fact
In 1969, 17 year old Cuban, Armando Socarras Ramirez survived hiding in the right wheel well of a Douglas DC-8 on an eight-hour flight from Havana to Madrid. Upon landing he was found on the ground covered in ice and not breathing, Dubbed ”the popsicle” by Spanish doctors, he recovered fully.
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A few years ago, I decided to treat my dad to an item on his bucket list.
He had always wanted to fly in a hot air balloon, but since my mom wasn’t interested in joining him, he didn’t expect it to happen.
Well, although I don’t much care for heights (or flying), I decided that I couldn’t let my dad miss out on such an adventure, so for his birthday I arranged a hot air balloon ride.
We went out to a rural part of the state where our balloon pilot lived and launched his balloons from his own front yard.
Even more amazing than that, there was a big grassy runway down the middle of his neighborhood, where all the families in the neighborhood could take off in their private planes!
I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently residential airparks, or fly-in communities, are actually more common than I would have ever imagined.
In fact, late last year, TikTok mom Sara Cormier, under the handle @TheSoulFamily posted a video about one such community near Cameron Park Airport in California, and it kind of blew the Internet’s mind.
Image credit: @TheSoulFamily via Bored Panda
According to Bored Panda, these residential airparks sprouted up after WWII because so many veterans had been trained as pilots during the war.
Flying enthusiasts flock to these communities, and because it’s super convenient, they don’t even have to store their planes at the airport–they actually have hangars right in their homes alongside car garages.
In her video, Sara shows how the streets of these neighborhoods are built wide enough so that the planes can actually just taxi right to the airport for take-off.
“Every road is ginormous. It’s almost as if you have no idea where you should even be driving.”
They’re so wide, in fact, that not only can a plane with a substantial wingspan drive down them, but there is room for cars to share the roads too.
Image credit: @TheSoulFamily via Bored Panda
Bored Panda further explains that there are over 600 such neighborhoods in the United States, and in neighborhoods like these:
The street signs and mailboxes are lower than normal so that the planes won’t knock them down with their wings, and the streets have names related to aviation, like Boeing Road.
I’m kind of obsessed with this now.
In her first video, which has been viewed almost 5 million times, Sara wasn’t lucky enough to catch a plane out on the road that day.
@thesoulfamily Have you seen a neighborhood like this? #aviation #airplane #airport #takeoff #hanger
But after one commenter asked her to try and get one on video, she was more than happy to oblige.
Check it out!
@thesoulfamily Reply to @kinmut here you go!
In addition to these plane videos, Sara also posts a lot of other wholesome content, like her sons giving food reviews and her own personal advice to parents hoping to adopt.
One of her boys wears a NASA hoodie pretty frequently, so I think maybe the aviation bug is contagious.
What do you think of these airport neighborhoods? Does it kind of make you want to move out to the country and learn to fly? Tell us in the comments!
The post There Are More Than 600 Fly-In Neighborhoods in the U.S. Where You Can Park Your Plane in Your Own Driveway appeared first on UberFacts.
The 747 airliner has a hump because Boeing was convinced that future supersonic aircraft would eventually make it obsolete as a passenger plane. The raised cockpit allowed for a hinged nose so the 747 could continue being marketable as a cargo carrier. Today, the 747 as a passenger plane is steadily replaced by twin-engine aircrafts […]
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In 1967 a Munich resident Helmut G. Winter built a catapult to launch Bavarian potato dumplings at noisy planes flying over his house forcing the West German Luftwaffe pilots to concede defeat and change their flight path.
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The first non-stop transatlantic flight happened in 1919. A modified WWI bomber with an open cockpit took off from Newfoundland, Canada with a crew of two. They almost spiraled into the ocean twice in heavy fog, had to climb onto the wings to clear ice, and landed in a bog in Connemara, Ireland.
When you make your way through first-class to your coach class seat, you pass passengers already seated in their wide seats, relaxed, with beverages and their noses stuck to their devices or magazines.
You squeeze yourself into your middle seat and shove your carryon under the seat in front of you because all the overhead space was taken by the time you got there.
Nodding at the guy next to you, you mentally calculate if he’s the kind of guy that would deny you elbow space on the armrest later in the flight.
Photo Credit: Flickr
You also mentally calculate if you could sneak into first class and take one of several empty seats you saw.
The answer? No.
Why? Because it’s stealing.
Photo Credit: Flickr
You’ve paid your fare and it was for coach. Why should you be the one to get an empty first class seat over another passenger?
Recently, on Twitter, United Airlines put it another way when a passenger tweeted this question: “What’s the point of empty seats if they can be filled and your customers can have a better experience?”
Because, United answered, “… If you were to purchase a Toyota, you would not be able to drive off with a Lexus, because it was empty.”
The customers who choose to pay for Economy Plus are then afforded that extra space. If you were to purchase a Toyota, you would not be able to drive off with a Lexus, because it was empty. ^BA
— United Airlines (@united) September 7, 2019
Something else to keep in mind, flight attendants know who is supposed to be in their first class cabin. If they do note someone taking a seat they didn’t pay for, they can confront that passenger.
In forums, tales of passengers getting charged for the upgrade or even getting arrested are frequently discussed.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia
More legroom and a free cocktail doesn’t seem to be worth the hassle, does it?
If you’re really determined, you can try asking the flight attendant if you can move up. Don’t count on a warm reception to the idea, though.
