pick?
This was almost certainly drawn out by hand, waypoints (lat/lon) and turns were plotted and then inputed into the flight management computer, and there is a good chance the plane just flew itself as told.
Although given it was flown at such a lower altitude below 15k feed near Moses Lake (which is where Boeing does a ton of testing at that airport) it's possible the pilots hand flew this by following a pre-plotted magenta line already plotted on a map for them.
This is what I was curious about. Presumably ATC wasn't calling out vectors, they were doing it through their own navigation. So did ATC basically give them free movement within a certain box and certain altitude? It looks like they did the moves at about 10,000 feet.
Yeah, just look at how balanced the design looks. Either they programmed that flight path or the pilot spent a lot of time on an etch-a-sketch growing up.
I doubt their normal on-board systems have a feature to do that, or that the pilots would feel confident in doing so in terms of the FAA's possible reaction.
If Boeing wants to draw a 747 logo in the sky for the last 747 ever made, the 747, the symbol of american design, and they don't want to actually drive the plane around in loops, I'm sure the FAA would sign off on some foolery. But kudos to them for doing it live.
Given that the area is covered by radar (as well as MLAT SDR coverage), it would be tricky to pull off – and the FAA would probably not find it funny at all.
Boeing does a lot of this actually. Here's another 747-8F drawing a massive "12" over the state of Washington to celebrate the Seahawks reaching the Super Bowl.
Seems weird.. you get payed $39/hour in your first year.. then jump all the way up to $239/hour in your second year and never really get a raise beyond that?
The link there is specifically UPS, which is union.
I guess it is probably the case that guys with a couple years experience are doing about the same work as guys with 10 years (plane smoothly and safely goes from A to B).
It may be true, but I would expect this sort of waste is a drop in the bucket -- drop in the swimming pool, even -- compared to all the waste going on over the rest of the planet during the same time period.
That's not to say we shouldn't avoid waste, but this flight was a pretty momentous occasion (final delivery flight of a 747), and I think it's appropriate to mark that occasion in some unique manner. Burning a bunch of extra jet fuel doesn't seem all that inappropriate, especially considering the total amount of jet fuel burned in a given day.
That's pretty close. It could be a good chance to educate people, perhaps, without turning it into a buzzkill. "This plane burned 27 tons of fuel for that pretty pattern in the sky, but if that sounds like a lot of fuel just wait until you find out that planes burn a million tons every day!"
While that's true that no individual action matters, it's also true that our individual actions taken as a whole has an impact on the world, and because of that, we must treat individual actions as though they had the impact of collective actions.
Collective individuals have simply no way of affecting the environment in any major way simply by collective behavior change. The only thing that will change things is positive policies that encourage good behavior through positive methods.
For example by making electric vehicles attractive Tesla did more for the environment than possibly any single company ever by causing the shift to EVs in the general populace’s psyche.
Alternatively by doing things like banning plastic straws you instead get malicious compliance and dislike for the policies. That will never change things in a positive direction in the long term.
Individuals who can do things that will change the behavior of others through positive reinforcement can change things or by going to work at a company that was started with one of those efforts in mind. For example one of the biggest impact things an individual could do right now for climate change is to figure out a way to make a concrete that’s cheaper than concrete but not made in the method that releases CO2 and start a business out of it.
My only point was about _collective_ behavior change that is often advertised as a way to stop climate change that is advertised by many. I think that’s completely pointless and impossible. For example I do nothing to conserve anything in my day to day actions other than not wasting money or time. So if you can make CO2 reduction possibly simply by saving money and time then it’ll happen automatically.
Also I’m not so pessimistic about the current direction as you. We’re headed for a 3 degrees C change in temperature which isn’t going to have the most disastrous impacts that could have happened. There’s still also a lot of emerging tech that could play out and reduce those predictions further.
Does that napkin math subtract the cost of the same delivery flight but without the stunt?
I didn't read about the flight but I assume that delivery was happening anyway, with or without the stunt. I am guessing it took an hour or two extra, so the fuel and pilot salary cost should only be what was extra in addition to the regular flight amount?
> My napkin math seems to indicate this couldn't possibly cost Boeing more than $10-20k? Pretty small potatoes to such a large company.
Yeah they were losing billions through criminal negligence and delayed deliveries of the 737 Max, so a couple of tens of thousands for some well needed good PR is nothing. This is probably the first bit of it for multiple years now, with all the delays in the 777X, assembly quality issues of 787, etc.
That link was... an interesting read. I'd say it merits a NSFW tag but it's kind of obvious from the title.
> Pinyan had previously lost the ability to experience certain sensations after a motorcycle accident, and he had begun to seek out increasingly extreme sexual acts
Almost feel bad for the guy if it weren't for the animal cruelty.
Wisdom of crowds and all that, i’m guessing around $30k ?
