Like, I’m on a plane. I don’t want to watch Toy Story when I can do that at home, I want to see what the pilots see. And that way every seat has technically a window to look out of.
Some of them do.
Many do now. They shut it down prior to landing which sucks.
Some of them show landing too. I had one that show us descending through a fog bank that was crazy. I don’t know how those pilots do it, balls of steel I guess.
ILS :-)
But you have to trust the instruments and not become disoriented, takes lots of training and practice.
Or Autoland or a HUD landing which both can go down to 0/0, conditions permitting. There’s a lot of tools these days that pilots (especially Air Transport Pilots) can use to fly. And yes, all of it requires fairly extensive training.
After watching Mentour Pilot I have an appreciation of just how much training they undergo. It’s basically the closest thing we have to a real Starship Enterprise type setting where the captain seems to have an answer to everything that comes up, because that’s precisely what they aim for.
I love Mentour Pilot! I’m sad I live in the US and may never have him as a pilot. It’s comforting knowing all the extensive training they go through and how many checklists and systems there are to avoid disasters.
And yes, all of it requires fairly extensive training.
Pffft I’ve played Flappy Bird. How hard can it be?
Very few airports are rated for it. Hong Kong is the only one that I know off hand. Mainly because they have so much fog and not great alternatives that they allow it. Very few planes keep up that certification either unless they commonly land in those situations.
That being said, in a crunch, the majority of modern aircraft could likely do it if there was no other choice. Might result in a hard landing and damage but would be survivable.
I actually have my private pilots licence. Had bought a Piper arrow that was IFR rated. I am not rate IFR but my instructor was.
Flew one flight to a small airport during real IFR conditions with my instructor. Uses GPS for localizer and glideslope. This particular airport minimum was 200 feet. That means if you don’t see the runway by 200, you abort. Anyhow the cloud layer was started at 5000 right down to 300 feet. Was beautiful day with zero turbulence. When we entered the clouds, it literally felt like you were not moving and just in a heavy fog. Your engine is even decreased and quiet as you are descending. You watch the instruments like a hawk because it is easy to lose spacial orientation and death comes shortly after that. The only really movement is watching your attitude decrease which is very eerie. Being we were flying into an unmanned airport, for all you know the clouds go right into the ground so watching for the abort attitude is critical. In this case the cloud layer was particularly low at 300 feet. We broke thru the clouds with 100 feet to spare before abort attitude. Literally about three seconds later we were starting the flare and landing.
You literally rely on your instruments 100 percent and hope that altitude indicator is right on. You have a minimum of two attitude indicators. If they were both to fail in real IFR conditions, conditions where you can’t see the horizon, very few pilots will survive. You can’t feel the horizon at all. There is no way to tell if you are level.On the ultimate failure, you can use slew, altitude, turn indicator, worried to try and fly out of the condition. But few pilots could successfully do that for any extend time.
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In my country our flag carrier does it because they usually arrive too early and have to circle around which for some reason caused bad reviews.
So they just turned the damn thing off, which makes things worse IMO. This happens with both ouTGoing and incoming flights, unfortunately.
I imagine if the slightest thing seemingly goes wrong it could have a snowball effect.
People rushing in panic in any direction out of fear or curiosity.
Landing a plane that size is hard enough but with all the mass tumbling around makes it even more unpredictable.
The seatbelts aren’t for your safety allone, they also keep your mass in place so the plane doesn’t react unpredictably.
Also a big plus if during the turbulences you’re not getting flailed by the whirling around extremities of a beltless corpse or getting crushed by its torso.
Remember, force equals mass times speed and there can be a lot of accelerstion during turbulences.Possibly. I do recall a commercial aircraft crashing when a bunch of people ran to the back of the aircraft because an alligator got loose. Something to that effect anyhow. Pretty sure was in Africa. Can’t find a source for that.
Overall large commercial are pretty stable. Don’t think you could effect c of g much laterally but possibly longitudinally you could.