The post This Is Why You Can’t Help Yourself to an Empty First-Class Seat When You’re Flying appeared first on UberFacts.
On rare occasions, an airplane passenger decides they want to trying to disrupt a flight…while in midair.
The bad news is the rest of the passengers can get quite a scare watching someone, who is usually drunk, have a breakdown and go for the exit door.
The good news is it’s impossible to get the door open while the plane is in flight.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia
There are a couple of reasons why no passenger, for any reason, could release a plane door during a flight.
The first reason is that plane doors are mechanically latched closed, and only the pilot has the controls to unlock them. Next time you’re in a plane making a landing, listen for the pilot’s announcement, “doors to manual.” At that point – and only at that point – the unlocking control is undone, allowing someone else to open the doors.
Pilot Patrick Smith, on his blog AskThePilot, explains that the reason why the doors can be opened once the plane is on the ground is in case of an emergency evacuation. A similar announcement, “disarm doors,” refers to the function of deploying slides, if needed. “Those slides can unfurl with enough force to kill a person, and you don’t want them billowing onto the jet bridge or into a catering truck.”
Photo Credit: Wikimedia
So, yes. If the plane is on the ground, it is possible for a passenger to get a door open.
But, in flight, it is literally impossible – and that’s because of reason #2…
Air pressure. Planes are pressurized on the inside during flights because of the lack of oxygen at typical cruising altitudes. We can’t breathe up there without pumped-in air.
Photo Credit: Flickr
The air that keeps the cabin pressurized so we can breathe also seals the doors shut. The doors actually fit the plane like plugs. To give you an idea of the amount of pressure keeping cabin doors sealed, at usual cruising altitude there will be eight pounds of pressure per square inch of the plane’s interior. This works out to 1,100 pounds pushing against every square foot of door.
Meaning no one is opening any airplane door while it’s flying. So get back to worrying about something more likely to happen: your luggage getting lost.
The post Here’s Why It’s Impossible for Someone to Open a Plane Door Mid-Flight appeared first on UberFacts.
Sometimes, these two worlds collide mid-air, and planes fly straight into a bird, or even a flock of birds.
The results can look really disastrous, especially for the birds. The good news is that bird strikes don’t typically pose any risk to airplanes or passengers. The really good news is that they’re unlikely to bring down a plane.
“Aircraft are designed and built to withstand bird strikes, and pilots undergo rigorous training to enable them to deal with eventualities like a bird strike,” BALPA flight safety specialist, Stephen Landells, told The Telegraph.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Even if a bird gets sucked into the airplane’s engine, the plane can usually land just fine. “Losing one engine is not going to cause an aircraft to crash because they are designed to fly with one engine down,” Stephen explained.
That doesn’t mean fliers are completely in the clear, however. While a single bird rarely poses any danger to a plane, Stephen added that “multiple bird strikes – or hitting large birds such as Canada geese – can and have caused serious accidents.” Captain Sully’s landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River in 2009 is perhaps the most famous example of this.
Photo Credit: YouTube
This is quite rare, though.
There were 160,894 bird strikes between 1990 and 2015 in the U.S. Only 40 of those strikes resulted in an accident.
Unfortunately, these incidents are often fatal for the birds (though not always). They can die on impact if they run into a plane, and they usually disintegrate if they get sucked into an engine. The number of wildlife strikes has also increased drastically over the years, as flying gets more popular.
Sadly, there’s not much that planes can do to avoid birds in the sky.
The post What Happens When a Plane Flies into a Flock of Birds? appeared first on UberFacts.
You’ve probably heard rumors about places you aren’t allowed to fly over (also, places that the Pope refuses to fly over), but it’s all just been speculation and hearsay for me up until now.
BUT NO LONGER. I did a little research and decided to learn about the actual places airplanes are not allowed to fly over and why, and here we are!
Some of these are probably pretty obvious, but some might just surprise you a little bit…
Here are 5 places in the U.S. that planes are not allowed to fly over. Enjoy!
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It makes a lot of sense that there is a no-fly zone over D.C. Think about it: the president, congress, the Supreme Court, the seat of government is all centered in our nation’s capitol.
Camp David in Maryland is another residence for the president, so naturally it makes sense that the area around it would be a no-fly zone. The country retreat is about 70 miles from the White House.
One of the most mysterious places in the United States, Area 51 sits in the Nevada desert and is the inspiration behind countless movies, TV shows…and memes. Area 51 is a highly-classified military base, so you know that no planes are going to be flying over this patch of land.
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Okay, this might be one of the locations that you didn’t expect to see on this list. Why is it a no-fly zone, you ask? During the 1980s and 1990s, the theme parks were bombarded by aerial advertisements flying overhead and officials wanted to get rid of those nuisances. There’s also a safety component, as both parks are among the most significant tourist destinations in the country.
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This area covers over one million acres in Minnesota and was declared a no-fly zone back in 1949 when President Harry Truman signed an executive order. The boundary waters are one of the only few no-fly zones that are purely recreational.
Cool, right?
The post Airplanes Aren’t Allowed to Fly Over These 5 Places appeared first on UberFacts.
Concorde flew so high passengers received twice the dose of radiation from flying in a conventional aircraft, which was believed to increase cancer risk. The flight deck contained a radiometer so they could descend in case of a solar storm.
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