https://simpleflying.com/sparks-kalitta-air-boeing-777-300-tail-strike-cincinnati/
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Lucky no explosion or fire but that part of the plane must be built for something like that youâd reckon.
Nothing flammable in that section. Tail scrapes happen, but rarely. That one seemed to be on the severe-side, itâs going to be an expensive layover.
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Yeah, even their flammable goods compartment should be located a little bit further forward
Yep, Iâve been following it too
Got it on here at work but TBH itâs really a bit of hype about not much
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Is the expectation that there will be Melbourne to London directs? This has taken 19hours (ish), so what would it be fully loaded?
Eventually yes MEL-LHR direct possibly other Euro destinations plus New York but thatâs years away as Sydney are getting the first few aircraft
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Went back to France by going over US and Canada. Its about 21,000kms
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Just testing its capabilities
Clocked up a world record of over 24hrs in the air and about 22,500km by my calculations
Even did a sneaky fly over of LHR
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Would they have added any weight other than fuel and crew that aircraft or is it empty?
It was loaded on the way over for test purposes but went back empty. It was the first lot of many tests so they just wanted to see what fuel burn rates were like, how the long range tanks affected flying etc. They will start doing some replica tests of the actually routes a bit later on
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Lucky it didnât get shot downâ
Tragic firefighting helicopter mid-air in Greece.
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The night was dark. The skies were clear. The weather normal. And the pilots highly trained.
But somehow an air ambulance slammed into a mountain near Roswell, New Mexico anyway.
The two pilots and two paramedics aboard the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air were killed instantly.
Three months later, we have an idea why.
The airwaves around it had been saturated with electronic white noise. The GPS satellite link which the pilots relied on had been jammed. It stopped feeding their flight computers vital positioning information.
The pilots had been warned.
But they didnât understand what was going on.
Roswell air traffic controllers responsible for their safety were overwhelmed. They had to contend with three other aircraft urgently seeking answers to their own GPS-related problems.
Meanwhile, the nearby White Sands Missile Range continued to pulse high-powered electromagnetic radiation into the heavens.
The air ambulance crewâs mission was urgent: A patient needed immediate evacuation to Roswell for appropriate treatment.
The White Sands mission was imperative: Find a way to stop armed drones before they attack airfields and critical infrastructure.
Last month, a Pakistani cargo plane with its five crew flew out of the United Arab Emirates towards Karachi. As it passed south of the Strait of Hormuz, it urgently reported a ânavigational system issueâ. The plane dived 1.5km, rose 1.8km, then plunged 11km vertically into the ocean.
GPS jamming and spoofing are suspected. The source remains unknown.
Reports of GPS jamming threatening civilian aircraft have exploded in recent years.
It has become almost normal for aircraft in Norway, Finland and Sweden to rely on manual navigation in the face of Russian jamming. Ukraine is blanketed with offensive and defensive systems attempting to disrupt â or strengthen â missile and drone guidance systems.
The threat has since spread to the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
Itâs also a threat being experienced much closer to home.
In 2024, Qantas pilots reported navigation difficulties when flying near Chinese warships in international waters.
âAircraft have experienced GPS jamming suspected to originate from the warships operating off the northwest shelf of Australia,â a subsequent Qantas operating order to its pilots stated.
On the other side of the coin is the drone threat.
All their operators need is a wi-fi link. A local telephone tower or a commercial satellite can supply this.
They also need to know where their drone is. GPS satellites answer this.
Some drones donât even need operators. Their on-board computers take GPS positioning data, match it to the mission theyâve been assigned and work their own way towards their target.
Over the past year, unexplained drone swarms have been appearing around Europeâs major airports, nuclear power plants, ports and military bases. Last nightâs incident in Germany bodes of terrible things to come.
One obvious solution is to cut access to GPS satellite positioning signals. That makes them effectively blind.
But the same applies to commercial (and military) aircraft.
White Sands may have inadvertently downed the medical flight while testing ways to confuse drone and missile guidance systems. Now the National Transportation Safety Board is trying to figure out exactly what happened.
âThe Army is aware of the release of the NTSBâs preliminary report into the crash of a civilian medical evacuation flight on May 14 in the vicinity of Ruidoso, New Mexico,â reads a statement from the US Army.
âAs the incident remains under investigation, we cannot comment at this time.â
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