50 of my most interesting facts of aviation...
Hey guys,
I recently brought another book on aviation and it featured a whole lot of interesting facts on the subject, some of which are listed below. I have decided to post them in 10 posts at a time, so in a few days time I'll post another 10 and so on. Some facts have been questions here in the forums recently so it may be useful for you to read, anyway here goes:
➡ A Boeing 737 weighing 150,000 pounds (68,000 kg) must deflect about 88,000 pounds (40,000 kg) of air - over a million cubic feet (31,500 cubit metres) down by 55 feet (16.75 m) each second while in flight.
➡ A commercial aircraft door will not open in flight because it is actually bigger than the window frame itself, and the door opens inwards towards the cabin. To open, it must be opened inwards, rotated, and then slipped sideways out of the frame. Even if the door could somehow be opened, it would be like lifting a 2,200 pound weight.
➡ Most planes flying internationally have their home country's flag painted on or around their tails. Genrally, the flag is facing the proper way round on the left (port) side of the aircraft, and backward on the starboard side. Why? Because that's how it would look if a real flage were hoisted on a pole above the airplane during the flight.
➡ Airline doors and windows are often inset a few millimetres from the fuselage so that they'll expand to be flush with the fuselage during flight.
➡ If you look closely at the top of a jet airliners wings, you'll probably find a row of small metal tabs standing about one inch (2.5cm) tall, especially in front of the ailerons. These are vortex generators, which actually help the air follow the shape of the wing during flight by creating tiny whirlwinds over the wing. You can sometimes find vortex generators on the tail and in front of the rudder, too.
➡ How powerful are jet engines? In May 2000, a chartered jet carrying the New York Knicks basketball team taxied out to close to a line of cars parked on the tarmac. The blast from the taxiing jet flipped head coach Jeff Ban Gundy's car into the air and over three other cars, completely demolishing it.
➡ Each engine on a Boeing 747 weighs almost 9,500 pounds (4,300 kg), cost about $8 million USD, and burns about twelve gallons of fuel per minute when cruising. Altogether the four engines account for about 5 percent of the total weight of a full 747 upon takeoff.
➡ Even if you strapped on giant wings, you could never fly because the human heart can't pump blood quick enough to satisfy the enormous strain of flapping. When flying, a sparrow's heart pumps more than 450 times each minute!
➡ One of the strangest forms of lighning is ball lightning, which can form inside an airplane and appear to be rolling down the aisle while glowing and sparkling. Although it's startling, it has never harmed anyone.
➡ The windows in an airport control tower must be tilted out at exactly fifteen degrees from the vertical to minimise reflections from both inside and outside the control tower.
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Great infos Jarred.I already copy them.Looking forward for the rest... 😉
Thanks a lot. 😉
greekman nice posting time
Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:37 am
737 🙂
Jamier wrote:
greekman nice posting time
Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:37 am
737 🙂
LooooL...Exceelent point 😉 😂
Nice read 👍 👍
How powerful are jet engines? In May 2000, a chartered jet carrying the New York Knicks basketball team taxied out to close to a line of cars parked on the tarmac. The blast from the taxiing jet flipped head coach Jeff Ban Gundy's car into the air and over three other cars, completely demolishing it.
😳 Why were they parcked on the tarmack anyway??? ❓
If you look closely at the top of a jet airliners wings, you'll probably find a row of small metal tabs standing about one inch (2.5cm) tall, especially in front of the ailerons. These are vortex generators, which actually help the air follow the shape of the wing during flight by creating tiny whirlwinds over the wing. You can sometimes find vortex generators on the tail and in front of the rudder, too.
I've wanted to know what those things were since i was like 4 years old. 😀 Finally!
Good find Jarred! 👍 [/quote]
That was a great read Jarred mate, both very enjoyable and interesting! 😀 I look foward to the rest, I will be reading all of them fo' sure 😎
A very interesting read Jarred 👍
Thanks 😉
Well thanks for all of your replies, its nice to no that everyone seemed to enjoy them and am looking forward to posting up the next 10, which I will probably get around to on Saturday evening (NZ time).
If anyone has any other interesting aviation facts, whether it be commercial or GA, please feel free to add them to the collection for everone to read. 😉
alohajoe , the cars were probably parked on the tarmac just outside the airport boundary, well thats my guess anyway.
really interesting! which book did you get these from?
Sean, the book is called "The flying book".
Well here are facts 11-20:
➡ The faster an airplane flies through the turbulence, the more stress it can put on the aircraft, so airlines have "rough air" speed rules that instruct the pilots to slow down in turbulent conditions.
➡ Radar can be compared to a flashlight shining in the night sky: when the light hits something, like a bird flying by, it bounces back into your eyes so you can see it. Radar uses light waves that the eye can't see; if the radar beam hits an object, it can be picked up by a sensor. Light waves travel so fast that the whole process happens in less than one hundredth of a second.
➡ Airplanes often cruise at around 35,000 feet. That sounds pretty far up, but compare this to the size of the earth itself: If the Earth were shrunk to the size of a typical desktop globe, the airplane would be cruising at only one - tenth of an inch (2.5 mm) off the surface.
➡ Commercial pilots who fly on international flights and the flight controllers who the pilots talk to are required to be able to speak English, the international language of flight. When a French airline travel to Germany, all air traffic control communication is handled in English. However, pilots making domestic flight within their own countries sometimes speak with the controllers in their own language.