The A350 with Lufthansa for example had it.
Yeah, I’ve seen this on flights since 2010
Why not in addition to as opposed to instead of?
I love to have a window seat and just can’t take my eyes off the landscape below. It’s so amazing to see the plan of farms and cities, the aquaducts and rivers, the crinkled mountains deserts and coastline. Sometimes you can see the shadow of your own plane trace along the ground. Try to guess which lake this is. I guess a night flight is boring.
Ever since I took an atmospheric science class I’ve come to love the view even when we’re above the clouds. I try to identify cloud formations and guess whether it might be raining/snowing below. Seeing a big ol’ cumulonimbus from that vantage point is cool as hell.
Also, seeing the wing control surfaces moving.
Me on my flight from Seoul to Stockholm: “oh look, grassy plains. I must be over Russia!”
13 hours later: “oh would you look at that, more grassy plains, still over Russia 😒” Flying over Russia is like flying over the ocean except it’s grass.Sounds like driving through Kansas.
Agree. Ocean flights are boring as well.
If only my neck wouldn’t hurt so much after staring
I really enjoy watching the features of the desert when I fly to Vegas. You can almost see the geographic history of how the grand canyon came about. I love the dried up river beds that look like ancient crooked highways.
I fly from Indianapolis to Los Angeles once a year and love this as well. See the topography change over plains states…sometimes the Rocky Mountains if there is a layover in Denver or something. The Grand Canyon and cool landscapes in Utah. Maybe over Vegas/desert…Death Valley. The Sierra Nevada mountain range and “high desert” in California. Then the Pacific Ocean. Kind of amazing and people take it for granted.
Passing over mountains is the best!
On night flights there’s mysterious patterns of lights on the ground. What town is this, is that a stadium? Why is there one solitary light in the middle of nowhere? Why are the streetlights yellowish over there and pinkish over there?
You’re right, and even flying into my hometown trying to orient based on the freeways
Or the water… the endless water, when you fly over the Atlantic ;)
One of the coolest experiences of my life was flying back to Portland from Chicago at night. Somewhere along the way, I looked out the window and off in the distance I noticed a lightning storm over a town. It was surreal how much lower the storm was than we were flying, and watching the lightning bolts branch out from the clouds to spread all over the place was just incredible.
I don’t fly often, so maybe that’s more common than I realize, but I thought it was pretty awesome.
I definitely never saw such a cool thing!
They did on one flight I was on. You could choose from a number of different cameras around the plane and watch the view. Short of take-off and landing, it was pretty dull.
I landed in Orlando recently and the captain said “hey everyone look out the left side and you’ll see a rocket launch.”
I was on the right side. With my kid. It would have been amazing to be able to flip on the TV and see!
Is it different to see a launch live on TV in a plane vs. seeing a launch live on TV at home?
Yes. Just like seeing lightning with your own eyes is different than seeing a GIF of it on the internet.
A TV broadcast of a rocket launch is better in some ways - cameras are well positioned to show you more, etc. but there is something about seeing a thing with your own eyes.
I was just pointing out the absurdity of describing seeing something on TV in a plane, recorded with a camera on the plane, as seeing it with your own eyes, without even realizing it 😄.
Oh I see, the last thing I said about turning on the TV. Well you’re right that wouldn’t be the same but part of the problem was that we didn’t really know what we were missing. My kid got all stirred up over the fact that he couldn’t see the rocket. TV would have been something.
A lot of thing you can see from a plane have this problem of only being on one side so yeah the TV would just be a slight concession to folks on the wrong side.
Little did you know that it was an ICBM and the beginning of the end of the world…
Most people don’t care. I seem to be the only passenger on the entire flight that looks out the window. Idk why people are so indifferent to the amazing things in their lives, but they are.
I once saw the northern lights from the airplane window. We flew from Amsterdam to Seoul and back then the route went over Russia. We went far enough north that a faint green glow was visible in the distance.
