Civil

The aircraft is the sole Boeing 747 carrying weapons for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Syria.

Taken on Mar. 17, 2019, the interesting photos in this post show the only Boeing 747-281B of Fars Air Qeshm (EP-FAB) damaged at Hamad airport, Doha, Qatar after the loadmaster mistakenly unloaded the cargo from the nose of the airplane first last night. According to world-famous aviation journalist Babak Taghvaee’s Twitter Profile, the aircraft is the sole 747 carrying weapons for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to Syria.

Fars Air Qeshm was established in 2003 with the aim of creating efficient passenger and cargo services serving Qeshm Island. The airline was created with the aid of private sector investment. It temporarily ceased operations in 2013 due to bad management and financial problems. Operations were restarted with the new management team in March 2017.

NASA Captures First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction in Flight.

NASA has successfully tested an advanced air-to-air photographic technology in flight, capturing the first-ever images of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft in flight.

Physical Scientist J.T. Heineck of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley gets his first glimpse at a set of long-awaited images and takes a moment to reflect on more than 10 years of technique development – an effort that has led to a milestone for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

“I am ecstatic about how these images turned out,” said Heineck. “With this upgraded system, we have, by an order of magnitude, improved both the speed and quality of our imagery from previous research.”

As explained by Matt Kamlet, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, in the article NASA Captures First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction in Flight, the images were captured during the fourth phase of Air-to-Air Background Oriented Schlieren flights, or AirBOS, which took place at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The flight series saw successful testing of an upgraded imaging system capable of capturing high-quality images of shockwaves, rapid pressure changes which are produced when an aircraft flies faster than the speed of sound, or supersonic. Shockwaves produced by aircraft merge together as they travel through the atmosphere and are responsible for what is heard on the ground as a sonic boom.

The system will be used to capture data crucial to confirming the design of the agency’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane, or X-59 QueSST, which will fly supersonic but will produce shockwaves in such a way that, instead of a loud sonic boom, only a quiet rumble may be heard. The ability to fly supersonically without a sonic boom may one day result in lifting current restrictions on supersonic flight over land.

The images feature a pair of T-38s from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), flying in formation at supersonic speeds. The T-38s are flying approximately 30 feet away from each other, with the trailing aircraft flying about 10 feet lower than the leading T-38. With exceptional clarity, the flow of the shock waves from both aircraft is seen, and for the first time, the interaction of the shocks can be seen in flight.

“We’re looking at a supersonic flow, which is why we’re getting these shockwaves,” said Neal Smith, a research engineer with AerospaceComputing Inc. at NASA Ames’ fluid mechanics laboratory.

“What’s interesting is, if you look at the rear T-38, you see these shocks kind of interact in a curve,” he said. “This is because the trailing T-38 is flying in the wake of the leading aircraft, so the shocks are going to be shaped differently. This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact.”

The study of how shockwaves interact with each other, as well as with the exhaust plume of an aircraft, has been a topic of interest among researchers. Previous, subscale schlieren research in Ames’ wind tunnel, revealed distortion of the shocks, leading to further efforts to expand this research to full-scale flight testing.

While the acquisition of these images for research marked one of the goals of AirBOS, one of the primary objectives was to flight-test advanced equipment capable of high-quality air-to-air schlieren imagery, to have ready for X-59’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstration, a mission that will use the X-59 to provide regulators with statistically valid data needed for potential regulation changes to enable quiet commercial supersonic flight over land.

While NASA has previously used the schlieren photography technique to study shockwaves, the AirBOS 4 flights featured an upgraded version of the previous airborne schlieren systems, allowing researchers to capture three times the amount of data in the same amount of time.

“We’re seeing a level of physical detail here that I don’t think anybody has ever seen before,” said Dan Banks, senior research engineer at NASA Armstrong. “Just looking at the data for the first time, I think things worked out better than we’d imagined. This is a very big step.”

Additional images included a “knife-edge” shot of a single T-38 in supersonic flight, as well as a slow-speed T-34 aircraft, to test the feasibility of visualizing an aircraft’s wing and flap vortices using the AirBOS system.

The images were captured from a NASA B-200 King Air, using an upgraded camera system to increase image quality. The upgraded system included the addition of a camera able to capture data with a wider field of view. This improved spatial awareness allowed for more accurate positioning of the aircraft. The system also included a memory upgrade for the cameras, permitting researchers to increase the frame rate to 1400 frames per second, making it easier to capture a larger number of samples. Finally, the system received an upgraded connection to data storage computers, which allowed for a much higher rate of data download. This also contributed to the team being able to capture more data per pass, boosting the quality of the images.