➡ The larger the airplane, the slower it is flying, the more powerful its wingtip vortices. If you stand below a jumbo jet when it lands, you may even hear a flapping sound and see ribbons of water vapour, both created by the wingtip vortex.
➡ Air pressure is serious business. If the cabin depressurizes while you are at cruise altitude and you dont put on an oxygen mask, you could become unconscious within thrity seconds. In such a emergency, pilots will immediately descend to a self altitude; if they didn't, anyone not wearing a mask could die within minutes.
➡ Even though airliners carry medical kits and can quicky be in radio contact with doctors on the ground, about 100 people die each year while flying, from heart attacks, seizures, or other medical emergencies.
➡ The specific rules regarding flight attendents vary among airlines and between countries. On US based airlines there must be at least one flight attendant for every fifty seats of the aircraft.
➡ The pilots' headsets are always tuned to air traffic control frequencies, but the pilots also communicate with the airlines offices via private radio channels. Before takeoff, the airliners dispatcher, confirms the number of passengers onboard, the amount of fuel loaded, the weight of the aircraft, the takeoff speed, whether there are animals onboard or in the cargo hold, and the airports genral security status.
➡ The captain and the first officer always eat different meals during a flight, just in case one of them gets sick.
Very interesting,Can't wait for the rest! 😀 Very good!
Interesting facts there Jarred 👍
Always fascinating facts. Most of the time they answer questions you knew you had but never thought of asking.
The pilots' headsets are always tuned to air traffic control frequencies, but the pilots also communicate with the airlines offices via private radio channels.
LOL, I always hear that one on the ole scanner, and if theres nothing to report, the pilot announces "no specials"
Thanks for the interesting read once again 😀 I look foward to the rest J1!~
Interesting facts, Jarred. 😀 Thanks 😉
Nice topic 👍
Interesting facts!!! 😂
No probs everyone, next set coming up tommorrow evening NZ time. (06:30am GMT to be exact). 😉
Well J1, when are the next 30 facts coming ❓
cheekytrolly wrote:
Well J1, when are the next 30 facts coming ❓
Well I have been a bit lazy lately, I'll try post ASAP... 🙄
RGR that J1, looking foward to them 👍
Apologies again for this guys, my computer stuffed up on me and had to get fixed, thats why I haven't been here the last 3 or 4 of days.
I'll post those new 10 facts tommorrow morning! 😉
No problems 👍 Looking forward to it...😉
Still waiting 😉 You've got me hooked now!
Hey everyone,
I've finally got round to posting the third set of facts! Anyway that's enough talking, here they are:
➡ Each airlines flight operations centre calculates the proper amount of fuel for an aircraft based on total weight and the distance the airplane has to travel. At takeoff, airplanes must have enough fuel to get where they're heading, then fly to an alternate airport if necessary, then circle in the holding pattern for a while.
➡ The world's record for consecutive loops in an airplane - 2368 - was set in 1986 by David Childs in a specially designed aerobatic aircraft.
➡ National Geographic exlporer Mike Fay reports that many Africans in small villages (few of whom have ever flown) have a word for the human - made objects that they occasionally see flying overhead. The call them Boeings.
➡ If you look closely at the control wheel or control joystick in the cockpit, you'll notice one or more finger buttons. They look like gun triggers, the truth is much less exciting: One button lets the pilot turn the autopilot off. There is also a control for adjusting the angle of the horizontal stabliliser.
➡ The pilots can only see about half the wing from the flight deck, and they cant see the tail at all. Some airlines are exlporing the use of tiny video cameras mounted outside the aircraft to transmit images to the pilot.
➡ The brakes on a jet airliner can take forty - five minutes to cool down after landing. And while jets do have parking brakes, the normal brakes cool down faster when the parking brakes are turned off, so to keep the plane in place at the gate, the ground crew uses triangular chocks in front and back of the nose wheels.
➡ If everyone in an airplane jumped into the air at the same time, would the plane get lighter? In fact, the opposite is true. Because of a basic law of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so if you jump into the air, you actually force the airplane downward a little bit, thereby increasing its weight momentarily.
➡ The Boeing 747-400 can carry more than its own weight. Empty, it weighs close to 200 tons, and it can carry more than 235 tons of cargo, passengers and fuel on top of that. Total maximum weight is 875,000 pounds (about 437 tons or 400,000 kg), though it must burn off enough fuel during flight so that it ways less than 652,000 punds (about 325 tons or 296,000 kg) for a safe landing.
➡ To withstand the landing weight of a fully laden jumbo jet (more than 900,000 pounds) commercial airport runways are between two and four feet thick, typically with various layers of ashphalt. Taxiways are often less thick, perhaps eighteen inches of concrete. It took over 2.5 million cubic yards of concrete to build Denver International airport's five 12,000 - foot runways, plus taxiways.
➡ The choice of runway is based on the prevailing wind because airplanes usually take off and land more or less facing into the wind.
Thanks for the interesting info Jarred, It is making some really enjoyable reading.
Thanks again for taking the time to type those facts up mate 👍
Nice facts there! 😉
Good work Jarred, keep it up 👍
Hegermon
Guest
Ive recently found this aviation news website, they have a special articles section called 'did you know' and find lost of different interesting aviation facts and inetresting aviation stories, maybe you will like too http://www.aviatime.com/en/did-you-know/7743-the-world%E2%80%99s-first-spherical-uav please share some links if you know some similar projects
Hegemonti
Guest
Here's the right link with interesting aviation facts, ive made a mistake in a recent post: http://www.aviatime.com/en/did-you-know sorry for that!
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