Tag: PLANE

Virgin Galactic took a major step toward realizing the dream of commercial space travel yesterday when its SpaceShipTwo craft gracefully landed at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The landing marked the first piloted glide flight for the SpaceShipTwo, or VSS Enterprise, which was released from its mothership VSS Eve at an altitude of 45,000 feet. Manned by Pete Siebold and Mike ...

Finding somebody to tow your fancy glider thousands of feet into the air is hardly cheap or convenient, so Desert Aerospace has developed a jet-powered sailplane that can launch itself into the sky. The company's TST-14J BonusJet, which completed its first successful test flight this spring, will supposedly be cheaper than other self-launching gliders that are manufactured in Europe (although, ...

At first glance this seems like a terrible idea: putting an iPad front and center in an airplane cockpit. You wouldn't put one at the fingertips of a driver, so it would make sense to keep the app-running, Web-browsing device out of view when careening several thousand feet above ground. But, surprise, that's one of the key features of the Zlin iCub, a new recreational aircraft being shown off at ...

Houses built from recycled materials are a popular trend, but the materials for one woman's house came from an unlikely source. According to Treehugger, Francie Rehwald's Malibu Hills, California, home is being partially built with parts from a Boeing 747. Architect David Hertz is charged with converting the 230-foot-long and 63-foot-tall airplane into a house that will sit on 55-acres just ...

Share On Monday, Boeing revealed its newest unmanned spy plane, a boomerang-shaped, drool-inducing object that looks straight out of a Michael Bay film. The sleek Phantom Ray is 36-feet long with a 50-foot wingspan, and takes off this December. This bad boy can hit 614 mph while hovering around 40,000 feet, but its purpose seems a bit obscure. Fast Company reports that, aside from being ...

For one daredevil, even the sky is not a limit. According to Fox News, Felix Baumgartner's jump later this year from 23-miles (or 120,000-feet) up in the air will make him the first parachutist to ever break the sound barrier. He'll fly toward Earth at speeds of 760-mph wearing a custom-made, supersonic suit. This attempt to set the record for the world's highest free fall is part of the Red Bull ...

Ha, and you thought your HotSeat Chassis was the next best thing to paying way too much to carry an appropriate amount of luggage on your next jaunt to paradise. Australia's own Matthew Sheil has been tinkering on his own personal flight simulator for over a decade now, but the latest iteration is just too good to ignore. Aside from setting a Guinness world record for his efforts, the man has ...

It took only hours but with all the passengers and crew of US Airways Flight 1549 declared safe it was, perhaps, inevitable that a Facebook fan page was crafted in dedication to the pilot who skillfully guided the plane to its controlled landing in the Hudson River off the edge of Manhattan. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, of Danville, Calif., a former Air Force pilot and now hero to at ...

We've lately covered a number of interesting firsts on the Twitter site, including the first novel tweeted, the first NBA player to start posting, the first baby tweeting device, and the billionth tweet tweeted (a tweet, by the way, is the term for those little statements you send out to all your Twitter followers, which are generally just status updates about what you're doing at any given ...

A new GPS system being planned by the FAA, called NextGen, could potentially save airlines 3.3 billion gallons of fuel per year (about $10 billion at todays prices) The GPS system would replace the currently aging system of aerial highways that use use radar and radio beacons to guide planes. The use of GPS would allow planes to fly the shortest route between two points, shaving time off of ...

Here's something you don't hear everyday ever: an Irish air traffic controller helped guide a seriously malfunctioning plane to a safe landing via text message. In a story that's admittedly tough to fathom, a pilot with four passengers aboard his twin-engined Piper plane lost all on board electrical power, communications and weather functions soon after he lifted off. In an effort to establish ...

United-Arab-Emirates-based Emirates Airlines has decided to banish all paper reading materials from flights on their brand new Airbus A380 jumbo jets. Pre-printed materials like magazines, pamphlets, and shopping catalogs (goodbye Skymall!) will no longer be available on planes. Instead, content that was previously in those printed publications and pamphlets will show up on the LCD video ...

Maybe this airline mechanic at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport was hopped on DayQuil earlier this week -- after all, "they" do say to take caution if operating heavy machinery. Whatever the cause, a mechanic at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport accidentally pressed a starter switch on a commuter airplane she was cleaning, which immediately sent the craft into full-fledged take-off mode -- right ...

What if it's not enough to have your own private suite (see image above) on your flight from New York to the Middle East? Leave it to Emirates Airlines, out of Dubai, to top its own first-class offering. The airline has announced its new Airbus A380 jets will be the first in commercial use to provide first-class passengers with an in-flight shower. Sounds like a nice, refreshing way to improve ...

It appears as if this whole Wi-Fi on airlines thing is finally taking off (sorry, couldn't help it). Four months after announcing that it intends to put Wi-Fi on some of its planes, American Airlines is starting to reval some specifics on the plan. Wi-Fi access to a broadband data connection will be provided by Aircell (which has also partnered with Virgin) on transcontinental 767-200 flights ...