My working was:
+2 hours (a path that should take 0.5 hours took 2.5h according to flight radar)
According to a random aviation site, an unspecified 747 revision at unspecified altitude with unspecified engines burns 4 litres per second, so take that with a bag of salt!
I don't know anything about flight deliveries. But, including a set of basic flight maneuvers makes sense to me. In which case they would be maneuvering anyway and they decided to go out in style. Big salutes to them who set it up.
I'm guessing it is in the range of 50..60k. The sibling posts come up with lower values, including only fuel, ignoring the cost of the required regular (flight hours in this case) maintenance.
There's cost and opportunity cost and marketing, so who knows? But it looks like it doubled the leg length, I'd guess cost and opportunity cost into the 100k+.
Do it as part of a flight that needs to happen anyway (such as this one, which was a delivery)? Probably not much more than the fuel and overtime the pilots needed to fly a few extra turns.
The 747 IMO is the most beautiful aircraft ever, certainly the most beautiful civilian aircraft.
A couple of years ago, I made it a point on an international trip with my kids to book seats for us on the upper deck. It was really awesome, and I am sure they will look back on it as a great memory.
If you are able to, before it is too late, I would encourage doing it.
The most iconic seats on the most iconic civilian airplane!
When you have been away from them for a while and you're used to just spending time in terminals with nothing but 737s everywhere, when you come back to a terminal with a 747 at the gate, it is a bit awe inspiring to see just how big these are. Similar to the first time walking up to a 777, A380, etc. They are just huge (or the 737 is tiny).
Like most people a 747 was my first long haul flight. I've not been lucky enough to fly the upper deck but a few years ago, I did get to fly in the nose, seat 1A. A great experience, strange being in front of the pilots and surprisingly noisy when the nose gear is moving up or down
As for being the most beautiful civilian aircraft. I see your 747 and raise you a Concorde
Book a flight from/to Germany with Lufthansa or from/to South Korea with Korean Air. They use the 747-8i and Lufthansa even the older 747-400 (delivery issues with B787 and B777). It is a nice plane and efficient between high demand routes of major destinations (e.g. JFK<-->FRA). If you want spend more money, I recommend the upper-deck which is provides a private atmosphere.
Question: But I'm not wealthy?
Answer: Me neither. I had a nice talk with a complete stranger in the middle row in the Economy during the last intercontinental flight. No Champagne but nice memories.
If business: Lufthansa business-class seats allow for lay-flat but with older screens. I like them because use an open interior without the closed "office-cubicle" interior of other airlines. Look out of the window, drink champagne, eat a nice meal (or two...) or sleep.
I had the pleasure and privilege to sit under the pilot on a BA 747 from LHR to SFO. Amazing experience. That plane has been melted down and made into beer cans.
Given that they flew this below 15k feet, not requiring the full IFR flight plan which would be required above that altitude, I suspect they might have hand flown this out by Moses lake by following a magenta line on a map.
They could have also just programmed the FMS with the waypoints and the plane flew itself.
Some of the turns are way too tight to be done by the autopilot. But it looks very regular, so I would suspect some custom control system was used. Would also be interested to know how they did this!
I'm sad you are getting downvoted for this. This was my first thought as well. You are not a party pooper and you live in reality.
I like the atmosphere/branding of aviation and prefer flights over train travel as an experience, but after my wife recently wrote an article about the handling of emission information by the sector and I read many of the more science- and engineering-focused studies she is referencing in her work I am now officially horrified by flying.
It's just so damned inefficient and the industry is so disingenuous about it (layers of fraud related to carbon offset schemes, lobbying, etc.) and tries so hard to talk customers out of caring that stunts like this do not read as the heartwarming celebration of the engineering crafts it once would have. Instead being this wasteful and callous makes a mockery of trying to engineer a better world.
It's a misuse of a magnificent tool we should respect more surgically for its utility and risks.
Are jumbo jets being retired because of fuel economy? If so, is there a chance demand for them will return if there's a spike in passenger numbers? I would've thought a larger fleet of smaller planes would be less efficient because it increases operational cost and you have more overhead weight to move around.
Jumbo jets are not being retired. That term applies to any airplane with two aisles between the seats or a "wide body". Currently produced examples from Boeing are the 767, 777 and 787. The 747 is simply not economical when compared to those newer airframes. Mot of the final run of 747s and I believe of those still in operation are used for cargo operations, this was an expected outcome even in the 1960s, although for different reasons. For airlines it is about running the plane at capacity and minimizing time on the ground. Airlines choose specialized models for the routes they run. The super jumbos are simply too big to be practical or economical.
> I would've thought a larger fleet of smaller planes would be less efficient because it increases operational cost and you have more overhead weight to move around.
You'd be wrong. Airline bosses (Willie Walsh? Almost sure it was him) have said it literally costs less to have two 787 fly one after the other than a single A380. The fuel efficiency of twin engine planes compared to 3 or 4 older engines compensates for the lower capacity.
