Istanbul Airport Accidents

It’s no wonder, yesterday once again an departing aircraft overshoot runway 06 at Istanbul. This time it happened to a poor Ariana A300 crew. In the past the same also happened to various other airlines/airplanes like a Delta 767, Egypt Air 707, Kuban YAK42, Iran Air A310, Onur A321 and countless russian airliners. Everytime the departing aircrafts were just clueless about the anomaly of that specific runway and the pilots are not to blame, it’s clearly a fault of the ATC and airport management!

So what anomaly I’m talking about?

Runway 06/24 is so dangerous and capricious because it’s covered about 85% full with tyre marks, which results in a extremely slick surface. When landing on a wet runway the stop distance is just required to be 1.15 times more as in dry conditions. However, runway 06/24 in Istanbul has a serious decending slope issue. The touchdown zones and most of the rollout zone has so much tyre rubber on it, that when the aircraft touches down, it doesn’t contact the actual runway but the rubber, it skids around and loses very little speed! Since the runway is too short in that respect, the aircraft doesn’t lose enough speed and by the time it fastly reaches the end of the runway and that’s it …

Some airlines going to IST frequently, do have special instructions for that particular runway (40 flaps, autobrake 2 …) and have been warned to use it during rain and/or windy conditions.

Instanbul ATC of course knows very well the difficult conditions on RWY06/24 during unstable winds and wet weather. However they still remain to use this runway! If a pilot knows about these difficult conditions and requests the longer runway 18/36, they sometimes just delay this particular flight for about 25 mins! If 18/36 would be used anyway, on 18 ILS couldn’t be used because there simply is no ILS installed. ILS on 18 is blocked by appartment buildings on the path.

Airport management as well knows the problems but they still remain to clean up 06/24 from all that rubber and dirt.

Let’s hope authorities are woken up before further accidents occur.

Inside the Airbus A380 – Part2

The german newspaper “Sueddeutsche” just published a bunch of interior pictures of the Airbus A380.

Link: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/bildstrecke/794/106688/p0/?img=0.0 To browse those pictures, you need to click on “nächstes Bild”

Aside from that, you might be interested in my exterior photos as well.

A video from inside the Airbus A380 you can find in my previous article Inside the Airbus A380
There are also some In-Flight videos. Please browse they A380 Category to find those.

Inside the Airbus A380

This video is a must see! It includes great shots of the interior which gives an idea of how huge it is, a view out the window on takeoff from 4L at JFK, an interview with the flight testing engineer, an interview with the FO, and closeups of the first class bar and the cruise-ship-style spiral staircase.

Link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4213543.html

Virgin America – Hi-Tech In-Flight Entertainment

The new upcoming airline Virgin America is gonna have real stunning In-Flight Entertainment, even in Economy Class, called “Red”! It’s the most advanced In-Flight Entertainment System out there.

  • Every seat has a 9 inch integrated touch screen
  • Full QWERTY keyboard/game controller

controller

  • A PC intergrated in every seat
  • Running on Linux and using Open Source Software
  • All “seats” communicate over an ethernet network
  • 3 file servers in the belly of the aircraft (Airbus A320)
  • “Airborne Decoder Receivers” which convert sattelite signals into multicast streams. That allows Live TV on every seat provided by a Dish Network.
  • On-Board cached movies
  • The world’s only In Flight Program guide (IPG) for Live TV
  • Over 25 on-demand Pay-per-view movies

virgin4.jpg

  • On-demand audio provided by a server with 3000 MP3s
  • Customized Playlists
  • 20 Radio Channels
  • Broadband WLAN Access everywhere in the aircraft
  • Providing a social network for passengers with E-Mail, SMS, Instant Messaging, Seat-To-Seat Chat & Chat Rooms to chat with other passengers

seat-to-seat chatseat-to-seat chat

  • Open source video games that even allows to play DOOM against other passengers

play doom

  • Order food directly from your seat

Now is that cool or is that cool? 😀

Link: https://www.alaskaair.com

*Link updated due to acquisition by Alaska Airlines