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This is how much time it should take to escape a crashed airliner….

August 4, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

A Emirates Boeing 777-300 crashed landed and burst into flames at Dubai International Airport on Wednesday.

Fortunately, the airline has confirmed that all 300 passengers and crew on board the flight made it to safety before the aircraft became engulfed in flames.

Which leads us to the question, how long does it take to evacuate a crashed airliner?

Believe it or not, federal regulations dictate that all modern airliners capable of carrying more than 44 passengers must be able to be fully evacuated in less than 90 seconds.

In addition, in order to be certified to fly, new airliners or even new derivatives of existing airliners must pass an evacuation test. The tests involve simulated emergency situations in which all passengers and crew must exit the aircraft in pitch-black darkness using only half of the available emergency escapes.

In 2006, the Airbus A380 superjumbo managed to pass the test by evacuating 853 passengers, 18 crew, and two pilots in just 78 seconds, Flight Global reported. The Boeing 777-200 passed the evacuation test in 1994 in 84 seconds, Quartz reported. The aircraft involved in the Emirates crash is an elongated 777-300. According to the AP, the aircraft was not subject to its own evacuation test. Instead, it was certified by extrapolating the test results of the 777-200 with the addition of two emergency exits.

These tests are generally conducted using the aircraft type’s maximum passenger capacity which means that aircraft in service are equipped with far fewer seats. For instance, the A380 was evacuation tested with 853 passengers. In operation these days, most of the superjumbos fly with around 500 seats.

However, it should also be noted that these test are also conducted in a laboratory conditions that are calm and organised. The hectic nature of an actual emergency evacuation may slow down the time it takes to empty an aircraft.

As a result, experts recommend that passengers select seats within three rows of an emergency exit. In addition, passengers should be aware of the location of the nearest emergency exit at all times.

Here’s a video of the Airbus A380 evacuation test:

Source….www.businessinsider.com.au

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APJ Abdul Kalam 1st death anniversary: This is how the noble soul planned to celebrate his elder brother’s 100th birthday….

July 27, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

APJ Maracayer, elder brother of APJ Abdul Kalam was like a father figure to Kalam and counselled him on several important decisions and was also his spiritual guide.

APJ Abdul Kalam had planned a “big surprise party” for his elder brother who would turn 100 this November by gathering all the family members at his native place Rameswaram, putting up banners saying ’100′ and playing Tamil songs but destiny had other ideas.
Sixteen years older, APJ Maracayer was like a father figure to Kalam and counselled him on several important decisions and was also his spiritual guide.

But as fate would have it, seven weeks after this planning session Kalam passed away on July 27 last year. Kalam’s aide Srijan Pal Singh presents a tribute to the late President on his first death anniversary in the form of a book “What Can I Give?: Life Lessons from My Teacher, A.P.J.

The book, published by Penguin Random House, brings alive rare personal and unheard-of anecdotes as well as unseen pictures from Kalam’s life. Taking Kalam’s vision ahead, Singh has decided to donate all the royalties from the book to the charitable cause of providing free education to underprivileged children through an initiative called The Kalam Library Project.

On the grand plans made by Kalam for his brother’s 100th birthday celebrations, Singh writes, “In 2015, in the month of May, Kalam’s brother dropped by for a visit. It was a special moment as Janaab A P J Maracayer was about to turn 99 in a few months. His birthday was on the 5th of November. The day his brother was leaving for Rameswaram, Kalam met him over dinner.

He said to me later, ‘You fellow, listen. My brother will turn 99 years old in November. Tell me, now by the end of this year, how many orbits will he have completed around the sun? “This was the question he always asked on people’s birthdays. A true rocket engineer, he loved equating years to the number of orbits the earth had made around the sun and the number of orbits the moon had made around the earth. I was familiar with this question by now.”

“Hundredth orbit!” Singh replied. ”Right. Now listen, you fellow. You see, next year, in November 2016, my brother will be a hundred years old. He has never celebrated his birthday in a big way. On his hundredth birthday, I want to throw him a big surprise party. He would love it, right?” Kalam asked.

Kalam wanted the party to happen at his native place. ”We can also gather all the family – the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren – everyone. There will be about 50 fellows like that,” Singh quotes Kalam as saying. Kalam entrusted Singh with making all the arrangements. Then Kalam was undecided on what gift he should give to his brother. For the next half an hour, both sat planning the details of the party.