In addition to a recent avionics upgrade for the King Air, which improved the ability of the aircraft to be in the exact right place at the exact right time, the team also developed a new installation system for the cameras, drastically reducing the time it took to integrate them with the aircraft.

“With previous iterations of AirBOS, it took up to a week or more to integrate the camera system onto the aircraft and get it working. This time we were able to get it in and functioning within a day,” said Tiffany Titus, flight operations engineer. “That’s time the research team can use to go out and fly, and get that data.”

While the updated camera system and avionics upgrade on the B-200 greatly improved the ability to conduct these flights more efficiently than in the previous series, obtaining the images still required a great deal of skill and coordination from engineers, mission controllers, and pilots from both NASA and Edwards’ U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.

In order to capture these images, the King Air, flying a pattern around 30,000 feet, had to arrive in a precise position as the pair of T-38s passed at supersonic speeds approximately 2,000 feet below. Meanwhile, the cameras, able to record for a total of three seconds, had to begin recording at the exact moment the supersonic T-38s came into frame.

“The biggest challenge was trying to get the timing correct to make sure we could get these images,” said Heather Maliska, AirBOS sub-project manager. “I’m absolutely happy with how the team was able to pull this off. Our operations team has done this type of maneuver before. They know how to get the maneuver lined up, and our NASA pilots and the Air Force pilots did a great job being where they needed to be.”

“They were rock stars.”

The data from the AirBOS flights will continue to undergo analysis, helping NASA refine the techniques for these tests to improve data further, with future flights potentially taking place at higher altitudes. These efforts will help advance knowledge of the characteristics of shockwaves as NASA progresses toward quiet supersonic research flights with the X-59, and closer toward a major milestone in aviation.

AirBOS was flown as a sub-project under NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project.

Photo by NASA and Lockheed Martin

“This flight is requesting to come back…a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing,” ATC operative.

Kuala Lumpur-bound Saudi Arabian Airlines flight SV832 set off from Jeddah, but the pilot requested to turn back after a passenger told the crew she had forgotten her baby in the boarding area of the terminal.

A video in which the Boeing 787-9 (B789) pilot can be heard relaying the story to air traffic control was uploaded to YouTube and has since gone viral, with more than 50,000 views.

(Click here to watch the video).

“May God be with us. Can we come back or what?” the pilot says over the radio.

“This flight is requesting to come back…a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing,” an ATC operative can be heard saying.

The pilot is asked to repeat the request, to which he replies: “We told you, a passenger left her baby in the terminal and refuses to continue the flight.”

“Ok, head back to the gate,” says ATC. “This is totally a new one for us!”

No further information on how the mother managed to forget her child has been released.

It’s not the first controversial air travel-related parenting decision.

As reported by The Independent, In 2017, a photo of a woman who’d left her baby on the airport floor while she used her phone, with the caption “idiot”, quickly went viral.

However, the Illinois mother, Molly Lensing, was quick to defend her actions, explaining that a technical glitch with Delta had left her stranded in Colorado airport for more than 20 hours with her than a two-month-old daughter.

“Anastasia had been held or in her carrier for many hours,” Lensing said.

“My arms were tired. She needed to stretch. And I had to communicate with all the family members wondering where the heck we were.”

Lensing has said that her shaming experience should be a lesson to those who deem it acceptable to publicly judge a stranger’s parenting techniques online.

Photo by Aero Pixels from England via Wikipedia

Chuck Yeager, the first person to ever go supersonic in 1947, escorted the DC-8 during its supersonic flight in an F-104

On Aug. 21, 1961, a jet designed for commercial use became the first airliner to go supersonic. And it wasn’t the famous Concorde, which wouldn’t break the sound barrier until an October ’69 test flight, or the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, but rather a humble DC-8—no. N9604Z, to be specific.

The test flight was planned by Douglas test pilot William Magruder and was set to take off from Edwards Air Force Base (AFB). As flight test engineer Richard Edwards, told to Air & Space Magazine, the idea was to “get it out there, show the airplane can survive this and not fall apart.” The DC-8, which at the time was competing with the Boeing 707, had been used by commercial carriers for about three years. Even though the DC-8 wasn’t designed to go supersonic, the bragging rights of being the first to do so were worth making the attempt.

In order to reach Mach 1, the jet had to be in a dive. According to Mentalfloss.com, this meant taking it up to 52,000 feet, which was also a record for altitude.

