TerryW

hardknox,  I am not frustrated with you, I get frustrated with pilots without airline experience writing as if they know what they are talking about.    There isn't anybody that has ever flown an airliner trained to go to high altitude to put out a fire.  An airplane is made of aluminum.  Fire and aluminum don't mix well.  I have always been trained IF you ever encounter fire in the aircraft you get the mo fo ON THE GROUND, even a road if you have to.  If the Wing Separation light comes on you no longer have a flying machine..  (There really isn't a Wing Separation light)   The author is not a commercial airline pilot.    Also, that pilot says things like,  "I instinctively knew".  No he doesn't, I sure don't and I sit in an airliner for 800 hours a year, every year for the past 26.    I hate when internet experts that write as if they were sitting there...

    Oh ok. Good.... Glad to hear the media is getting that right...  Can you tell I'm not a news guy? lol

    I have no idea how much fuel they left with but in my 17 years flying the 737 I have NEVER taken off with full fuel. So max range could be a moot point.  Their range is going to be based on their fuel load at take off and I doubt, but maybe it was topped off with fuel.

Mine is how I feel some days.  Like when I get to see my wife for more than just a few days!  Or when I am on vacation! 

Take offs are normally calculated for what they call a balanced field take off.  Balanced field take off. <---- I'm short on time or I would have typed that in my language.  We don't always want to take off at full power because it is much harder on the jet engines and when they engines are stressed at T/O power if they are going to fail, that is where it is more likely to happen, at the power reduction after full or very high power take offs. Rotate, V1 and V2 speeds are calculated on runway length, outside air temp, barometric pressure, altitude, wind and weight of the aircraft at take off.

Flying on one engine....     I think I was told by my commercial flight instructor that a twin engine aircraft loses 65% available thrust on one motor.   The 15% extra loss is from drag from the aircraft slipstream isn't as streamlined and carrying a dead motor around.    So, if the boy/boys up front shut one down they really won't save any gas and probably burn more.  Plus a jet engine burns a $hit pot of gas down low.  The 737-700 will burn around 4,400 lbs per hour at the service ceiling of 41,000 feet at .78 mach.  At 4,000 feet it burns around 8,000 lbs an hour at 250 knots .3 mach. Jet fuel weighs 6.7 lbs per gallon. 

    peejman, Pilots are not able to control passenger O2 with an on/off on newer aircraft like the 777.  Passenger O2 comes from individual oxygen generator at each passenger service unit (PSU).   Oxygen generators are like what took that Value Jet airliner down when they caught fire in the cargo compartment.   I don't remember how long the generators lasts but the FAA requires enough O2 to make an emergency decent from max certified altitude to a lower altitude around 10,000 feet.  I am sorry I don't remember all the exact numbers.  But  the bad guys could hang out long enough to put everyone out for good.  :-(

My Mom always told me, "If you can't find anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."    Mr Phelps,                                                                                                                                                                                   .

I finally watched the news yesterday. This story is crazy. Opinion Alert: I think the plane is fine and going to be used for something nefarious and the pilots were in on it. The way the news is reporting is like those two pilots fly together all the time.? Scary scary scary. I hope they find the plane and passengers safe.

    Tanker, me too.  There are some funny Mo Fo's here.  I love the humor. 

Good article.  The part about cell phones about to be approved for use inflight in Europe, I hope that doesn't happen here.  I really don't want to listen to someone 18 rows away talk on their phone.........

The people that scam like this deserve bad things to happen to them....

    I like this one...

    I like that except I would say  1)sudden mechanical failure     Errors, if trapped aren't that big a deal.

Yikes!

Those other countries need the TSA. They don't know what they are missing.  :taser:

     Dave I know it's hard to believe. Don't equate what they do in other countries to the US air traffic system, regulatory agencies, pilot training, radio communication, aircraft maintenance, etc. I have a friend that flew a Russian airline, in Russia about 10 years ago that allowed standing during all phases of flight. YIKES...     (I got lost here in the middle.....)   I think one possibility might be fire.  If there is a fire on board, they were screwed. Fire is bad, bad and real bad.  You would have your hands full fighting a fire and flying an airplane.  IDK

Cancer rates for pilots is high, very high.  I have had LOTS of precancerous junk removed to the tune of about a pound of flesh.  I get checked only once a year now.  I was every 6 months there for a while.    When I was a kid I never wore a shirt or long pants unless I absolutely had to. I grew up in the desert SW and it was warm enough most of the year to get away with it.  My doc told me that is where a lot of my precancerous junk came from.   No radiation testing per se.

Great collection.  Are they all 45 ACP?

    TMF, I can't argue, you're right and I am on your side. How an aircraft is equipt isn't always decided based on what is the "latest greatest", it is decided by people that look for .0001 pennies in the cost and what will it return in whole dollars.              I can't speak for other airlines but my transponder operation hasn't changed one bit since 9/11.  I have friends at just about all the other carriers and don't know if the others procedures have changed but I doubt it.  We turn the transponder on and off based on the phase of flight.  It is used on the ground during taxi because most airports have ground based radar and they track us at all times during taxi, especially during low visibility conditions.  We don't leave the transponder on at the gate as it has a very high output and is more damaging to humans than the aircraft's airborne radar.  It has the several modes one of which is STBY.  The way our transponders work is we have a discreet code assigned to our flight by Air Traffic Control. Their ground based radar sweeps the sky(queries) and our transponder replies with our assigned code and our altitude in order to differentiate us from others.  I am not aware of a transponder that communicates globally ie in non radar environment.  I think what would be used to give position would be a separate radio device.   

    There is nothing free, everything has a price.  Buying putting the technology in the 600+ airliners my company owns costs downtime or it has a weight that costs me in payload/gas to carry it around every day.  My company is going to iPads for our flight manuals.  We will pull the 10 manuals out of the airplane and those weigh about 50 pounds but carrying 50 pounds around on 600 airplanes on 4500 hundred flights a day will save my company millions in gas annually.

Tanker, it's the bus or us!

Lumber Jack, I am just surmising.  I really don't much detail about the story, as I am not much of a news guy.    I just talked to a buddy and some aircraft are tracked via GPS sat.    I am only current to fly domestically(Thank God) I am always in sight of dirt.  :-)

Me after one too many cups of coffee....

      I am a 26 year commercial pilot with many many many thousands of hours in the left seat. I haven't flown international in years but I'm 99% sure even off our coasts there is zero GPS type "tracking" that all tracking/ positioning is plotted by pilot induced position reports over the Sat Com.  Now, most other countries outside of the US and Europe, they don't have jack for modern ground technology when it comes to radios, radar or radar coverage.    I just ask a buddy of mine that flies captain on a 767 for Continental and he hasn't got back to me but I'd bet my paycheck US carriers don't use this technology and I guarantee third world countries don't have tracking.