Qantas ferried an engine on the wing of a 747 (2016)
flightradar24.com
flightradar24.com
Worse things have been carried under wings.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...
this one [1] was way scarier, imo D:
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
Personally, one thing I enjoy about HN is the tangents that discussions sometimes take. If there is something I can learn from a comment, I'm not too worried about whether it is strictly on topic.
“anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” applies strongly to leeoniya’s comment IMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...
Imagine mistakenly loading a nuclear warhead on the wrong plane.
"Sir, I need you for a moment. It's kinda important"...
Flying it is also more complicated
This was something that always made me think about the difficulties of flying something with multiple sources of lift.
Here is an Air Lanka L-1011-500 TriStar doing the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1011_TriStar#/media...
And an even older DC8: https://nitter.net/PilotJamesB/status/1262751026408378369
Other models like the 707-300 or the VC-10 and Super VC-10 also did it: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=775179
Aparently doing this makes the fuel consumption increase a lot.
"What are the consequences of attaching an unused extra engine under Boeing 747 wing?': https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/53755/what-are-...
Cowling cowling cowling.
How Qantas Ferried an Engine on the Wing of a 747 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870123 - Jan 2016 (25 comments)
It also seems odd that they would do this on a plane carrying commercial passengers since it seems more of an "experimental" modification even if the manufacture has approved it.
Most aircraft with such capability are identified by the inclusion of built-in stairs for passenger ingress/egress, which the 747-100 had.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-crom...
Regarding the cargo hold problem, the aircraft wasn't carrying just the engine core. The 'pod' is most likely the engine nacelle itself. I wonder if the entire thing would fit through the cargo door (mere speculation). While it's true that the 747 was originally meant as a cargo carrier, most of it was meant to be loaded through the nose of the aircraft. The nose could be opened for this purpose and the cockpit was above the cargo area to accommodate this.
How’d you end up doing it? Roll it on its side? Usually the height of a sea going container is ~2.6m and per the specs I’m seeing online the allowed height through the nose is only ~2.49m. Because they are just taller than they are wide, spec wise it would fit laying on its side, but still curious when doing it for real if that was necessary.
Going via the main deck side doors on a cargo style 747 would be much easier imho for a container that size. Not only can you go a full 10ft high, you’ve got around 11’ straight in width clearance.
I was surprised by this so I consulted Wikipedia. Apparently when the 747 was designed they were convinced enough that passengers in the future would not want to travel subsonically, so they designed the 747 to convert to a freighter, to not have to throw the design away when it's hard to attract passengers due to the "low" 0.8 mach speeds!
For a myriad of reasons ( Boeing failing to make their own supersonic airliner which helped the US Congress banning supersonic flights over the US being one of them), we never got there though, and it seems we never will since the currently planned crop of supersonic airliners ( Boom and co) are specifically targeting the business niche.
You sure about that order? I thought supersonic domestic flights got banned in the US and then the Boeing supersonic airliner was doomed. I’m not positive, hence asking.
The FAA picked Oklahoma City (without asking them first) for an experiment to subject a city to regular sonic booms. It, uh, didn’t go well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tes...
I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though.
They weren't, the Concordes were quite profitable until 9/11 and the following slump in international travel ( due to fear, increased controls and inconveniences) and increase in oil prices.
> I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though
There are companies trying to build supersonic business jets, like Boom.
But I wouldn't care for sonic travel besides the novelty.
Price wins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_KbZON5sW0
The normal caveat about how microphones are really unable to capture sounds of this magnitude probably apply here.
For example, I once went to vandenburg to see a rocket launch and that was the biggest sound I have ever heard, not the loudest, we were five miles away, but the way the sound shook you impressed the hell out of me.
In comparison, part of the A380’s short life is that it’s useless as a freighter since a minimal amount of freight would bring it to “too heavy to fly” territory.
The "fifth pod" thing was designed in from the start.