“We thought of everything, from banners saying ’100′ to Tamil songs to be played in the party. We came up with many ideas for commemorating the occasion and finally decided to open a 100 libraries across rural India. A 100 libraries for a 100 years on earth. Kalam was very happy with the idea. We decided to begin working on it by July,” Singh writes. The Kalam Library Project was started in December 2015.

“By the time this book reaches you, we would have perhaps already completed the target of opening a hundred libraries.
And by reading this book, you are becoming a part of this project because the proceeds from this book will be used to open more and more such libraries,” Singh says.

Source…..Press Trust of India….27 july 2016

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THAT TIME A FLYING PIG GROUNDED EVERY PLANE AT LONDON’S HEATHROW AIRPORT….

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Imagine if you will that you’re sitting in an airport waiting to go on vacation. Suddenly and without warning you hear a voice over the tannoy system informing you that every single plane scheduled that day had been grounded. As your mind begins to think of all the horrible things that could have caused the delay, you hear the voice again informing you that flights have been grounded not by a freak storm, crash or technical glitch, but by an escaped flying pig.

flying pig

As unbelievable as it’s going to sound, this is genuinely something that once happened in London in the 1970s thanks to the band Pink Floyd and their gigantic pig shaped balloon.

In 1976, Pink Floyd recorded an album called Animals which drew inspiration from the 1945 novel Animal Farm, a thinly veiled allegory of Soviet communism that prominently features pigs as characters.

After the album was recorded, the band met with a design team called Hipgnosis to create the album’s cover. Despite being regarded by many as some of the best album designers of all time (working with and designing albums for the likes of AC/DC, ELO, Styx and Rainbow), all of Hipgnosis’ ideas fell flat with the band.

After some deliberation, bassist Roger Waters suggested to Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis that they use Battersea Power Station as the backdrop for the cover. Waters later explained to Rolling Stone, “I’d always loved Battersea Power Station, just as a piece of architecture. And I thought it had some good symbolic connections with Pink Floyd as it was at that point. One, I thought it was a power station, that’s pretty obvious. And two, that it had four legs. If you inverted it, it was like a table. And there were four bits to it, representing the four members of the band…” (I’m getting a definite This is Spinal Tapvibe here… Just me?)

The band had recently commissioned a gigantic 40 ft. inflatable pig for their upcoming tour. Putting two and two together, Powell stated in an interview that when the pair were discussing the power station idea, “Roger and I both looked up at the Station, and said, ‘let’s fly the pig between the chimneys’. Just like that.”

After applying for what we can only assume was an ungodly amount of permits to float a giant balloon shaped like a pig above an (at the time) operational major power station, the band with help from Powell picked out the best angle from which to shoot the cover. Other prep work included hiring an expert marksman who was given orders to shoot the pig down should it escape. The band then decided on a date on which to shoot the photo- December 2, 1976, a day which was supposed to be mostly clear with some cloud, which the band specifically wanted so that the sky didn’t look “boring”, or as boring as it could be with a giant floating pig in the middle of it.

However, on the day of the shoot, the pig wouldn’t inflate for reasons never explained in any interview we could find. This annoyed Powell to no end because, “that day there was the most incredible, Turner-esque sky. But for some reason, the pig wasn’t inflating. I shot the Station anyway, because the sky was so amazing.”

After trying and failing to inflate the pig for several hours, the band gave up and they agreed to come back the next day.

The group returned and, oddly, this time the pig inflated just fine. After painstakingly attaching the pig to Battersea’s southernmost chimney, disaster struck as the tether holding the balloon in place broke during a wind gust, causing the gigantic inflatable porcine to begin lazily drifting away.

The pig was loose.

So what happened to the sniper they hired for just such a bizarre event? Well, apparently the manager simply forgot to tell him or his gun that they required his services the next day. So he never showed up.

As the pig began to climb ever higher, rising to heights no pig, inflatable or otherwise, had ever hoped or dared to dream, a terrible realisation crept over those watching it sail toward the heavens- the pig was flying directly towards Heathrow airport. As panic began to set in, the band did what many would do in such a situation, according to Powell, “Pink Floyd left the site.”

Moments after the skyward swine escaped, Heathrow officials received several communiqués from pilots in passing planes matter-of-factly telling them that they’d just seen a giant pig float past their windows. After realising that the calls weren’t a joke, all flights from the airport were grounded.

As the pig danced around in the sky, police helicopters and eventually the RAF were called in to chase it down, but to no avail; by the time they arrived the pig was gone and, despite their sincerest efforts, they couldn’t find it.

