No idea how it holds up now, but when I was a kid in the 80's I used to watch this show which was about an Air Force pilot during the cold war:


Starts right off with the U-2 and of course, the Blackbird. Ah, the Blackbird.

I love those Blackbird shots.

W0F0x you hear about this story?

http://news.yahoo.com/hawaii-release...234647426.html

15 year old hops a fence at San Jose Airport, climbs into a wheel well, survives 5 1/2 hour flight to Hawaii. Security footage shows him jumping out of the well.

Question #1 How did he survive? Question #2 How the hell did he know where to climb into? Just a kid being a kid?

I found an interesting article on plane stowawys, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19562101 .

Since we are both in the DC area I'm sure you've heard the lobby ads about denying NAS's request for landing permits in the US. What's all the heartburn with NAS?

Yeah, I heard about this and how the kid lived is beyond me. Between the lack of pressurization and the sub-zero temps, I would have thought it was 100% fatal.

As far as knowing where to climb, I think he just got lucky on that. There have been several cases of people trying this and being crushed to death by the retraction of the gear. This kid wedged into a small space to avoid the fear.

Interesting article. That survival rate amazes me.

I don't watch much live TV (just stuff I've recorded) and I diligently avoid the 24 hour news machine because the reporting is irritatingly bad. That leaves me with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for my news. I haven't seen anything about the issue you mention. I even tried Googling "NAS landing permit" and came up empty.

So what or who is NAS and what's the issue here?

I flew Delta ATL->LGA on Monday and had a crazy incident on my plane. The guy sitting next to my girlfriend (I was window, she was middle, he was aisle) got super tense clenching a magazine and it looked like he was going into a seizure or state of shock. We called the flight attendant over, who in turn called for a doctor. The guy eventually responded to the doctor that he was okay. Then a few minutes later, he started violently shaking, eating the magazine, and saying things like "this plane is doomed", "everybody's dead" and "I have a nuclear bomb." A passenger in front was able to restrain him temporarily and my girlfriend and I jumped over the seat in front of us to get away from him. Meanwhile, the guy was still completely out of control and they were only able to put plastic handcuffs on him after a firefighter sat on him for the rest of the flight. When we got to LGA, 5 policemen were needed to carry him off. We were a little surprised that neither the cops nor Delta asked to speak to us to give a statement about what had happened since we were the primary witnesses. Anyway, we mentioned this to the gate supervisor guy and he called over a cop to take down our names and gave us a $100 voucher each for our inconvenience. The cop said the guy was taken to a hospital and probably wouldn't even end up in jail.

I'm wondering if the crew followed proper protocol by just landing at the gate and leaving all the passengers on board while they extracted the guy. If a person says they have a bomb, shouldn't the plane land away from the terminal and everyone be evacuated? I wasn't worried really because the guy just seemed completely insane, but I figured that post-9/11 these kind of things are taken more seriously. I'd say that the crew was lucky that my girlfriend and I are pretty level headed because some people would have flipped out after hearing the things he was saying. A few passengers up front asked us what he was saying and I just said "crazy stuff" because telling them what he really said may have sent some of them into a panic.

W0X0F, how common are incidents like this?

I've never experienced anything like this, and I'd have to say it's very rare.

I'm surprised they went right to the gate if a bomb was mentioned. This had to be because either (1) they weren't aware of that part of his rantings (did you make it known to a crew member?) or (2) they just assessed him as a complete nut job, so they didn't take it seriously.

Like you, I'm also surprised they didn't talk to you and your girlfriend for a statement. I would think that the law enforcement guys meeting the plane would have some kind of protocol for getting all the facts and eyewitness accounts. But this isn't my area of expertise.

I didn't mention his rantings to a crew member because by the time he was saying all of that stuff until the end of the flight he was surrounded by all of the flight attendants and a woman who I believe worked for the TSA. All of them heard the things he was saying.

Here's some more detail that I didn't think about until after we landed. Before the flight took off, they made several announcements over the intercom that someone had left a black roller bag by the plane entrance that didn't have a bag check tag on it. A girl from a few rows up came back to my row and said to the man next to us that she was behind him boarding the plane and she saw him put down a bag without a tag on it. He denied that and said his bag had a tag. The flight attendant nearby asked him if he wanted to go check to make sure, and he said no. I don't know what ever happened to that bag, if it was really his, or if the girl was mistaken. But anyway, if I had remembered that during the flight I probably would've flipped my ****.

Wow you made your girlfriend sit in the middle next to a crazy stranger. That's pretty alpha.

I found out he was crazy when he became crazy.

I should've left out crazy and just left stranger to convey the trolly point I was trying to make. It's cool if your g/f is fine with the middle seat, but I take the middle 100% of the time because I have no idea what kind of creep could hypothetically end up sitting next to my wife.

Last week I was on a plane that had to pull up about 700 feet from the ground because of visibility issues during the landing. How close to the ground could you be before that decision couldn't be made? I do a lot of flying, typically across Canada 3-4 times a month and have never had this happen to me before. Is it common? Has it ever happened to you?

It was a Boeing 737

**** that! I want to look out the window!

Ive been flying regularly for 35 years. Only been on one aborted landing. Icy runway at Detroit Metro and the flight in front of us didn't clear the runway in time. We circled around and landed fine.

Two aborted takeoffs, same aircraft when warning lights came on during both attempts. A United flight out of D.C. I was with a crew of 8 folks - we decided to get off the plane at that point and spend the night in town. The supervisors decided to comp us all rooms after I fired up the large video camera I was hand carrying to record the interaction.

Norwegian Air Shuttle - I have no idea what the issue is but the Airline pilots association is running non stop radio ads against NAS getting permission to operate flights into the US.

Wow! That was an incredibly important bit of information. I wouldn't be surprised to find his version of a bomb in that bag, but given his mental state that "bomb" could be a sack of flour with a clock attached to it.

Aborted landings are such fun. Many years ago, coming into Denver from Chicago, we were already past the ind of the runway and nearly down when it's full power, gear up and away we go in our hotrod 727. Shortly we passengers were informed that a small plane ahead of us had aborted it's takeoff, sending us on our merry way.

You can tell it was long ago, since hardly anyone flies 727s these days.

This article explains the issue.

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/20...ian-air-labor/

So what's your opinion?

What a sad and scary world you must live in. What happens when she flies alone? Or isn't she allowed to leave the house without you?

This. My wife lost window seat privileges by not caring enough about being thousands of feet in the sky!

We also usually do the window/aisle seats and hope the middle stays empty. We use to offer to switch the aisle seat for the middle seat if someone actually had the middle seat but now we just let someone sit between us and ignore each other all flight.

Thanks for the reply. It's great being able to communicate with active pilot in the airline industry.

W0X0F
Ever had a windshield shatter?

Ever want to take the fire axe to the avionics guy?