There are 20 item(s) tagged with “air-travel” on this site.
Other tags used by these items: history, spies, science, business, fiction, investing, military, transportation, environment, chicago, engineering, china, research, canada, philosophy, taxes, geography, geometry, labor, physics, infrastructure, tech, space, biography, james-bond, mystery
“This is simply a place where aircraft take off and land. Most often, we call these ‘airports,’ but aerodrome is more inclusive. A small dirt landing strip in the jungle could be an aerodrome. A patch of ocean where seaplanes launch could be an aerodrome. From Wikipedia : The term airport may imply…”
“This book was written by an airline journalist, and it shows. It’s very low-level – a sometimes bewildering recitation of deals and maneuverings by the two biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world: Boeing and Airbus. It’s like if every news article ever written about them were bundled up into a…”
“ Solid thriller about the apparent cover-up of an inflight incident on trans-pacific flight. Lots of a super geeky airline industry information. If you like jets, this is your book. Fast-paced, page turner. I legitimately couldn’t put it down. ”
“About 50 pages into this, I was bored, and it seemed very similar to another book I had read. Sure enough, turns out Annie Jacobson wrote The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency . I’m just not a fan of her writing, I guess. The truth is…”
“Yes…ish. Some of them can under some circumstances. ‘Autoland’ is a feature on some larger airlines. But it has limits: It has to be enabled and initiated. It doesn’t just do it automatically. The airport has to be equipped for it. The plane doesn’t really ‘land itself’ – the plane and the airport…”
“Defining what actually constitutes an individual ‘plane’ can be hard. In each case, there is a basic airframe (ex: 737), but there are sometimes dozens of variants of it (100 through 900, as well as MAX versions 7 though 10). Some common changes: Lengthening the body (you can’t increase it in any…”
“It has to do with the transition from two-letter to three-letter codes. Originally, airport codes were just two-letters. In Canada, they decided to use the same code as the Morse code for the corresponding Canadian railway station. Eventually, it became important to know if an airport had a weather…”
“ Somewhat interesting, but scattered. The author bounces around a lot. ”
“This is a purchase made at a shop in the international terminal of most airports which is free from taxes. Since some goods – like alcohol and cigarettes – are highly taxed, this can result in a steep discount on these items. There are three separate concepts at work: If you have checked in and…”
“In geometry, a ‘great circle’ is a flat plane that cuts through the middle of a sphere. Essentially, it becomes the longer line that was drawn around that sphere. In aviation navigation, a ‘great circle route’ is the shortest path between two points, and is achieved by finding the great circle that…”
“Fantastically written history of how poorly flight attendants were treated in the 60s and 70s, and how they fought back. Back then, a stewardess was a key selling point for airlines. Most travelers were male, and stewardesses were employed to indulge the male ego with an image of servitude. They…”
“This is a value commonly used to describe the speed of an aircraft. It’s not a constant value. It represents the speed of sound in whatever air is being used at the time. The speed of sound changes with elevation and air density. Also, ‘speed of sound’ is kind of a misnomer. What’s really being…”
“This was apparently a revolutionary book, back when it was published. It pushed back on the idea that industrial accidents were usually the fault of human error. It advaned the idea that in the world of connected systems, humans simply be expected to understand the ultimate ramifications of…”
“Chicago’s largest airport is named for Edward ‘Butch’ O’Hare. He was a Naval aviator during World War II. He’s most known for single-handing attacking nine bombers who were threatening his aircraft carrier. He shot down five of them. O’Hare was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was shot down by the…”
“O’Hare is built on what used to be an airfield complex called ‘Orchard Field.’ It served a Douglas manufacturing plant and an Air Force service depot. That’s where the ‘ORD’ comes from: ‘Orchard.’ When the city of Chicago needed more capacity than the original airport (now Midway), they purchased…”
“I normally find things to research by reading books. This time I read a book because I wanted to learn more about a thing I was researching. I was writing this entry: Types of Aircraft Engines . I wanted to know more about the differences between turboprops and turbofans. So I found this book, and…”
“I read this because NASA’s Artemis mission was in the news, and I felt kinda of guilty that I don’t follow space much. It’s poor geek cred, I know, but outside of childhood, I’ve just never been that interested in space exploration. But my brother got me to watch an Apollo 11 documentary , and it…”
“This is short for ‘tarmacadam,’ which differs slightly from macadam . Wikipedia defines it as: Tarmacadam is a road surfacing material made by combining crushed stone, sand, and tar […] It is a more durable and dust-free enhancement of simple compacted stone macadam surfaces… Vocabulary.com says:…”