With the pig off enjoying its freedom and the band having absconded the scene of the crime, this left Aubrey Powell to take the fall. After police arrived, according to Powell, he was promptly arrested and taken in for questioning.

Meanwhile the band, who’d managed to retain their freedom, set about trying to find the pig- giant inflatable pigs not being cheap, after all. Using their status as Pink Floyd, they were able to convince radio stations across the country to plead with listeners to keep their eyes peeled for a giant floating pig, providing a number they could call if they happened to see it.

Almost immediately this number was flooded with prank calls because, of course it was. However, at around 9:30 pm that evening, a phone call from an irate farmer in Kent (about 40 miles or 65 km away) came in, with the farmer sharply asking “Are you the guy looking for a pig?”

After having this fact affirmed, the farmer angrily told the group that such an object had landed on his farm and was currently scaring all his cows. After getting the man’s details, Powell, along with the police, went and collected the swine which was miraculously undamaged from its adventure.

Surprisingly, the police and officials at Battersea allowed the band to come back and re-shoot their album cover, with the proviso that they actually bring the sharpshooter along this time. Although Powell was able to get shots with the tethered pig, the sky that day was entirely clear and he ended up hating how they looked initially. However, he was able to get the shot he wanted by using a photo from the first day and superimposing the pig on top of it. Sans Photoshop, this did not look that great if you looked too closely at the picture.

As such, this all went against Waters’ original requirements that the “picture should be real”, rather than superimposing the pig, as Powell had at one point suggested before the whole debacle. This nevertheless all ended up working out for the band swimmingly. As Powell later noted, the escaped pig “was front-page news: Pink Floyd couldn’t have got better publicity if they tried.”

After its little adventure, the pig went on tour with the band later the following year.

Source…….www.today i foundout .com

Natarajan

Image of the Day….Astronaut Tim Peake has returned to Earth after an historic mission aboard the ISS…

June 19, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

The Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft capsule carrying International Space Station (ISS) crew members, Timothy Peake of Britain, Yuri Malenchenko of Russia and Timothy Kopra of the U.S., descends beneath a parachute near the town of Dzhezkazgan (Zhezkazgan), Kazakhstan, June 18, 2016. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

Source….www.businessinsider.com

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This $300 million airliner is the hottest new trend in private jets….

June 18, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Kestrel Aviation Management Boeing 787-8 BBJ.

In July, China’s HNA Aviation Group will welcome a shiny new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner to its fleet.

This plane is special because it is the first 787 Dreamliner to be built purely as a private jet.

HNA’s new Dreamliner is symbolic of a hot new trend in private and corporate aviation — long-range, mid-size, wide-body airliners.

“It’s an emerging market that didn’t really exist in the past,” Kestrel Aviation Management CEO Stephen Vella told Business Insider. Kestrel oversaw the design, engineering, and fabrication of HNA’s new Dreamliner which has an estimated total cost topping $300 million.

Airbus and Boeing have long offered versions of its airliners to private customers under their Airbus Corporate Jet and Boeing Business Jet programs. However, buyers of these airliner-based private jets have long gravitated to either four-engine, jumbo jets like the Boeing 747 or smaller, narrow-body jets such as the Airbus A320.

“The market is traditionally separated into two buckets,” Vella said. “The big Boeing 747s and Airbus A340s primarily catered to heads of state while the smaller Airbus A320 and Boeing 737s are popular corporate runabouts as well as secondary planes in government fleets.”

Boeing 787-8 BBJ interior.

Although twin-engine, mid-size, wide-body jets such as the Boeing 767 and the Airbus A330 have long been available, they never quite caught on with the private jet crowd.

However, in recently years, ultra high-end private jet customers have become increasingly interested in the new generation mid-size, wide-body planes such as the Dreamliner and Airbus A350.

What’s changed?

According to Vella, several factors led to the shift.

First, leading business men and heads of state are generally pressed for time. As a result, they prefer be to able to fly anywhere they need to go non-stop. Until recently, this simply wasn’t possible in a twin-engined jet. The traditional thinking in the aviation dictates that there’s safety in the number of engines a plane has.

Regulating bodies such as the US Federal Aviation Administration have even placed limits on which ultra-long-range intercontinental routes twin-engine jets can fly. As a result, government and corporate clients looking for a plane which the range and capability to go anywhere in the world had to turn to four-engined jumbos.