As Edwards tells Air & Space Magazine: “We took it up to 10 miles up…and put it in a half-a-G pushover. Bill maintained about 50 pounds of push. He didn’t trim it for the dive so that it would want to pull out by itself. In the dive, at about 45,000 feet, it went to Mach 1.01 for maybe 16 seconds, then he recovered. But the recovery was a little scary.”

The stabilizer in fact was overloaded and the plane stalled when Magruder tried to pull it back.

“What he did, because he was smart, is something that no other pilot would do,” explains Edwards. “He pushed over into the dive more, which relieved the load on the stabilizer. He was able to run the [stabilizer] motor…and he recovered at about 35,000 feet.” The crew successfully turned a mass-produced airliner into the world’s supersonic commuter jet. (Right by their side the entire time? Chuck Yeager, the first person to ever go supersonic in 1947. He escorted the DC-8 during its test in an F-104.)

“That’s an unofficial supersonic record, payload record, and of course an altitude record for a commercial transport,” Edwards points out.

After the test, DC-8 no. N9604Z was delivered to Canadian Pacific Air Lines and was used by the carrier for almost two decades before being retired. Sadly this piece of aviation history isn’t hanging in a museum somewhere: after it was put out of service, in fact, Canadian Pacific sold DC-8 no. N9604Z for scrap.

Photo by Douglas and Eduard Marmet via Wikipedia

The Boeing 747 wound up on a slight incline far off the runway, about 50 meters (yards) from a fence marking the airport perimeter

Taken on Nov. 7, 2018, the incredible video in this post, which appeared on CBC Nova Scotia Facebook page, shows a Boeing 747 cargo plane after it had skidded off the runway while landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Canada’s east coast province of Nova Scotia. Five crewmembers have been sent to the hospital with minor injuries.

Airport spokeswoman Theresa Rath Spicer said the SkyLease Cargo plane went off Runway 32 just after 5 a.m. (4 a.m. EST) Wednesday. It’s not clear what caused the accident.

As reported by AP News, the plane wound up on a slight incline far off the runway, about 50 meters (yards) from a fence marking the airport perimeter. Two engines were sheared off completely.

The nose of the white aircraft showed moderate damage. The underside of the plane appeared to be cracked and heavily damaged.

Following its introduction in 1969, the Boeing 747 became a major success with airlines and the flying public. As the world’s first wide-body jetliner, the 747 had revolutionized air travel and cemented its manufacturer’s dominance in the passenger aircraft market.

Photo by ANDREW VAUGHAN/THE CANADIAN PRESS

F-15Cs aircraft scrambled out of Portland, Oregon, and were in the air within a few minutes and the pilots kept people on the ground safe

On Aug. 10, 2018, a “suicidal” airline employee stole an empty Horizon Air Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 turboprop plane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport, and was chased by military jets before crashing into a small island in the Puget Sound.

According to The Washington Post, preliminary information suggests the crash occurred because the 29-year-old man was “doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said.

Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, said on Twitter the man was suicidal and there was no connection to terrorism.

As the video in this post shows, the Horizon Air Dash 8 was doing large loops and other dangerous maneuvers as the sunset on the Puget Sound. There were no passengers aboard. Authorities initially said the man was a mechanic but Alaska Airlines later said he was believed to be a ground service agent employed by Horizon. Those employees direct aircraft for takeoff and gate approach and de-ice planes.

Troyer added that F-15Cs aircraft scrambled out of Portland, Oregon, and were in the air “within a few minutes” and the pilots kept “people on the ground safe.”

The Dash 8 was stolen about 8 p.m. Alaska Airlines said it was in a “maintenance position” and not scheduled for a passenger flight. Horizon Air is part of Alaska Air Group and flies shorter routes throughout the U.S. West. The Dash 8 is a turboprop aircraft with 76 seats.

The man could be heard on audio recordings telling air traffic controllers that he is “just a broken guy.”

An air traffic controller called the man “Rich,” and tried to convince the man to land the airplane.

“There is a runway just off to your right side in about a mile,” the controller says, referring to an airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“Oh, man. Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there,” the man responded, later adding “This is probably jail time for life, huh?”

Later the man said: “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this…Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess.”

Flights out of Sea-Tac, the largest commercial airport in the Pacific Northwest, were temporarily grounded during the drama.

Photo by U.S. Air Force and Hawaiian717 via Wikipedia

The 747 Wing House was made by using the two wings and tail section of a scrapped Boeing 747

The interesting photos in this post show the so-called 747 Wing House, the house that was created by using a former jumbo jet to build the ultimate dream home.

