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Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

flightradar24.com

271–280 of 421 posts

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#271
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the 4-engined models can fly more direct routes over oceans and uninhabited areas right? Because of ETOPS. Of course this is not a problem on many routes.

ETOPS is what allows twins to fly routes that would otherwise require trijets or four engines. I'm not sure what the limits are but flights to Hawaii for example are routinely done with twins.

I know, but as far as I know it requires them to stay with 200nm or so of an airport. So they can't take the most direct route. Also for flights over the poles.

I think four engines still have a benefit there. But I guess you don't run a whole airplane model just because it's not economical on 2 or 3 routes.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#272
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETOPS is what allows twins to fly routes that would otherwise require trijets or four engines. I'm not sure what the limits are but flights to Hawaii for example are routinely done with twins.

I know, but as far as I know it requires them to stay with 200nm or so of an airport. So they can't take the most direct route. Also for flights over the poles. I think four engines still have a benefit there. But I guess you don't run a whole airplane model just because it's not economical on 2 or 3 routes.

I have personally flown from Seattle to Hawaii on a 737 MAX. That is 2320nmi. So no, the ETOPS limit is not 200nmi. There's nothing between the west coast and Hawaii but water. You can see AS853 is a nearly straight line from Seattle to Honolulu. If any of that deviation is for ETOPS it is minor.

ETOPS is time based, not distance based. The 777 has been approved by the FAA for ETOPS-330, which is 330 minutes of flight time to the nearest airport on one engine.

The 737 MAX is ETOPS-180, so it only has to be within 3 hours of a suitable airport when running on one engine.

https://flightaware.com/live/airport_status_bigmap.rvt?airpo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/as853#2ef8bfcb

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#273

Makes me think of the famous "707 Barrel Roll" story from its initial testing: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-f... “You know that. Now we know that. But just don’t do it anymore.” Edit: forgot the barrel roll was on a 707 - not a 747

there's film of Tex Johnston's Dash-80 barrel roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaA7kPfC5Hk many years later, Boeing Chief Test Pilot John Cashman stated that just before he piloted the maiden flight of the Boeing 777 on Jun. 12, 1994, his last instructions from then Boeing President Phil Condit were “No rolls”. -- anecdote from https://theaviationgeekclub.com/that-time-tex-johnston-barre... I wonder why "the suit…

A barrel roll is one thing to perform in a transport category jet, it is a ~1G maneuver when performed correctly. A loop is altogether different. My good friend Bernardo Malfitano, https://www.understandingairplanes.com/Bernardo-Malfitano.ht... , when he worked as a Structural Methods & Allowables engineer at Boeing, was also an aerobatics pilot on the side and put on a fantastic brown-bag lunch presentation entitled "Can you loop a 747?" where he demonstrated how he calculated the weight, altitude, airspeed, and configuration points to theoretically loop a 747 while staying within the certified load limits, then did a stepwise simulation of the results. It would theoretically be possible, but it would be very close to the limit of the airplane's capabilities.

Found it - "Aerobatic Capabilities of “Marginally Aerobatic” Airplanes" - scroll down to "The Physics of Aerobatics" and click "Paper", toward the end there is a detailed summary of how a transport jet could just barely do a very ugly loop. https://www.understandingairplanes.com/online.html

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#274

Makes me think of the famous "707 Barrel Roll" story from its initial testing: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-f... “You know that. Now we know that. But just don’t do it anymore.” Edit: forgot the barrel roll was on a 707 - not a 747

there's film of Tex Johnston's Dash-80 barrel roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaA7kPfC5Hk many years later, Boeing Chief Test Pilot John Cashman stated that just before he piloted the maiden flight of the Boeing 777 on Jun. 12, 1994, his last instructions from then Boeing President Phil Condit were “No rolls”. -- anecdote from https://theaviationgeekclub.com/that-time-tex-johnston-barre... I wonder why "the suit…

Even if intellectually you know it's totally safe, it's still something the plane was not explicitly designed to do and literally will never be used for again. I can understand the "oh my god what are you doing" reaction feeling a lot stronger than "I guess he must know what he's doing".

