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Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#301

Post by danlugo92 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #78
sharkweek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to the audio book of “The Only Plane in the Sky” (do recommend), and they played real recordings of ATCs on 9/11 as the planes were hitting buildings. It was surreal listening to them talk about the catastrophe but all while maintaining a total sense of calm.

During my Interaction Design master I had to read a paper about the interface design for tools aiding people in these kinds of jobs. The designers spent a lot of time observing them at work and concluded that one specific feature of this work environment was that it doesn't have a "normal" situation and "emergency" situation, it's a non-stop juggling of emergencies all the time . Which I guess is part of why they sta…

Glassdoor says they earn $30k - $64k yet lots of us earn more in our comfy office jobs typing code into a text editor, kinda puts things into perspective.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#302

Post by aceman22 »

blhack wrote: post #196
aceman22 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that 2020 is not any more unusual than other years, but that information dissemination and digestion has become so efficient that it seems like it's a crazy year. Just think about the Beirut explosion without cellphone cameras. Maybe it would have been in newspapers, but because so many people caught it on camera we were able to understand what 4.1 kilos of ammonium nitrate exploding looks like.

In 2020 the sitting US president was impeached, we saw a massive stock market crash, a global pandemic, the worst civil unrest in the US in 50 years, massive wildfires all over california, and are heading into what will almost definitely be a contested election where we won't know who won the most contentious presidential election in the last century likely far past what the inauguration date is supposed to be. I thi…

> In 2020 the sitting US president was impeached

Coming from someone who has used this against Clinton many times, having a congress with majority control by the opposition party pass articles of impeachment along party lines isn't really that big a deal.

> a global pandemic

The global campaign to make people aware of it would not have been as effective without modern information infrastructure. Think about Google, facebook, etc. and cell phones roles in that.

> the worst civil unrest in the US in 50 years

I'd like to see the data on that. Also, I feel it's over-hyped by our access to information. Anecdotally, I took a road trip up the west coast of the US a month or so ago. San Diego, LA, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, fairly thoroughly exploring each city. Didn't see one protest. Not saying they're not happening, just saying a vast VAST majority of the population in these places are not protesting/rioting etc.

> massive wildfires all over California

we have these every year. Again, the VAST majority of Californians are not affected by them. But people that don't live here probably believe all their friends that live in California are affected because of the information provided. My GFs parents for example are very worried about us. We're like 100 miles away from them ...

> the most contentious presidential election

EVERY modern presidential election is, 'The Most Important, most contested, election of our lives!!!!'

Just think about the Trump admin. without Twitter.

It's like we're out of the 24 hour news cycle and into the hour-to-hour/minute-to-minute news cycle.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#304

Post by braythwayt »

dpifke wrote: post #266
Waterluvian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I’ve got a phone number for you to write down. Are you ready to record it?” “Uh...no?” I imagine a jet pack forces some interesting takes on related technology that pilots are used to having access to when in a cockpit.

For the non-pilots: if ATC gives you a phone number to call after you land, it means you really screwed up. (It's the number for the supervisor, who is thinking about filing a "pilot deviation report" with the FAA.)

The pilots I know describe these calls informally as,

"Mr. Braithwaite, would you step into my office? Bring your license, and a match."

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#305

Post by braythwayt »

danlugo92 wrote: post #301
vanderZwan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my Interaction Design master I had to read a paper about the interface design for tools aiding people in these kinds of jobs. The designers spent a lot of time observing them at work and concluded that one specific feature of this work environment was that it doesn't have a "normal" situation and "emergency" situation, it's a non-stop juggling of emergencies all the time . Which I guess is part of why they sta…

Glassdoor says they earn $30k - $64k yet lots of us earn more in our comfy office jobs typing code into a text editor, kinda puts things into perspective.

It's amazing how much leverage an employer has when they have the legal right to simply fire everyone, and there is no recourse for the employees because the employer is the federal government itself.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-00...

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#306

Post by quacked »

janlaureys wrote: post #287
tim333 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - so he can - here's a video https://youtu.be/lK75XLUIKUk?t=8

Whenever I watch this video and the other jetman videos I can't help but try to find anomalies or something wrong in the video to somehow try and prove that it is CGI (which I know it's not).

Same. I studied aerospace engineering and know that small-scale jetpack flight is possible to do, and yet I cannot help but scan for weird lighting changes or lens incongruities whenever I see a video. It's so insane to see these things.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#307

Post by supernova87a »

pmachinery wrote: post #284
supernova87a wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of, and coming up on the anniversary in September, here is a description of what a passenger experienced in a plane on that day: "On 9/11, I was listening to Ch. 9. I was on a flight out of ORD to AZ (757) seated in 5F. We had just taken off and where climbing to cruise. A flight out of Rockford, IL was squeezing between us and the UA in front of us. I watched as he lined up to get on the highway westbound.…

Great post. I was confused by "channel 9" since I thought there may be rules or regulations against receiving ATC on a plane, but for anyone else who didn't know exactly what it referred to, it is (was?) an inflight entertainment feature of United Airlines. https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/united-air...

It was just a channel on the UA entertainment system (audio) where the pilots could choose to make the ATC transmissions audible to the passengers (if desired). It was highly spotty because enough pilots had bad experiences (or believed they would) based on passengers asking them annoying questions or reporting things that didn't need to be reported, or generally causing more trouble than it was worth.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#308

Post by wil421 »

gala8y wrote: post #260
peeters wrote: post #69

Took me a while to find on LiveATC as this wasn't actually on the Tower frequency, but here is the full feed: http://archive-server.liveatc.net/klax/KLAX-Final-Aug-31-202... . At 5:23. Unfortunately their web player is not linkable, but this is the KLAX North/South Final Approach feed ( https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php?m=klax6 ) from Aug 31, 0130-0200 UTC.

"Only in LA." at 6:15.

“Or Louisiana” a few seconds after.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#309

Post by quacked »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #250
bewaretheirs wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not ATC but here's a classic viral recording of a frazzled ground controller herding cats at JFK airport in NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMDkwfkXv0

Well, ground controllers are notorious for being constantly annoyed... and I can't blame them. When they're on tower duty it's less common.

Can you expand a little bit? I thought all ATC that talked to planes were in the towers.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#310

Post by mstade »

cglace wrote: post #247
sandworm101 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I probably have 5000+ hours driving cars. That doesn't mean I don't occasionally confuse one type of road vehicle for another, especially when dealing with odd/rare types.

You often confuse motorcycles for cars?

At night, sure. Many times I've met a car with a broken headlight, only realizing it's not a motorcycle as we're passing. I don't know if this happened at night, but visibility can be reduced for other reasons as well.
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