I just want to sleep and get it over with. Flying has become hellish for me . Everything sucks. The cost, the lineups, the hassle of security, the delays, the price of a bottle of water, the horrible service, the discomfort…
BUT YOU’RE FLYING! You are sitting in a chair. In the air!!! You’re like a Greek god right now… YOU ARE FLYING!!
I swear the Wright brothers would kick us all in the cunt right now if they knew… “Hey Orville, they’re gonna make us wait on the runway a bit.” “O shit, it hardly seems worth it then.”
This was copied from a Louis CK bit btw. Around 1:16 from this:
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I’ve flown about 20k miles in June and July from Seattle to JFK and back due to my father going missing.
I’m so over flying right now.
I’m still going to have to put another 5k miles in this month, and I’m not looking forward to it.
Did you find him?
He was found in the middle of field, covered in chemical burns, and in a coma. He was trying to “burn the microphones” out from under his skin
Unfortunately, not but a few days that he was released from the hospital, he passed away in his sleep in my chair in my living room
I’m organizing a funeral on both coasts of the USA as we speak.
Sorry man, best of luck. Mental health problems have become an epidemic.
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Add a delay and have it cut off if there’s an emergency.
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Yup, there was a very well known case covered on an early episode of Mayday / Air Crash Investigation (like season 1) about this. A lot of people got to watch the same terrifying view as the pilots as their plane plummeted from the sky.
Sometimes there’s a map, but I wish it had landmarks. Is that cluster of lights in the distance Chicago or Salt Lake? Sorry, the map only shows the origin and destination cities.
I was on an international flight recently and the map was great. It had an sorts of zoom and different visualizations with landmarks. Really good. Only downside was realizing we were passing something cool and I couldn’t see it because no window.
I remember international flights that had several outside cameras, one looking slightly down and forward was the best by far, although most of the flight it was just clouds and during landing that one turned to face forward so you couldn’t see the runway. Haven’t seen them recently though.
Emirates has such cameras, one looking downwards and one mounted somewhere in front of the rudder, looking forward. Maybe there’s a third camera as well, I don’t remember. I flew in 2019 last time.
I flew air France last month and they have them. I loved it. That was my default screen while I was watching downloaded Netflix shows on my phone.
I’ve often fantasized about a 360 cam mounted on the tip of the vertical stabilizer, and then the crew can offer VR headsets that put you “in” the 360 lookout. It’d be like flying while sitting on top of the plane! Cool even in clouds / inclement weather. Could even stream those feeds to the public for cheap tours of the skies. Would be extra interesting during landing and takeoff, I think. Maybe have a few cams around the plane. Bottom, top, each wing, cockpit, etc.
I can’t remember off the top of my head, but there is at least one airline/airplane that offers a live camera from the tip of the rear stabilizer to those displays. VR is of course a bit much currently, but it would be an awesome experience, no doubt.
Bottom would probably be most interesting because on top you can only see the sky
@[email protected] I was on an Emirates A380 recently (massive, double-decker beast) and they had three selectable cameras: cockpit, downwards and vertical stabiliser (unfortunately not controllable). The vertical one was weird as it felt like being in a racing game or something since it seemed too high to be part of the plane.
They left the camera on the whole time, which was great to watch the landing and taxiing. We must have been in a decent crosswind early in our flight, as the downwards camera was showing the ground go by diagonally.
Emirates do this, there is a choice of three cameras.
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What’s even the point of having a view from the cockpit if I can’t drive the plane? Forget the crappy movies and games, if you truly want me to not be bored just stream to me control over the flight console.
twitch plays pokemon, airliner edition
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Unless it suddenly isn’t boring.
Another jet zooms right beneath/above you.
Pilot banks to avoid birds and hit a few.
Suddenly the feed turns off and pilots come on the PA and ask folks to buckle up.