I have a truck which a few times a year I tow various trailers/etc with. Yes the truck was "designed" for this, but that doesn't mean its not eating in safety margins in many ways and is fundamentally far more dangerous for a laundry list of reasons over simply driving the truck around.
The asymmetry of something that large is going to create a lot of complications that this article is glossing over with "trimming", starting with weight/balance issues (which presumably end up being a case that the opposing wing tanks need to be unbalanced/over full, and managed by the crew, etc), and unusual airframe/control surface stresses that eat into the engineering margins.
So, it wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that they were also flying 350+ passengers at the same time. Many airline accidents are cases of confounding variables strung together. You can be assured that had anything unusual happened on that fight, that the NTSB report would have started with "The airplane was flying massively out of trim"
- Front nose cone door
- Main deck cargo door
I believe neither would be used on a passenger airline configured 747 (could be wrong though!) and hence why the wing based fifth pod configuration was likely used.
However your big limitation will be height at either 2.44m or 3.00m depending on where on the main deck you're checking. The lower deck (which is all you'd have available on a passenger 747) has a much lower height limit (an LD-1 has a height limit of 1.62 m).
An engine's just not going to fit inside unless you're talking about something designed for oversize cargo like the Dreamlifter (747) or Beluga (A300) or Beluga XL (A330). Oversized cargo is also the main use case for the An-124/225.
https://www.cargolux.com/fleet-equipment/aircraft/747-400f-s...
This is in direct conflict with literally the paragraph you posted before it. You could definitely carry the RB-211 on a standard cargo version of the 747, as you yourself stated previously. It could only fit on the main deck, but the standard 747 cargo (aka not needing the guppy) definitely could do it.
I know the answer, which is that the fan and the turbine are very much separate entities and that removal of the fan blades is a long shot from taking apart the complete engine, but a more gut level part of my brain still likes to consider the entire pod "the jet engine", and from that point of view it feels as if they'd strip out 90% of "the engine" when in reality the entire turbine remains untouched.
Not really. The 5th pylon is an original design item and is only on the the left wing. When the 747 first started operating, IIRC there were no cargo aircraft big enough to transport fully assembled 747 engines so there was a real logistical concern about transporting spare and faulty engines to and from far flung destinations. It's kind of a relic of a certain age between the dawn of large turbofan engines but before the growth of the modern aviation industry.
The presence of that 5th pylon does mean some 747 get used for some interesting things. Virgin Orbit launches their rocket from a heavily upgraded 5th pylon.
No idea whether any twin engine jet has a 3rd pylon. My guess would be the asymmetry would be much more difficult to handle for offering regular passenger flights.
[1] https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850623-...
The point is that islamist terrorism isn’t a large uptick in terror activity, both in term of number of incidents and number of victims. They do more spectacular attacks though. But the reaction it created is kind of curious (security in airports, army in the street, state surveillance), particularly in countries with an otherwise large tolerance to crime like the US (tough laws but very high level of crime) and Europe (lax law enforcement) where terrorism is a drop in the ocean of regular crime.
With Islamic terrorism came more sophisticated attacks that required more logistical planning. These were only possible because the people carrying out the attacks were simultaneously committing suicide in the process.
Previous attacks did affect procedures it’s just that they weren’t as noticeable and the type of surveillance we have now was not possible at the time due to the technology being used. For instance bags were unloaded if the passenger didn’t board[0] or flight observation decks were enclosed to stop RPG’s being fired at airplanes[1].
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103?wprov=sfti1
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Orly_Airport_attacks
Islam was arguably designed by Mohammed to cede power from the establishment of his time. Joseph Smith's (Mormonism) very obvious deceptions lead to a new global power structure; Ron Hubbard's (Scientology) even more obvious deceptions are used to target individuals in powerful positions and gain leverage over them.
Those who truly believe will always have a negative reaction to religious ideas that challenge their truth; those who use religion to bolster power will be even more against new religious ideas.
