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EDIT TO ADD INFORMATION REQUESTED.
If a helicopter is flying low, and not "squawking", there is no way that any civilian radar will pick it up. Especially in a mountainous region such as Pakistan. Simple mechanics of radar as illustrated by this picture from Answers.com. Note that mountains between the radar site and aircraft will further block the ...
102
TL:DR
United makes about $9.50 per passenger.
Detailed:
United Airlines Q4 and full year 2016 performance results offer a great starting point for these calculations.
We can see that United recorded a Q4 net operating income of $397 million. In the same time frame, United recorded having moved 36.023 million passengers. This gives us a baseline ...
98
Yes, absolutely a plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th.
To address the claims specifically.
but did not even scuff up the grass
Do you know what airplanes do? They FLY. That this is even a claim is absolutely ludicrous and seems to be grasping at straws... Mike J. Wilson does a nice reconstruction of the crash that shows this gravity ...
90
No, at the altitudes that airplanes fly at, you can suffer brain damage form hypoxia.
The brain requires a constant flow of oxygen to function normally. A hypoxic-anoxic injury, also known as HAI, occurs when that flow is disrupted, essentially starving the brain and preventing it from performing vital biochemical processes. Hypoxic refers to a partial ...
90
We don't need the video evidence. Even without the footage from many angles, there is a plethora of eye-witness accounts testifying that a plane hit the South Tower.
Here's a small sample.
At that time Chief Ganci was behind me and he thought there was another explosion in the north tower and that's when I turned around and said Chief, listen, there is a ...
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It is a real threat. Enough of a threat for the FAA to mail out a Pilot Safety Notice (Linked PDF). Let me explain why, as a counter to each of your points in the original question:
First of all, planes bank and turn, so they aren't always perpendicular to the ground. Also, the Plexiglas material that aircraft windshields are made of further scatter and ...
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TL;DR; The F-15 is somewhat unique among current airframes, in that its body shape and size induce a certain amount of lift. That extra lift, along with the speed achievable with afterburners, allowed this aircraft to recover from an incident which would bring down most other aircraft.
The fact that we have a picture of this aircraft on the ground and ...
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Although the person named existed and served in the Royal Flying Corps, the story itself is very likely not true.
First the good news. "Dattabraya Laxuman Patwardhan" certainly existed and was apparrently a member of the Royal Flying corps. The London Gazette of 25 March 1919 records his appointment to the temporary honorary rank of Second Lieutenant. The ...
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It didn't. You are looking at a pile of snow with an airplane some distance behind it.
Source: Try Modern magazine
In the first photo, the photographer simply took a pic of a snow pile at an angle that made it look like it was covering the aircraft, which in fact was actually behind the pile of snow (and a good way off as well).
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Note that the URIs of the reports by the Dutch Safety Board seem to change from time to time as apparently their website gets reorganised. I'll try to keep the links in this answer up to date.
Failing that, the main page on the investigation of the crash of Flight MH17 seems to be stable enough and the reports are all linked from there. Another option is ...
58
Heathrow Airport has a "dedicated website" for the planned creation of an additional runway. From the dedicated website (emphasis added):
Heathrow Today
98% capacity – Flight movements at Heathrow are capped at 480,000/year
473,000 flight movements a year (2016) – an average of 1,300 a day
Heathrow Expansion:
740,000 flight ...
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When trying to ascertain why timestamps seem to disagree with each other, it is often important to start with an accurate (as possible) timeline of the events being reported on
It is also helpful to keep things co-ordinated to a single point of reference with respect to time, so we'll use UTC.
Timeline
FDB981 Scheduled to arrive Rostov-on-Don at 18th ...
47
Yes, it is perfectly safe.
The United States FDA provides the following information.
Q8: Is it safe to eat food, drink beverages, use medicine, or apply cosmetics if any of these products have gone through a cabinet x-ray system?
A8: There are no known adverse effects from eating food, drinking beverages, using medicine, or applying cosmetics that ...
47
Unlike seatbelts found in cars, a seatbelt on an airplane isn't there to save you if the plane slams front first into the ground or is hit by a missile.
It's there to keep you safe in the event the plane makes a sudden move or has a minor accident. This commonly happens when flying through turbulence. Sudden movements could also happen during a bad ...
