In 2014, Boeing delivered a record 723 jetliners to airline customers. Airbus wasn’t too far behind, with 629 deliveries. But those numbers are nothing, compared to the 983,533 aircraft delivered by Herpa Wings, a company based in the small German village of Dietenhofen. Each aircraft conveniently comes in a box. And is about 6 inches long. Herpa Wings has been making highly-detailed, scale aircraft models since the early 1990s, in both die-cast metal, and plastic.
We’re a chronically sleep-deprived society, thanks to the demands of our jobs and personal life. We’re extending our waking hours, exchanging our sleep for other activities. We try to convince ourselves that “it’s ok, I don’t need to sleep as much.” But when we do this day-after-day, and night-after-night, we end up with a “sleep debt,” and we’re fatigued. “Fatigue is a state that results from sleep loss, continuous hours of wakefulness, disruptions of your body clock, and workload, that affects you both mentally and physically,” says Dr. Melissa Mallis, of M3 Alertness Management.
It’s been 44 years since the first 747-100 was delivered to Air Canada, in February 1971. That was barely a year after the industry-changing wide-body aircraft entered service with launch airline Pan American Airways, and just two years after the 747’s first flight. In Canada, different versions of the 747 transported passengers on Air Canada, CP Air/Canadian Airlines, Nationair, and Wardair for over 30 years.
C’est magnifique! Air France’s first flight to Vancouver International Airport (YVR) touched down in a huge spray of water on a soggy Sunday afternoon. The Boeing 777-200ER landed on YVR’s Runway 08L, after a nearly ten-hour flight from Paris – Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG).
"How did Nolinor get its name? Everybody asks that,” laughed Dave Morgan, Nolinor Aviation’s director of sales and marketing. “It was in the early days of the company, and the partners decided to combine the French word ‘nolise,’ which means ‘to charter,’ with the word ‘north.’ They couldn’t decide whether to use the French ‘nord’ or the English word, so they compromised and chopped some letters. So, we’re Nolinor,” explained Morgan.
Pilots flying the upcoming Gulfstream G500 and G600 business jets will control their planes with an advanced version of the ubiquitous side-stick. In the first civil-aircraft installation of the technology, BAE Systems’ “Active Inceptor System,” not only provides pilots with tactile feedback, but the pilot’s and co-pilot’s sticks will be electronically coupled. The stick movements made by one pilot, or the autopilot, will be seen and felt by the other.
It looks like Star Trek got it right, again. Long before we had tablet computers, the crew of the Enterprise “D” could be seen running to Captain Picard with devices that looked suspiciously like an iPad or Galaxy Tab. Now, in our timeline, on mere jet-powered aircraft, cabin crews are using this Star Trek-esque technology as a new way to connect with their passengers.
The Aviation High School opened in 2004 in its first temporary quarters, with a freshman class of 100 students. Gilman became the school’s first principal and led the drive to find a permanent home. “It took us almost a decade to get the funding,” she says. $43.5 million was raised from public and private sectors, including the State of Washington, the Port of Seattle, Boeing, and Alaska Airlines. Recognizing the major contribution of Sherry and James Raisbeck of Seattle’s Raisbeck Engineering, the new school opened in fall 2013 and was renamed Raisbeck Aviation High School (RAHS).
The very first Boeing 747 took to the air February 9, 1969, barely four months after the airplane rolled out of its then new factory in Everett, Washington. The prototype, “Queen of the Skies,” was known by her serial number RA001. She was soon joined by additional test aircraft, all working towards the airplane’s entry-into-service in January 1970 with Pan American World Airways. Since then, over 1,500 747s have been delivered.
Joe Sutter is a giant in the history of commercial aviation. And he’s also not the least bit reserved about speaking his mind! Sutter, now in his ‘90s, graduated from the University of Washington’s College of Aeronautical Engineering in 1943. After World War II, in 1946, he joined Boeing’s aerodynamics group and was assigned to work of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, a four-engine propeller passenger plane that would enter service in 1949. Sutter would go on to a life-long career with Boeing, and is famously known as “The Father of the 747.”
