Getting on a plane with an upset child … even worse an upset child that isn’t yours … it is something every traveler fears. No one likes being locked in a pressurized metal tube with a screaming kid. We’ve all heard the phrase “it takes a village,” and when traveling that same principal applies. …
A little over a week ago I wrote What Does The Future Hold For Young Airplane Geeks?, Â this post lead to some interesting discussions, and an email I received from Lynn Young, from Delaware, who asked, “This may be an impossible question, but how does one end up an airplane geek? My young daughter is…
The other day my seven year old son, Max, asked me why I can’t take him on the Concorde. When I explained to him that Concorde had been retired in November 2003 I was met with the follow up question enquiring why there were supersonic jets when I was a kid, but none while he…
For the past few months on a nearly daily basis the same image appears somewhere in my Twitterstream, Facebook Wall, Google + feed or in my email box … often more than once a day. The photo is a beautiful image of dozens of aircraft lifting off from Runway 27L at Germany’s Hannover-Langenhagen Airport. The…
On December 17th 1903, a morning, not unlike today, sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight become a reality in Kill Devil Hills, Dare County, North Carolina, when Orville and Wilbur Wright launched the Wright Flyer into the skies and into history. The Wright Brothers’ Wright Flyer, 21 feet 1 inch long, constructed of giant spruce…
Fifty-three years ago today, on the evening of October 26th 1958, crowds gathered to witness history, the first Boeing 707-121 commercial passenger flight. Pan Am’s “Clipper America” (N709PA) flew from Pan Am’s Wordport, at New York’s Idlewild Airport to Paris’ Le Bourget Airport with 11 crewmembers and 111 passengers for eight-and-a-half hours. The Boeing 707’s…
Moose Peterson is a world renowned wildlife photographer, landscape photographer, camera bag designer and he literally wrote the book on Nikon. While my interests were never in wildlife photography, I was hooked at Moose’s work at the age of 16 when I received my copy of the Nikon System Handbook (now in it its sixth…
Yesterday at 7:08am PST, a Boeing a 747-8KZF/SCD (RC523), flying as Flight BOE 523, lifted off from Runway 16R/34L at Paine Field, in Everett, Washington, for a 17-hour function and reliability test flight. After flying 8,119 miles over the continental United States, Flight BOE523 touched back down at Paine Field at 12:08am PST having made…
As I sit here looking out the window at more than a foot of snow on the ground and a grey dreary sky dropping ice from the clouds, like most people my mind wanders to warmer places with clear skies. Yesterday afternoon John Milleker, a photographer in Baltimore, sent me the link to a video…
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar took to the skies for the first time forty years ago today, November 16th 1970. To me is the L-1011 is the airplane that started my love of airplanes, airlines, travel and the smell of jet fuel.  The L-1011 was not only an airplane that flew over my house day and…