43
The question of airplane safety is a nice field to demonstrate the old quip that you shouldn't trust any statistic you haven't forged yourself.
It is crucial to define exactly what you mean by safe, and what you are comparing:
Are you interested in total deaths per year? Then the car is the most dangerous and, depending on the country you are looking at, ...
39
This is attributed to Bob Crandall, the American Airlines CEO of that timeframe. He was indeed a very driven individual to reduce cost and make money. This particular exploit is covered in a book called Corporate Creativity: how innovation and improvement actually happen By Alan G. Robinson, Sam Stern. The story is detailed on page 107, although there it ...
39
Does Ryanair use cookies to raise the price of their tickets after you have visited the site before?
This belief seemed to spread in April 2011 via twitter.
Due to Ryanair's reputation as being overly greedy at the cost of the consumer, I think many people have simply assumed that this claim was true.
It does not appear that it has been looked into too conclusively, but the investigations that have been done indicate that the claim is not true.
Popular ...
37
In the US, there appears to be no FAA requirement for the flight crew to require window blinds to be in any particular position.
FAR 91.103 - Preflight actions makes no mention of window blinds, nor does FAR 91.105 which covers the next phase of the flight (when the flight crew are at their stations).
The next relevant section is probably FAR 91.517 which ...
33
Absolutely. As a matter of fact, one of the first commercially successful aircraft (the Boeing 707) did a barrel roll during a demonstration flight. In case you don't believe my claim, here is a video to back up my claim:
Boeing 707 Barrel Roll - Pilot Tex Johnston Performs Roll In Dash-80 Prototype Aircraft In 1955.
In 1994, FedEx Flight 705 (A DC-10), ...
33
Further to Articuno's answer.
This is part of an inscription where one king's name was later overwritten with another's.
from The Abydos-Hieroglyph does NOT depict a Helicopter
From helicopter hieroglyphs explained
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The footage of the South Tower hit exemplifies several anomalies, including a Boeing 767 flying at an impossible speed, an impossible entry into the building
There is ample documentation and physical evidence of aircraft parts at and near the WTC site in the day after crash that seem improbable without there having been an impact.
http://911research.wtc7....
30
The pay of pilots covers a huge spectrum. Experienced plots for major airlines are well paid. However the pilots of regional airlines and commuter lines are sometimes paid much much less. This is partly because there is a glut of pilots right now, and also because pilots use these jobs as a way to gain the experience they need to be hired by the major ...
30
While it is of course almost impossible to debunk a conspiracy theory (there is always a counter-rebuttal if you don't mind how improbable you get) here are a few points that would clearly indicate the ridiculousness of the idea.
Contrails predate the jet age. High-flying aircraft of both sides in WW2 left them; if they were truly sprays of mind-control ...
30
Apparently yes.
There was extensive news coverage of this, which eventually points back to this ABC News report from June 1st, 2015. The report references an internal government report, which is not published on the TSA's website with other public or partially redacted reports, at least at this time.
The news story states "undercover investigators were ...
27
The purpose of seat belts on aircraft are to keep you secure in case of turbulence. You become an airborne projectile once this happens so not only can you hurt yourself but you could hurt others.
Here is an example
The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into what caused a United Airlines jetliner that departed from Dulles ...
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I recall Mathias Rust landing a plane in the middle of Moscow during the Cold War, completely undetected and unknown to the Soviets. I'm thinking Pakistan's surveillance is probably not as good as the Soviets. In any case, by the time Pakistani authorities would have been notified about it and had time to do anything, they were already out of the country ...
23
The story is slightly less dramatic than it sounds.
The runways themselves are not being "shifted" (i.e. construction crews getting out and laying tarmac), but just renamed and signposted.
From a Livescience report
Runways are designated according to the points on a compass, and the drifting magnetic north means that they, periodically, need to be ...
23
Is there any first hand evidence, accessible to the public, showing MH17 was shot down?
No, nor should we expect any.
As in almost all cases, the public do not have direct personal access to evidence of the causes of an aircraft loss. For example, It is not possible for me to visit the site of the wreckage and I lack the forensic expertise to make an ...
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