Not sure about the other examples, but the "Red Brigades" (Brigate Rosse) and other terrorist acts in Italy lead to special laws that extended considerably the powers of police (you can be searched without a warrant if there's the suspicion you have a weapon, you would potentially be arrested for wearing a helmet or other face cover without legitimate need, e.g. in a demonstration) and the use of force, the creation of new "swat-like" police forces. And of course, there was considerably more police on the street in those years...
Fun fact, all I know about Germany is that they proposed (and too slowly deployed) a new font for car plates after the Baader-Meinhof gang successfully altered with black tape a plate.
The most famous operation of GSG 9 was the storming of the hijacked Lufthansa aircraft "Landshut" at Mogadishu airport (Somalia) in 1977, freeing all 86 passengers. (The crew's captain had been executed by the terrorists before.)[1]
* the US had the anti-communist McCarthy hearings.
Canada had secret shunning commitees. See a book/video called "The UnCanadians".
(Millions of Canadian households had files on them, at a time when Canada had < 16M people.)
* Due to this, and the RCMP going bananas in other ways (eg, burning down barns on private property because bikers were legally meeting there....), parliament disbanded the RCMP's domestic and international "spy" departments.
CSIS, CSEC and other agencies were formed.
* During the transition from the RCMP handling terrorism reports, to CSIS, there was bad blood, and a desire to make a clean break, eg, bad RCMP culture was to be replaced with a new agency new culture.
* the Air India disaster had multiple people call in, all reporting, with details, to the RCMP that it was going to happen
* due to all of the above, these reports never made it to CSIS, and the RCMP was at that point forbidden to investigate on their own.
* in 2006? 8? A report was published detailing this disconnect, and more.
I believe that some US agencies are exdeeding their power, and one day, may need to be disbanded and replaced.
To all those, in any country considering the same? Do it right.
Do not let the transition, mess up ongoing dilligence.
The Air India disaster is a poster child for what can happen.
So one of the five eyes activities I found which involved the RCMP (I'm based in the UK), was putting a tiny picture of a full stop (period/dot/whatever you want to call it), at the end of sentences in various web forums. If your broadband was slow, like in the dialup days, before the image had downloaded, web browsers would put a placeholder square or rectangle where the image would eventually appear. I saw this on some forums, so naturally I traced the image back to Canadian webservers. It was their way of tracking who was reading what threads on a forum, but not the only way!
You will find the security services sacrifice many innocent members of the public even kids, in the 5eyes countries, its how the security services effect change when they cant manipulate or blackmail the politicians. There is also a lot of collusion between the Police and the security services, its totally criminal!
I had no idea that Indira Ghandi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, after she insisted they be reinstated to her protective detail, Intelligence Bureau having removed them after Operation Bluestar. The same operation is what lead to the Air India 182 plane bombing. Quite the blowback, only to then be met with the killing of over 8,000 Sikhs in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/us-decla...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-the-stra...
> “There have been exactly two things since 9/11 that have made air travel safer,” Schneier said recently over spring rolls at a favorite Vietnamese restaurant on Nicollet Avenue. “Reinforcing the cockpit door and telling people to fight back in the event of an attack.” After a brief pause, half-devoured roll in hand, he reconsidered. “Well, maybe three,” he said. “I’m on the fence about sky marshals.”
Those two or three are not security theater, a term he uses for 'new measures that conveyed safety but accomplished little.'
He gives an example of security theater - requiring people to throw out their cigarette lighters. When they could buy cigarette lighters once they pass through security.
If those two or three things alone indeed caused the decrease in plane hijackings and bombings that you commented about, then the rest - dumping out water, taking shoes off, etc. - is very likely security theater.
I thought that the reason for banning outside cigarette lighters was that the TSA folk could not distinguish a lighter with "improved/better" fuel from one with ordinary fuel.
If there is something, why not put the fuel in a 3oz bottle instead of a lighter?
Hijacking used to be common in the early days of commercial aviation and the airlines resisted the idea of security screening as it didn't fit the experience they wanted their customers to have. The occasional inconvenience of hijacking was a price they considered worth paying. That changed once the hijackers started killing people and planes were bombed mid-air.