But the 4-engined models can fly more direct routes over oceans and uninhabited areas right? Because of ETOPS. Of course this is not a problem on many routes.
ETOPS is what allows twins to fly routes that would otherwise require trijets or four engines. I'm not sure what the limits are but flights to Hawaii for example are routinely done with twins.
I know, but as far as I know it requires them to stay with 200nm or so of an airport. So they can't take the most direct route. Also for flights over the poles.
I think four engines still have a benefit there. But I guess you don't run a whole airplane model just because it's not economical on 2 or 3 routes.
I have personally flown from Seattle to Hawaii on a 737 MAX. That is 2320nmi. So no, the ETOPS limit is not 200nmi. There's nothing between the west coast and Hawaii but water. You can see AS853 is a nearly straight line from Seattle to Honolulu. If any of that deviation is for ETOPS it is minor.
ETOPS is time based, not distance based. The 777 has been approved by the FAA for ETOPS-330, which is 330 minutes of flight time to the nearest airport on one engine.
The 737 MAX is ETOPS-180, so it only has to be within 3 hours of a suitable airport when running on one engine.
Aha ok, I didn't know that. I thought they had to remain within glide distance (and I think this was also the case in the beginning). I haven't flown intercontinentally for a very long time :) And most of it was in 747s.
Fuel efficiency is one part, but the increased consumer preference for direct flights is another, while the business model for the A380s was basically "ferry all your passengers to the nearest hub on A320s then use A380s to bring them from hub to hub". But instead larger twinjets like the B787 and A350 which could do these direct routes more economically won.
Fuel economy is one piece of the puzzle. Another major piece is that passengers prefer the flexibility offered by smaller, more frequent flights instead of larger, less frequent flights.
We’re in the flight path, and I told my wife to go up to her office roof to see if she can see it, but she’s stuck in a meeting, and I’m too far north to catch a glimpse. I guess I’ll have to settle for spotting it on my ADS-B receiver, which is still pretty cool.
Somebody spent a few hours programming the FMS with lat-longs as few, if any, of the waypoints would be in the directory, likely offline.
Then there's a long phone call to, likely Seattle, Center to get the flight route accepted into the system. There's a possibility the ATC computers couldn't take all the way points, in which case they would need an airspace reservation where they could do the pattern.
On a trip home a few years ago, I went ahead and booked a 747, partially intentionally. It was very nostalgic knowing that it was probably the last time I would ever fly in a 747 again. That was a good plane.
My friend notes that the logo covers Grand County Int’l Airport, containing the 2nd-longest runway in the US, where JAL and FedEx both have 747 pilot training facilities.
Ok but the dev in me needs to know if this was done manually or programmed into the flight computer, I am assuming the latter as it looks meticulously done!
I’m rarely impressed anymore for whatever reasons, but even in the midst of a miserable bout of viral induced malady, I have to stand in awe of this.
I can’t even fathom the skill required to move a piece of equipment that large in a straight line let alone produce precise graphics with its flight path.
Question:
On the western side, the top-left side of the crown, it looks like two curves were flown, both more than 90 degrees. Wouldn’t it have been possible, instead, to fly straight (and then fly the „crown“ the other way around)?
Wouldn’t that have been marginally prettier?
After the 777 gained enough market share, it just seemed like less and less flights (especially the long range ones) were on the 747. End of an era. I flew on the top deck of a 747 once, I was sweating the whole time, but the views were worth it.
Interesting. I often feel safer in smaller (but not too small planes), where I don't see the wings visibly flapping. Something like a A320 or a 737.
With 747s the wings flap up and down quite visibly in turbulence, and you can even see the fuselage twisting if the curtains aren't closed between the sections.
There's also just the wall thickness to mass ratio. You ever notice that you can crash toy RC cars all you want and they never break, but if you crash a real car even mildly it's rather easily totaled?
> There's also just the wall thickness to mass ratio. You ever notice that you can crash toy RC cars all you want and they never break, but if you crash a real car even mildly it's rather easily totaled?
That might not be the best to share to someone who says they are being uncomfortable in a airplane, you're making things worse for them! :D
Any plane at 500mph is tissue paper if it hits something.
If you haven’t seen the wing flex in a 737 or A320 you aren’t paying close enough attention. It’s very obvious during the takeoff roll as load is applied or during any moderate+ turbulence.
> Any plane at 500mph is tissue paper if it hits something.
Sure, but a commercially-sold 1:500 plastic model of the same plane crashing into a wall at 1mph won't be tissue paper.
Similarly, ants can lift 100 times their own weight and survive having 5000 times their own weight placed on top of them, but it's quite impossible to for a human-sized mammal to do the same.