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#275
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETOPS is what allows twins to fly routes that would otherwise require trijets or four engines. I'm not sure what the limits are but flights to Hawaii for example are routinely done with twins.

I know, but as far as I know it requires them to stay with 200nm or so of an airport. So they can't take the most direct route. Also for flights over the poles. I think four engines still have a benefit there. But I guess you don't run a whole airplane model just because it's not economical on 2 or 3 routes.

The 787 has a 330 minute ETOPS certification, so as long as it’s within 6.5 hours of an airport it can fly there.

That’s almost everywhere on the planet except the South Pacific and Antarctica.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could just... not use tracking cookies. Then no banner is required. The real idiocy is every website wanting to hoover up data.

The popup is about any cookies, right? Cookies are a basic building blocks of websites. If you login to a legit website, there's a cookie in your browser for that.

> The popup is about any cookies, right?

The popup is, yes. But the legislation they are pretending to be compliant with isn't.

For basic session-level cookies that are essential to the operation of some sites, no legislation requires consent. The issues are third party tracking, long term use stalking, etc. But those that want to stalk you want you to believe that the legislation is against even session maintenance & similar cookies as well so you'll be against the legislation and not them. And that is apparently working on you and some others commenting in this thread.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#277
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drawing things in the sky seems to be a well established aviation tradition Not really... This level of high-precision and publicly-available flight tracking is pretty new.

Drawing stuff on a map with a GPS track is a rather beaten path in the world of Strava and similar [0]. Not being bound to the road network graph just makes it easier. I don't want to think about the fuel burned for this stunt, but if I were in some position that is required to sign off that flight path I'd sure congratulate whoever came up with this. Wouldn't even be all surprised if tomorrow some Airbus ferry fligh…

I don't think this uses GPS, at least not directly. This data comes from ADS-B and radar. ADS-B involves the plane itself broadcasting where it (thinks it) is. That may come from GPS onboard but is probably more sophisticated than that in a modern 747.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#278

So, how does this work? Do you plot this via the Auto Pilot? Like, inserting a list of waypoints?

Given that they flew this below 15k feet, not requiring the full IFR flight plan which would be required above that altitude, I suspect they might have hand flown this out by Moses lake by following a magenta line on a map. They could have also just programmed the FMS with the waypoints and the plane flew itself.

It appears that flight was flown IFR as the cleared route is available: SEA V120 EAT 4700N/11924W 4723N/11930W 4714N/11915W 4712N/11901W 4714N/11848W 4728N/11831W 4714N/11816W 4711N/11803W 4714N/11750W 4722N/11733W 4707N/11739W 4708N/11811W 4708N/11856W 4706N/11926W 4637N/11918W 4638N/11909W 4657N/11856W 4657N/11913W 4701N/11913W 4701N/11849W 4637N/11904W 4638N/11831W 4657N/11831W 4645N/11841W 4645N/11831W 4643N/11831W 4643N/11849W 4701N/11834W 4701N/11827W 4638N/11826W 4638N/11813W 4657N/11800W 4657N/11816W 4701N/11816W 4701N/11753W 4637N/11807W 4637N/11749W 4707N/11739W 4713N/11737W HLN DPR MCW JOT CEGRM5

Since the clearance includes a STAR, I'm suspect it was all filed IFR.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun is a good thing to spend some of our CO2 emissions budget on. We need fun. A joyless society isn't worth saving.

That’s a fair sentiment, but in this particular case the portion of society that will be aware that this even happened, much let get joy from it, is a rounding error above none of society.

And 17 tons of CO2 is a rounding error above none of society's total emissions -- the US alone is around 5 billion tons per year.

Re: Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

#280
post #225

Screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmcjrYXR934QZqBuMHioRdcZEmo... On small displays this is otherwise obstructed by a cookie popup that offers only an “accept all” button. What’s even the point of the popup then?

Make sure to choose “yes” to see the Easter egg > Live flight not found > The flight with callsign GTI747 is currently not tracked by Flightradar24. It's either out of coverage or has already landed. > Do you want to see the flight history of this aircraft? > [ ] No, close pop-up > [X] Yes, show aircraft history

It opened the app for me, but the app doesn’t offer this option, so it just fails. Great.
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