Aviation Video: F-16 Dead Stick Landing
The most amazing thing I’ve seen this week was via Jetwhine: this amazing video of an F-16 landing dead stick with an engine out.Jetwhine writes:

For those of you who may not be familiar with a Head Up Display used in the F-16, the pilot essentially views the information while still being able to look out the cockpit. The airspeed is the tape along the left side in hundreds of knots, while the altitude unwinds on the right side tape.

24 Hour Air Traffic Around the World Blows Minds, Eyeballs
Not surprising that the US and Europe are the hotspots but it’s interesting to actually see the big circle:

Here’s a video displaying all commercial air traffic in the world during a 24-hour period. Seriously, I’m moving to New York City tomorrow and seeing the flight density in this computer simulation scares me a bit. Thankfully, it’s a big planet with plenty of space to fly. But then, pilot friends tell me that sometimes they get close enough to wave at each other, so maybe it’s not as big as to accommodate the 7.4 billion passengers that will travel by air in 2020.

The Pitch/Power Debate: It’s the Trim, Stupid
The House of Rapp pitches in rather powerfully on a popular discussion:

I’ve never understood the dogmatic attitudes you’ll find among some pilots on this issue, although I’ve definitely seen those vociferous arguments out in the real world.

You can’t say it’s JUST power which determines altitude, because let’s face it, some aircraft don’t even have engines. And those aircraft happen to fly higher than aircraft which do have engines.

Good Captain / Bad Captain Revisited
Sam from Blogging at FL250 wrote Good Captain Bad Captain from the right seat. A few years later, he considers his point of view now that he’s in the left seat:

Having been in the left seat for about 300 hours, I can say that it’s a quite different experience than I thought it’d be when I was an FO.

BBC News: Pilot completes jetpack challenge
Fusionman crosses the English Channel with a jetpack:

The 49-year-old flew on a plane to more than 8,200ft (2,500m), ignited jets on a wing on his back, and jumped out.

Mr Rossy had hoped to reach speeds of 125mph. It felt “great, really great.”

Cockpit Chronicles: Flying around Hanna and Ike
Meanwhile, Kent Wien of Gadling is routing around hurricanes:

I couldn’t believe my timing. A four-day trip to the Caribbean with Hurricanes Hanna and Ike scheduled to be right in our way for almost every leg.

Monstrous Aviation: World’s Biggest Airplanes
I’m not sure monstrous is the word I’d use but it’s an interesting round-up nevertheless:

Talking about big planes is very much like talking about who should get the credit for man’s first flight – it all depends on who you talk to. As the brilliant James Burke has pointed out, inventors rarely create something from nothing – their successes are often the result of combining the partial successes, or learning from the downright failures, of other inventors. In some cases, it’s just pure dumb luck.