However, with the incredible reliability of modern turbofan engines, the regulatory limitations on twin-engined jets have essentially been wiped out. Now, planes such as the A350 and the 787 can fly anywhere the owner requires, but in a slightly smaller and more affordable package. For instance, HNA’s new state-of-the-art composite Boeing has a range of 9,800 miles even when packed with passengers, luggage, and fuel. A similarly outfitted A350 ACJ will be able to delivery that type performance as well.

“You can fly between virtually any two points on the globe,” Vella said of the Dreamliner.

Secondly, the price of crude oil has fallen dramatically over the past two years. Even though cheaper fuel makes buying and operating a thirsty, four-engined, jumbo jet much more attractive, low crude prices have also cut dramatically into the income of Middle Eastern governments. Unfortunately for the 747 BBJ, they are also some of the plane’s biggest customers.

According to Vella, all major Middle Eastern governments such as Saudi Arabia, operate large royal fleets, many of which are jumbo jets, for elite members of the ruling family and officials to use.

Over the next decade or so, these fleets with need to be updated. Vella, whose company has bought and sold more than $50 billion worth of commercial and private jets, believes the Middle Eastern clientele are ready to do some belt-tightening and downsize to smaller planes.

Finally, another factor that has benefited the Dreamliner-sized jet is the increasing public sensitivity towards political largess. Unlike the US, where the plane that operates as Air Force One is held in high esteem and seen as a symbol of national power, the public in many countries view a large presidential aircraft as a sign of political over indulgence.

According to Vella, this is a particularly sensitive issue in Europe. However, a smaller aircraft with the performance capabilities of a jumbo, but in a less attention-getting package is a reasonable alternative.

“The mid-size jets have less ramp presence,” Vella said. “They offer the owner much more discretion.”

After all, it’s hard to arrive discretely in a jumbo jet no matter where you go. Even at the world’s busiest international airports, an aircraft the size of a 747 or Airbus A380 is conspicuous.

But all of this requires some perspective. Even the “smaller” 787 BBJ is still an absolutely massive aircraft. At 186 ft. long, even Donald Trump’s converted Boeing 757 is dwarfed by the new Dreamliner. And with 2,400 sq. ft. of living space, it offers the same amount of room as an average American suburban home.

What’s coming

According to the long-time aviation executive, over the next 15-20 years, demand from just the Middle East for Boeing 787-sized private jets will top 30 aircraft. That may not sound like many planes, but at more than $300 million a pop, that’s about $10 billion in business from just a handful of customers.

In fact, Vella believes demand from East Asia will be just as intense over that period of time.

“Because of the high number of long distance and (trans-oceanic) flights the customers make, these are the perfect planes for Asia,” Vella added.

Whether the market for these mid-size, twin-engine wide-body private jets actually skyrockets remain to be seen. But with the unprecedented level of advanced technology, luxury, and performance it can offer, they are an undeniably attractive option for the right buyer.

Source…..BENJAMIN ZHANG in http://www.businessinsider.com.au

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Image of the Day…Sunrise stripes on Hospital Hill, Zimbabwe…!!!

June 2, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

At about 6.30 on the morning of May 28, 2016,, the sun rising over Mozambique projected some bright orange light through some layers of low cloud hanging in the Mutare Valley to produce a display of alternating light and dark sunrise stripes. One of these struck the summit of the nearby granite Kopje called Hospital Hill and then obliquely descended the slope facing me while narrowing and gradually fading away. The display lasted for just six minutes.

As a tripod was not immediately available, an impromptu series of hand-held camera images was taken using a Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ-60 in sunset scenery mode. Twenty of the most suitable for generating a time-lapse sequence were selected and adjusted in size to obtain good registration before being used to produce a time-lapse movie which loops five times.

A rare combination of light and shade, with Hospital Hill looking as I’ve never seen it before!

Source…….. Posted by Peter Lowenstein in www.earthsky.org

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Image of the Day…”Sunrays Seen from Chile “

May 25, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Sunrays seen from Chile

Crepuscular rays, sometimes called sunrays, above the famous volcano Licancabur on the border between Chile and Bolivia.

View larger. | Photo by Yuri Beletsky in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Visit Yuri Beletsky Nightscapes.

Yuri Beletsky wrote on May 16, 2016:

Erupting volcano? Fire in the mountains? Not really. These are so-called crepuscular rays. We witnessed this amazing view just before sunrise in Atacama desert in Chile. In the center of the image one see famous stratovolcano Licancabur (19,420 feet or 5,920 meters) illuminated by the sun from behind. Beautiful rays spans across the sky and the sun will appear just in seconds.

