Up now in Patrick Smith's ASK THE PILOT column on Salon.com:
-- LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE'VE BEEN CLEARED TO LAND. OR HAVE WE?
-- CABIN AIR TEMPERATURE GAMES
-- AIR TRAVEL AND CINEMA
Cleared to Land?…
"….This is a good time, meanwhile, to bring up one of my biggest flying pet peeves: those occasions when, prior to landing, a flight attendant announces, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we have been cleared to land. Please ensure your tray tables are stowed and all of your electronic devices….'
Truth me told, flight attendants do not have the slightest idea when the flight has been cleared to land. The public address chimes that precede this annoying announcement are a notification only that the plane will touching down, well, soon -- it's nonspecific and fairly informal. Actual landing clearance may take place many miles out or only seconds prior to touchdown, depending on circumstances. Ether way this is not something communicated between pilots and cabin crew, ever.…"
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Cabin Air Games…
"Q: On long-haul flights, when the time comes to sleep, the temperature in the cabin seems to rise substantially and I wake up in a sweat. Does the crew raise the temperature thinking it will keep us dormant?
A: Some crews might do this of their own volition because they assume a warmer cabin is more comfortable for sleeping, but there is no policy, written or unwritten, of turning up the temperature on an overnight flight. .
On the planes I fly, temperature is controlled from the cockpit. .The cabin is divided into three zones, with separate controllers and temperature readouts for each. .On the ground, until one or more engines has been running and the cabin remains susceptible to the conditions outside, we'll often move the settings toward full cold or full hot. .But when aloft -- day or night, long flight or short -- we set the dials to an intermediate position and usually don't change them unless somebody complains. .The temperature gauges are accurate to a point, but we rely on the flight attendants for fine tuning. Two or three times over the course of a long flight they will ring the cockpit to request it be made warmer or cooler in a particular section of the plane. You and your colleagues seem to experience warmer than average conditions, but we get just as many requests to turn * up * the temperature as we do to turn it down. On some aircraft the flight attendants have direct control over temperature. .Again there is no protocol here beyond common sense: .If it feels cold, they'll warm it up. .If it's hot, they'll cool it down…."
The full article is here:
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_...on_and_answer/
Air Travel and Cinema…
"…My favorite airplane cameo comes in the closing minutes of the movie "Dog Day Afternoon." Bankrobber Al Pacino is captured and handcuffed in a scene that unfolds at Kennedy Airport. In the background is a noisily idling jetliner, which Pacino thought would be his getaway plane. What's makes it so cool is that the plane is a Convair CV-990, a now-extinct, four-engine jet that was an uncommon sight even in 1975 when the movie was released. This peculiar * rara avis * is shown in the colors of Modern Air, a real life charter carrier around at the time.
What a great name that was: Modern Air. Today we get nonsense like "AirTran."
"Dog Day Afternoon" was one of few major motion pictures recorded with no backing music whatsoever. Yet that closing scene is all about sound. Airplane sound The earsplitting whine of the Convair's first-generation turbofans, and the roar of unseen planes taking off…."
The full article is here:
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_...on_and_answer/
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