I think when like me you read that, and your first thought is "ah, so he has a 75% chance to win the hand", it is proof you are binge-watching to many WSOP reruns.

Wow. 6 years. Thank you so much W0X0F.

Just getting the pilot / copilot thing cleared up makes this thread worth the read. Learned a lot even though I don't do much flying.

Big boys and their toys.

Wow that's crazy!

I read somewhere that each engine costs around six grand.

Was sitting over the wing the other day on a B737 and as we were ascending through clouds at 21,000 feet, I noticed ice forming on the slats and winglet. While I knew in my mind things were ok, it was still a little alarming as we have all heard what ice does to lift. Once we broke through the clouds, the ice disappeared, I assume from evaporation. Are the slats not heated? Would the pilots have seen ice on the windshield that alerted them to this?

Very impressive! I wonder how much was spent on the creation of this model, and how long did it take?

An article on it:
http://www.t3.com/news/man-builds-16...an-airbus-a380
5000 man hours to build. Cost not revealed but the cost of the engines here are around $3,300 each, which is probably more accurate than my first number.

Some things on a commercial airplane are heated continuously. These items, which are heated electrically, include pitot tubes, AOA vanes and windshields.

With the engines running, we have hot bleed air available for anti-icing the engine inlets, the wings and, on some planes, the elevators. Engine anti-ice is used on the ground or in the air whenever the plane is in icing conditions. Wing anti-ice is only used in the air because without airflow over the wings, that hot bleed air can actually damage the wing. On most planes, wing anti-ice won't activate on the ground even if the pilots inadvertently select it. This is done through the use of a weight-on-wheels sensor.

We make liberal use of the engine anti-ice while flying. Icing conditions are defined as TAT (Total Air Temperature)* 10 degrees or lower while in precipitation or with in-flight visibility less than one mile (i.e. in the clouds). We will only turn on the wing anti-ice if we actually observe some ice build-up. We use the windshield wipers as our representative surface.

In your case, the pilots probably had the engine anti-ice on and didn't see (or didn't yet notice) any ice on their wipers. Or perhaps they did just notice it, turned on the wing anti-ice and it quickly went away (that wing heats up quickly). But, as you guessed, that little bit of ice would probably go away quickly once you left the icing conditions even if they hadn't heated the wing.

* We always make things confusing in aviation. Just as we have several types of airspeed: True airspeed (TAS), Indicated airspeed (IAS), and Calibrated airspeed (CAS), we also have several kinds of temperature: Total Air Temperature (TAT), Static Air Temperature (SAT), and Ram Air Temperature (RAT).

Static Air Temperature is what the air would feel like if you were standing still in it. Ram Air Temperature is the temperature measured at the sensor, which will be higher than SAT due to compressibility of air. TAT should essentially be the same as RAT and, if you want to know more about this arcane topic, you can wade through this discussion in Wikipedia.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/...ta-entry-fail/

Does your company use iPads on all airplane types? What are your thoughts on this? I know ITT you've said it beats carrying around those heavy manuals, but I hadn't thought about the "fat finger" mistake before.

We use the Microsoft Surface, which took some getting used to for me (my first Apple product was the Apple II). We only use it for the Jeppesen aeronautical charts and the airplane and company manuals. We don't use it for performance data or calculations, as in the article you referenced. There is no opportunity for this kind of mistake in our cockpit.

Was flying TPA-DFW Monday through some poor weather (not horrible) and 15 minutes out the captain mentioned a "unique landing" and for all passengers to power down all devices. First I had seen this request and wondering if it's common or has any real impact on the instruments used to land?

I can't imagine what was behind that request. On the plane I'm currently flying (MD-88) there is no circumstance that would require this, even an auto-land. I would have had to ask the pilots about this when deplaning.

And it better not have any real impact on the instruments, because you know that there will always be a handful of people who purposely don't comply.

Have you ever experienced interference from a phone or other device? I think the devices have gotten better at preventing this but with audio production gear we were frequently picking up a beating pattern caused by some Nextel/Sprint phones. It happened right as the nearby phone was receiving a text or right before it would start ringing to receive a call.

My computer speakers do that. It reminds me when I forget to turn off my cell phone.

I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed this thread! There is a bit of wistfulness about it, because learning fly a biplane was on my bucket list and that won't happen due to my fused foot. (and old age and my dimming intellect, lol.)

I do like getting all this inside info which I sometimes use to impress my BiL who appraises jets for a living. Thanks again.

We live a couple of kilometres from an airport and are sometimes directly under the flight path for small personal planes landing. Every time a plane flies over the house it generates static on the baby monitor.

I suspect it's a one way thing but still kind of surprised me.

That is a problem with the way your speakers are designed. It is picking up a 217Hz signal encoded in the 800,900,1800 or 1900 Mhz signal that phones use. It has to be an active speaker to do that and the wiring is not properly shielded and/or it has lousy filters which is normally both true with cheap computer speakers.

For phone signals to interfere with anything on a plane the same has to be true. Having a non linear circuit to amplify signals combined with bad filtering of signals or bad wiring. I don't think there are any systems on a plane that could be affected and that the whole turn of your mobile phones thing is a better safe than sorry policy. But as W0X0F has said before be glad you don't have to listen to stupid phone conversations all around you.

Even better is if I could turn off the stupid conversations between passengers.

I think I did have some kind of interference once a long time ago, but I haven't noticed anything in years and it's always seemed to be an overblown issue to me.

Bet they filled more than a couple barf bags on this flight.

I have heard this request as well. We were flying into LAX with heavy fog. Not sure about this one, but I was on an A321. Could this be an Airbus issue, since they rely so heavily on software?

is this a normal takeoff trajectory?

http://brightside.me/article/100-bes...5/#image212655

Hi all,

I've got a question about flying out of Burlington (BTV) Vermont to NYC.

I'm flying out of there on the 17th of January and connecting with a flight from JFK to AMS departing on 17:50, booked through KLM. However KLM doesn't cooperate with JetBlue (the airline offering us a convenient flight between BTV and JFK) so we have no insurance coverage if we miss our connection between BVT and JFK due to bad weather and such.

We've heard from other people doing this route that Burlington can have some heavy snow which would lead to the airport being closed. How real is this scenario and what can we expect?

Our alternative is to fly out of BTV to LGA at 07:15 in the morning, switch airpots in NYC and then fly out of JFK at 17:50, which can be booked through KLM and would cover our new tickets if we miss a connection.

Any suggestions as to what line to take here? Is the risk worth it by booking through Jetblue or are delays / closing of the airport so frequent that we shouldn't risk it?

Not W0X0F, but this might not be his area of expertise either. What time is your BTV -> JFK flight due into New York?

You're going to need to leave the secured area in JFK, retrieve your bags from baggage claim, and be re-screened through security which is going to all take time. I wouldn't necessarily sweat the possibility of the airport being completely closed due to snow, but would want LOTS of extra time baked in for delays and the re-check in process at JFK.