Noteworthy this highly unusual home was made by using the two wings and tail section of a scrapped Boeing 747.

Francie Rehwald, a former Mercedes dealer, spent $26,000 on the scrap Boeing 747 and tasked American architect David Hertz to build this stunning house in the remote hills of Malibu, California.

According to Daily Mail, since Rehwald wanted curves and feminine shapes for her dream house, interviewed 12 architects before deciding on David Hertz and spent 15 years searching the globe for the perfect piece of land.

All Hertz had to do was look to the skies for his inspiration – coming up with the idea when he was on an airplane.

Rehwald even had to get permission from 17 government agencies – including Homeland Security – to build the house, as from the sky it looks like a plane crash.

The retired Mercedes Benz dealer explained: “I wanted something that was feminine.

“You might not think wings are feminine, but once they were detached from the plane they really come into their own.

“They have such subtle curves.”

Hertz’s brief was an economical, feminine house with a floating roof.

He said: “I was flying and looking out at the wing, thinking about what I could do to float a roof.

“Then it occurred to me, why try to build a wing when I can appropriate a wing?”

Rehwald – who refused to say exactly how much it cost to build, only hinting it was in the millions – added: ‘No one had ever built anything like this before.

‘There were a lot of surprises that brought the cost up, but it’s just beautiful.’

The mansion sits on 55 acres and is 1,000 feet above sea level.

It used two Boeing wings and two tail fins, which were detached from the plane using the latest precision technology.

They were then transported to the mansion by using a CH-47 Chinook belonging to Columbia Helicopters, after having to close five freeways to get them partway there.

Hertz said: “There was a lot of risk with the helicopter.

“It was clear when we were transporting the wings that if they started to turn or catch the wind, they would just drop them.”

Rehwald concludes: “Every day is a complete and utter joy and I feel so lucky.”

Photo by Superfastjellyfish via Wikipedia

The Turkish Airlines A321 was parked at its gate when it got struck by the A330, but the security camera footage shows that the Turkish plane was positioned too close to the taxiway when the contact happened

Taken on May 13, 2018, the video in this post features an Asiana Airlines Airbus A330 slicing through the vertical stabilizer of a Turkish Airlines Airbus A321 at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport, causing damage to both jets and a small fire to break out on the Turkish plane.

The mishap took place while the Korean A330 was taxing prior to a scheduled departure to South Korea’s Incheon International Airport.

The Turkish Airlines A321 was parked at its gate when it got struck by the A330, but the security camera footage shows that the Turkish plane was positioned too close to the taxiway when the contact happened.

No injuries were reported, but passengers have faced flight delays.

An investigation has started to determine the cause of the incident.

“Southwest 1380, we’re single engine. We have part of the aircraft missing so we’re going to need to slow down a bit,” Tammie Jo Shults, Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 pilot

Tammie Jo Shults’s voice was calm yet focused as her Boeing 737-700 descended with 149 people on board.

“Southwest 1380, we’re single engine,” Shults, a former fighter pilot with the U.S. Navy, said. “We have part of the aircraft missing so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” She asked for medical personnel to meet her aircraft on the runway. “We’ve got injured passengers.”

Asked if the plane was on fire, she said: “No, it’s not on fire, but part of it’s missing,” Shults said, pausing for a moment. “They said there’s a hole, and uh, someone went out.”

On Apr. 18, 2018, the engine on Shults’s plane had exploded spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one woman dead and seven other people injured. According to MSN, passengers pulled the woman who later died back into the plane as she was being sucked out. Others on board the Dallas-bound flight braced for impact as oxygen masks muffled their screams.

Shults was able to save the lives of 148 people aboard her Boeing 737 by successfully completing an emergency landing in the midst of the chaos at the Philadelphia International Airport.

“She has nerves of steel,” one passenger, Alfred Tumlinson, told the Associated Press. “That lady, I applaud her. I’m going to send her a Christmas card — I’m going to tell you that — with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.”

Another passenger, Diana McBride Self, thanked Shults on Facebook for her “guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation.” She added that Shults “came back to speak to each of us personally.”

“This is a true American Hero,” McBride wrote.

Shults has been compared with Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who glided his US Airways plane to safety in New York’s Hudson River in 2009.

Southwest declined to name the pilot, though passengers confirmed Shults’s name on social media, and Shults’s mother-in-law told The Washington Post she was the pilot. Shults’s husband also confirmed her name to the Associated Press. Shults declined to comment when reached by The Post.

According to her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University, from which she graduated in 1983, Shults was among the first female fighter pilots for the U.S. Navy. Cindy Foster, who went to college with her, told the Kansas City Star that Shults was also among the first women to fly a F/A-18 Hornet for the U.S. Navy.