Source….www.earthsky.org

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Worlds Safest Airlines …Top 20….” Qantas is in Top of the list for the 3rd Year ” …

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Nervous flyer? Just want to know you’re traveling with a reliable airline? Find out who are the world’s safest airlines.

AirlineRatings.com, the world’s only safety and product rating website, which was launched in June 2013, has announced its top twenty safest airlines and top ten safest low cost airlines for 2016 from the 407 it monitors.

Top of the list for the third year is Australia’s Qantas, which has a fatality free record in the jet era – an extraordinary record. Making up the remainder of the top twenty in alphabetical order are: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airlines, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

AirlineRatings.com’s rating system takes into account a range of factors related to audits from aviation’s governing bodies and lead associations as well as government audits and the airline’s fatality record. AirlineRating.com’s editorial team, one of the world’s most awarded and experienced, also examined each airline’s operational history, incident records and operational excellence to arrive at its top twenty safest airlines.

The AirlineRatings.com top twenty have always been at the forefront of safety innovation and launching of new aircraft and these airlines have become a byword for excellence. Responding to public interest, the AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top ten safest low cost airlines.

They are in alphabetical order: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Thomas Cook, TUI Fly, Virgin America, Volaris and Westjet.

Unlike a number of low cost carriers, these airlines have all passed the stringent International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and have excellent safety records.
Of the 407 airlines surveyed, 148 have the top seven-star safety ranking but almost 50 have just three stars or less. There are 10 airlines with only one star and these airlines are from Indonesia, Nepal and Surinam.

In selecting Qantas as the world’s safest airline AirlineRatings.com editors noted that over its 95-year history the world’s oldest continuously operating airline has amassed an extraordinary record of firsts in operations and safety and is now accepted as the industry’s most experienced carrier.

The Australian airline has been a leader in: the development of the Future Air Navigation System; the Flight Data Recorder to monitor plane and later crew performance; automatic landings using Global Navigation Satellite System as well as precision approaches around mountains in cloud using RNP. Qantas was the lead airline with real time monitoring of its engines across its fleet using satellite communications, which has enabled the airline to detect problems before they become a major safety issue.

Last year was a disturbing year for airline safety with some tragic and bizarre accidents such as the high profile GermanWings and Metrojet disasters. However according to Aviation-Safety.net data, the 16 accidents in 2015 with 560 fatalities were below the 10-year average of 31 accidents and 714 fatalities. Last year was also a significant improvement over 2014 when there were 21 fatal accidents with 986 fatalities.

Balancing these numbers the world’s airlines carried a record 3.6 billion passengers on 34 million flights in 2015.

Flashback 50 years and there were a staggering 87 crashes killing 1,597 when airlines carried only 141 million passengers – 5 per cent of today’s number.

– See more at: http://www.airlineratings.com/news/630/who-are-the-worlds-safest-airlines-for-2016#sthash.d2MKORhu.dpuf

Source….www.airlineratings.com

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Image of the Day….” Full Moon and Mars “

May 23, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Have you seen Mars?

Best photos of Mars near the moon this weekend. View larger. Full moon and Mars over Dallas, Texas, from EarthSky friend Ben Zavala. They were bright enough to be seen from large cities. Posted by Deborah Byrd in http://www.earthsky.org

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Image of the Day….. ” Mars thro’ Hubble Space telescope “…..!!!

May 21, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

New Hubble image of Mars

New Hubble Space Telescope image of Mars, in honor of the planet’s May 22 opposition, when our planet Earth will sweep between the Red Planet and the sun.

View larger. | Mars, as it was observed by the Hubble Space Telescope on May 12, 2016, shortly before its opposition on May 22. Read more about this image from Hubble. Image via NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team, J. Bell, M. Wolff.

On May 19, 2016, the Hubble Space Telescope released this new image of Mars. It’s in honor of the upcoming passage of Earth between Mars and the sun this weekend, when Mars will be closer and brighter than at any time in the last 10 years.

Mars’ nearness to Earth in our sky right now makes it appear each evening as a very bright reddish “star.” It’s ascending in the eastern sky each night as the sun is sinking below the western horizon.

Mars is lots of fun to view with the eye, and astrophotographers around the globe will be trying to captured its photo. Follow the links below to learn more about this 2016 opposition of Mars and remember to watch for it!

source…..www.earthsky.org

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