[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] A woman was sucked out the window of a Southwest Airlines plane . . . not a black woman, fortunately, so Southwest won’t have to shut down for racial bias training. In other news, David Hogg is telling his Twitter followers to boycott the BlackRock and Vanguard investment firms. “David Hogg’s Twitter followers” . . . might be a good name for an improv group. See you in Hell! Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Airplanes
Passenger Sucked Out of Plane Window: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
Southwest passenger died after broken plane window nearly sucked her out — CNN You are now free to move about the country! Thanks, but I’d prefer to move about the country from inside the plane . . . Read more →
Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
A passenger jet skidded off a runway and got stuck in the mud on the edge of a cliff in northern Turkey. — MSN Read more →
Flight Crews Shutting Off Working Engines: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
Airlines Headquartered in Strip Malls: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
Here’s a photo of cameramen standing outside the headquarters of the company that owned the Air Algerie plane that crashed earlier this week . . . MY GOD WHERE IS THAT?! It looks like a strip mall, or a trailer. CANCEL MY RESERVATIONS! Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Chuck Barris – TV host, “The Gong Show” Fidel Castro – Cuban dictator Richard Chamberlain – actor, “Dr. Kildare” Jules Feiffer – cartoonist, “The New Yorker” Rhonda Fleming – actress Pete Fountain – clarinetist Zsa Zsa Gabor – actress Dick Gregory – comedian Lee Iacocca – automobile manufacturer Dean Jones – actor Graham Kerr – The Galloping Gourmet Imelda Marcos – Philippine first lady “Little Richard” Penniman – rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Neil Simon – playwright, “The Odd Couple” Larry Storch – actor, “F-Troop” Rip Taylor – comedian Mel Tillis – country singer/songwriter Grant Tinker – TV executive, NBC Y. A. Tittle – Hall of Fame football player Claus von Bulow – acquitted attempted murder defendant Gene Wilder – actor, “Young Frankenstein” Chuck Yeager – test pilot Updates Chuck Barris – died 3/27/2017, age 87 Fidel Castro – died 11/25/2016, age 90 Rhonda Fleming – died 10/14/2020, age 97 Pete… Read more →
Disappearing Planes: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has left investigators, aviation experts and the authorities in several countries at a loss to explain what happened. . . . — NYTimes.com From an observer’s point of view, air travel is a magic trick: you disappear from one place and you reappear somewhere else . . . unless the trick doesn’t work and you never reappear anywhere ever again . . . Read more →
Thoughts on a Turbulent Flight
I can’t sleep on planes. I’m afraid the damn thing will crash and I’ll miss it. I don’t believe in anything. I wish I did. It seems comforting to imagine holding the plane aloft with prayer. I’m not a good person. Why shouldn’t something terrible happen to me? Read more →
See You in HEL
HELSINKI (AP) — Would you board flight 666 to HEL on Friday the 13th? For superstitious travelers, that might be tempting fate. But Finnair passengers on AY666 to Helsinki — which has the 3 letter designation HEL — don’t seem too bothered. Friday’s flight is almost full. — “Would you board flight 666 to HEL? Read more →
Airline Pilots No Longer Know How to Fly the Planes
Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important information from the attention of the flight crew. While the airplane’s avionics track crucial parameters such as location, speed, and heading, the human beings can pay attention to something else. But when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer decides that it can no longer cope—on a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from land—the humans might find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what’s going on. They’ll wonder: What instruments are reliable, and which can’t be trusted? What’s the most pressing threat? What’s going on? Unfortunately, the vast majority of pilots will have little experience in finding the answers. — Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 – Popular… Read more →
Serious People Don’t Ski
Five men, including three prominent Long Beach community and business leaders, were killed and one person seriously injured Wednesday when their Salt Lake City-bound plane crashed along a runway at Long Beach Airport and burst into flames. The group of six were on their way to ski in Park City, Utah, friends said. — Los Angeles Times I think we’ve covered this before but there are certain key indicators in life that you are not a serious person and one of those indicators is that you take ski trips. And it’s a key indicator squared if you’re a grown man and you take ski trips with other grown men. Did Napoleon take ski vacations with his buddies? No, he didn’t. Did Winston Churchill take ski vacations? Did Einstein take ski vacations? Did Jesus take ski vacations? So on the bright side, it’s not like promising lives have been cut short… Read more →
Snakes on a Plane
According to The Book of Odds: The odds an adult is afraid of flying are 1 in 5.56. The odds an adult is afraid of snakes are 1 in 1.96. Read more →
Carbon Emissions Reduction, Biden Style
There is a permanently restricted area of airspace to the NW of the [Wilmington, Delaware] airport, around [VP Joe] Biden’s weekend house. The airport gets shut down every time Biden commutes home at taxpayer expense. What kind of plane does Biden, a tireless advocate of reduced carbon emissions (source), use for the 15-minute flight from D.C.? “Boeing 757,” was the report from the ramp. “You wonder how the government can criticize private companies for using light jets when they themselves ride solo in the back of a 757.” [Note: the shortest version of the Boeing 757 can hold up to 234 passengers plus a crew of at least 7 (source).] — Philip Greenspun Read more →
Low-End Wealth
Flying back to California from the east coast, I sat next to one of about 60 kids coming back from a three-week tour of Europe to celebrate their graduation from an Orange County high school. “You guys must be rich,” I said to her, “traveling around Europe for three weeks.” “We’re on the low end of wealthy,” she said. She put her hand out in front of her, palm down — not too high — to indicate her standing on the wealth ladder. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-07-19
Something I didn't know: Leave Sydney at 10 a.m., arrive at LAX at 6 a.m. — on the same day! It's like going back in time! # Read more →
To Fly is the Opposite of Traveling
To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished. — Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler Read more →
Fat Guys on Planes
Make them pay for two seats. If they’re in a middle seat, make them pay for three seats. Then let other passengers have those seats for free if they want them, keeping in mind that the fat guy is going to spill over into your seat, invading your personal space, pinning you in awkward positions and stabbing you with his bristling arm hair. He may even listen to music on his iPod and do a little fat man dance in his — and your — seat, wobbling around like fat hairy jello. But you’re flying for free! You still want it? Read more →
Going Back in Time
Here’s something I didn’t know: If you fly straight from Sydney to Los Angeles, you arrive before you left! I’m looking at an itinerary here . . . leaving Sydney at 10 a.m., arriving at LAX at 6 a.m. — on the same day! It’s like going back in time! Read more →
Airline Safety
As we’re waiting for the plane to leave the gate, my son’s looking over the airline safety brochure, which shows multiple scenarios of people sliding to safety out of a downed plane — onto grass, into water, etc. He says, “None of these things is going to work if the plane is going–” here he makes a plummeting motion with his hand, along with a plummeting sound effect. “The plane is on the ground in those pictures,” I say. “You’re not supposed to slide out of the plane while it’s still in the air.” “I know. I’m saying there’s no solution if the plane actually crashes.” “That’s right. Do you want to get off?” Read more →
Twitter: 2009-07-15
Flamboyantly gay flight attendant on our Buffalo-to-Newark flight. In-flight entertainment: Bruno. No they didn't show a movie. # Read more →