“She said she wasn’t going to let anyone tell her she couldn’t,” Foster said.

Shults’s persistence in becoming a pilot goes back to her upbringing on a New Mexico ranch, near Holloman Air Force Base, Shults says in the book “Military Fly Moms,” by Linda Maloney.

“Some people grow up around aviation. I grew up under it,” she said. Watching the daily air show, she knew she “just had to fly.”

She recalled attending a lecture on aviation during her senior year of high school, in 1979. A retired colonel started the class by asking Shults, the only girl in attendance, “if I was lost.”

“I mustered up the courage to assure him I was not and that I was interested in flying,” she wrote. “He allowed me to stay but assured me there were no professional women pilots.”

When she met a woman in college who had received her Air Force wings, she wrote, “I set to work trying to break into the club.”

But Shults, whose maiden name is Bonnell, wrote that the Air Force “wasn’t interested” in talking to her. The Navy let her apply for aviation officer candidate school, “but there did not seem to be a demand for women pilots.”

“Finally,” she wrote, a year after taking the Navy aviation exam, she found a recruiter who would process her application. After aviation officer candidate school in Pensacola, Fla., she was assigned to a training squadron at Naval Air Station Chase Field in Beeville, Tex., as an instructor, pilot teaching student aviators how to fly the Navy T-2 trainer. She later left to fly the A-7 Corsair II in Lemoore, Calif.

By then, she met her “knight in shining airplane,” a fellow pilot who would become her husband, Dean Shults who also now flies for Southwest Airlines.

As reported by MSN, because of the combat exclusion law, Tammie Jo Shults was prohibited from flying in a combat squadron. While her husband was able to join a squadron, her choices were limited, involving providing electronic warfare training to Navy ships and aircraft.

She later became one of the first women to fly the F/A-18 Hornet, which was then the Navy’s newest fighter, but again in a support role. “Women were new to the Hornet community, and already there were signs of growing pains.”

She served in the Navy for 10 years, reaching the rank of Navy lieutenant commander. She left the Navy in 1993 and now lives in the San Antonio area with her husband. She has two children — a teenage son and a daughter in her early 20s.

Foster, her friend from college, told the Kansas City Star that Shults knew she “had to work harder than everyone else.” Foster said.

“She did it for herself and all women fighting for a chance,” Foster said.

The passenger killed was identified as Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, by her employer Wells Fargo. Riordan was an Albuquerque-based community relations leader “who was loved and respected,” Wells Fargo said in a statement.

“Knowing Tammie Jo, I know her heart is broken for the death of that passenger,” her mother-in-law, Virginia Shults, said.

Top image: Military Fly Moms; Boeing 737-700 window: Marty Martinez via Facebook; Boeing 737-700 engine: NTSB; bottom image: Facebook

The Boeing 737-700 crew decided to return to the airport “after receiving a cockpit indication of a performance issue with one of the aircraft engines. Following established protocol and procedures, the pilots completed an uneventful landing,” Southwest Airlines statement

Taken from one of the passengers aboard Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700, registration N431WN performing flight WN-604 from Salt Lake City, UT to Los Angeles, CA (USA) with 110 people on board, the following interesting video shows the aircraft right engine suffering a compressor stall 25 minutes after the takeoff.

According to the video description, the Boeing was climbing out Salt Lake City when the crew reported they were experiencing an engine compressor stall. The crew leveled off at 10,000 feet, shut down the engine, and returned safely to Salt Lake City.

As reported by CNN passenger Crystal Bangerter was taking her first flight ever when she saw “huge flames just coming right out of the engine.” “Suddenly there was a huge explosion,” she explained. “I kinda looked over and saw the look on my husband’s face, and I knew right away that this wasn’t normal.”

Passenger Traci Scarce said she heard a loud pop that sounded like a boom. “What do you do? You’ve got shooting flames out the engine. It’s crazy,” Scarce told the station.

Southwest Flight 604 left its gate in Salt Lake City around 6:38 a.m., according to tracking site FlightAware, and landed back at Salt Lake City International Airport around 7:20 a.m. Throughout the ordeal, the crew stayed calm and landed the plane safely, passenger Torrence Elegante pointed out.

Passengers took another plane to Los Angels.

The pilots decided to return to the airport “after receiving a cockpit indication of a performance issue with one of the aircraft engines. Following established protocol and procedures, the pilots completed an uneventful landing,” Southwest said in a statement to CNN affiliate KTVX.