Yes and yes.

Hi W0X0F, my girlfriend is in Salt Lake City and has a scheduled Delta flight returning to Seattle on Saturday, but the travel person for her organization is warning her about possible impacts from a pilots strike? We did some googling but could only find that BA pilots and pilots for a small French airline are or will be striking. Do you know anything about a strike that could impact western US flights by chance?

I haven't heard anything about this. Admittedly, I'm out of the loop a bit right now, but my brother is a Delta Captain and I talked to him just yesterday. He's starting a four day trip today and said nothing about an impending strike. I think I would certainly have heard something.

There was a story here in Denver the other day. Baggage handlers, plane cleaners, that sort on strike, maybe that was it.Denver Post

Thanks guys, looks like there won't be any impact.

Some airplanes have very poor forward visibility. The Pitts Special is notorious for it, and it's also a very tricky airplane to land with a tendency to ground loop. There was a pilot in a Pitts around here who landed over an ATR that was lined up on the runway to take off a few years ago.

That's very true, but that's kind of an exotic example. The Pitts is a one seat airplane (there is a two seat model, the S2B) and meant specifically for aerobatic flying.

I don't think I actually addressed this question. The reason they were able to get so close is that it can be difficult to pick out stationary airplanes on the ground at night. The only lights on a plane sitting on a taxiway are the position lights (red light on the left wing; green light on the right wing; white light on the tail) and the red rotating beacon. From a distance, these don't stand out at all and can be easy to overlook in the sea of lights in front of you as you approach the airport.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/1...sfo-airplanes/

Damn, that was a lot closer than I had though from the initial reports.

Meh planes fly at 500 knots head to head at 1000 feet separation all the time.

Plus even you on the highway drives like 20 feet laterally from oncoming traffic at 70mph.

100 feet is pretty close to an accident imo. Your point about the highway is, uh, not a helpful analogy. If you weren't joking then think about the time involved to go around in a large airliner where gravity is also working to close that 100-ft gap, versus turning your steering wheel a bit on the road.

1000 feet separation when planes are in the right place is one thing. 100 feet separation when planes are in the wrong places (and trending in the wrong direction) is most definitely another.

I'm not sure what the sink rate of a plane is at that point (I'm sure W0X0F can inform us), but I'm guessing it was around 10-15 seconds from complete disaster.

Typical descent rate during an approach is 700 fpm (+/-100). It will vary depending on winds and approach speed.

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I've loved the SR-71 since elementary school.

https://youtu.be/Lg73GKm7GgI

Yeah, I saw that bit in his book. If you don't have the book, buy it. Lots of cool pictures in it.

I saw on some other forum while searching around that it's out of print and now exorbitantly expensive to get it on eBay, but maybe that was old information.

Update: Just checked Amazon. The cheapest used copy is $409 and no new ones are available. Man, if they do another printing it's going to gut that market.

His printed book is done in extremely limited versions. It comes all nice and boxed up.

Can't thank you enough for sharing that video. I've heard the story before, but this was a really well done collection of clips to go along with it. I'm saving this one and sending it on to a bunch of people.

I saw an Omnimax movie in the old Caesars Palace Omnimax theater. IMAX is weak sauce in comparison. Anyway, part of the movie is an SR-71 starting the engines from the exhaust end's view. It looks like a gallon of raw fuel all ignites at once as the engine explodes into life.

Time to go visit the nearby air museum and gawk at the SR-71 parked there.

I assume you're talking about the one sitting in the Udvar-Hazy annex of the Air & Space Museum at Dulles airport. That plane flew coast to coast in 68 minutes before making its last landing at Dulles.

NY Times article

This is hilarious

I meant for me, which is in the Pima Air Museum in AZ.

I've seen three SR-71s on exhibit, the other two were outside and not well-maintained (Eglin and Huntsville). Udvar-Hazy is elite, everything is indoors and tip-top and if you're in the area it's well worth a side trip.

The one at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville is practically falling apart it has so much rust (as do most of the outdoor exhibits there).

FWIW if you're on the florida panhandle coast and you only have time for one military musuem, the naval aviation musuem at Pensacola is much nicer than the museum at Eglin. More cool stuff, more stuff indoors, and if you plan ahead you can see the blue angels practice.

I was in Huntsville in March and wish I had more time. Only had two and a half hours to see the whole Space and Rocket Center. But I got to see the SR-71 at Udvar-Hazy the same weekend they brought the new shuttle in. And the other shuttle they were moving to New York was mounted on the 747 on the tarmac when I landed at Dulles so I got to see two shuttles in one day and the SR-71. Awesome!

I'm sitting here watching "Why Planes Crash" and the lesson I'm learning is that many times a solvable technical problem spirals out of control due to human error.

The current situation resulted from the pilots not disengaging the autopilot to apply rudder to counter a roll caused by losing an engine. The autopilot couldn't apply enough aileron to stop the roll. I was thinking "hey, W0X0F talked about that recently."