The question in my mind is, what replaces the 747, and is it safe? Looks like 777X is going to replace 747. Does the 777X have the same design flaws as the 737 MAX, namely larger engine, positioned forward in way that destabilizes the airframe?
> The question in my mind is, what replaces the 747, and is it safe? Looks like 777X is going to replace 747.
The 747 has been replaced for passenger service for decades. This isn't the first time production has been halted. The 777 has been around since the 1990s. With the 767, 777, and 787 there's really no need for the 747 anymore, especially for passenger service.
> Does the 777X have the same design flaws as the 737 MAX, namely larger engine, positioned forward in way that destabilizes the airframe?
In a word, no.
The 777X looks more like the 737NG vs the 737 Classic. It's stretched and has new wings, but the engines on the 777 were already massive. The 777 started with 330cm diameter engines and the new ones are 335cm. Given the gear arrangement on the 777 I doubt they had to move the engines forward.
Further, the 737 MAX crashes weren't directly caused by moving the engines, it was more caused by MCAS and a lack of training and explanation. Boeing tried to make the 737 MAX feel like a 737NG, but the plane itself wasn't inherently unstable.
The 777X does not have MCAS:
> Boeing stated that the 777X does not have an equivalent of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that is installed on the 737 MAX and that played a role in two crashes.
I can't answer your question directly, but the modern 737 is a 2010s aircraft forced into a 1965 design. Many, many problematic design decisions have been visited upon the low-rise airframe, and many critics of the plane think the 737s should have been retired long ago in favor of a new narrow-body aircraft. I don't think those kinds of design problems are present in the 777, which was a new design from the ground up.
I hate to be that guy but...anyone able to compute the total C02 emissions from this stunt? I guess when you manufacture planes for a living, this sort of thing doesn't seem like a big deal.
speaking from experience, I would tell you the sky penis is one of the easiest things to "draw" by flying an airplane. It's two turns around a point and a quick run out to maybe to a training maneuver or two, them a 180 and head back to where your turns were, and then head home.
What a shitty website. Throws up a modal dialog that says:
This site uses cookies
By clicking “Accept all cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
No option to decline some or all cookies. No option to keep using the website without clicking accept. I hope some European sues them and wins under GDPR.
Why would they put such a message if they didn't have the GDPR in mind?
I think like many other (mainly US) sites it's partly to make a statement, and partly misguided belief that they have to put some kind of message.
In reality it would be safer to ignore GDPR if you believe it shouldn't apply to you because you're not EU based. If you're doing something specifically for EU visitors then it becomes clear you're also targeting them as visitors and then you have to comply with GDPR (this popup isn't compliant).
Not sure what device you're on, but on desktop Firefox, I see a "Show Purposes" button and have the option to configure which cookies I want and don't.
It's being downvoted because comments like these are against the guidelines[0]:
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
Seems fair. Why should they treat their (voluntary) web-visitors any better than the owners/pilots of the aircraft they collect data from without any form of consent?
I like Boeing and the 747 is a great aircraft and a fantastic technical achievement, but, really, this is pretty atrocious. Couldn't they have just paid FlightAware to add some data to the track?
Until we get our population down to a sustainable level, this is unconscionable.
Get it under a billion and we can probably afford this. Until then, definitely not.
Hmm. I thought all new Boeings flew out over the pacific so at the moment the customer signs the paperwork receiving the airplane, it was someplace where there would be no state or local sales tax.
I'm not in the aero business myself, just repeating what I heard other, more knowledgable-sounding people said. Maybe that's not true or there's an exception for this one.
> I thought all new Boeings flew out over the pacific so at the moment the customer signs the paperwork receiving the airplane, it was someplace where there would be no state or local sales tax.
I'm pretty sure that's an urban legend; I've seen the same story, but never evidence for it.
And I suppose Boeing put down $1.00 on the bill of sale? Give me a break. It's not a handshake deal on an El Camino. Give the IRS some credit here please. If this was feasible every bank and e-commerce site in the world would be hosted in international water.
The planes are not drawn to scale. Looks like your screenshot is over South Dakota. Looking at the scale on the map those planes are around 6km apart, not considering altitude differences.
yup - it just shows how little I know about the subject... agh! - It was bit spooky looking at these, and I thought I zoomed in but by the time I took the screenshot it was way oof
Now that you know, see if you can find an airport with bad weather and check out the holding patterns they do. You'll se a half dozen planes in the same circle separated by 1,000ft vertically.
yup - just layman (me) being scared not understanding what's going on :) - then I saw earlier what the plane did (took me a while to figure out what was this about)
You wonder how pockets of this survive when top management comes and goes, who sometimes only know the company as just some logo or another corporation to be managed, and when workforces go through rounds and rounds of potential layoffs where such knowledge and initiative is generally lost.
Maybe it also helps to be a company that has at least something to do with hardware that leaves a physical history :)