Top 10 Facts About Commercial Flight and Airplanes
If you've ever eaten something on an airplane and felt like it was bland, it might not be the food to blame. According to JetBlue, the difference in air pressure and the low humidity in a plane's cabin make it more difficult for your taste buds to register sweet and salty flavors.
In 1977, Pan Am Flight 1736 and KLM Flight 4805, both Boeing 747s, crashed into one another in Tenerife. However, as CBS News reports, it wasn't an error on either pilot's part, per se. Low fog made visibility poor, and the airport's runways were overly congested, leading to the two planes colliding. This resulted in the deaths of 583 passengers and crew members in the resulting fire.
ETOPS - or Extended Twin Operations - is a designation that indicates the length of time a twin-engine plane can safely cruise with one inoperative engine. In 2014, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner earned 330-minute ETOPS certifications, meaning it can stay safely operational on just one engine for more than five hours before needing to land.
In pre-COVID times, the South Korean Seoul - Jeju flight route was the busiest on the planet. In 2018, there were up to 250 daily scheduled connections on this 449-km-long route, with over 14 million passengers a year flying this route. The route was so popular that you could board a flight every 15 minutes in some cases.
While you may only see the occasional plane pass by overhead, that doesn't mean the sky isn't full of them. In fact, according to the FAA, there are 5,000 planes in the air over the United States at any moment in time, and more than 8,000 flying across the globe.
American Airlines is a major U.S. airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. Founded in 1926, the airline serves an extensive network of domestic and international routes. American Airlines focuses on delivering reliable air travel services, including passenger flights, cargo transportation, and frequent... read more When attempting to cut costs in the 1980s, American Airlines discovered that removing just one item from passengers' meals would do the trick. By simply nixing just one olive from the salads served in-flight, the airline saved a staggering $40,000 in the course of a single year.
The dirtiest place on a plane was found during recent studies to be the tray table on the back of the seat in front of you where you eat from and put your electronic devices on. In fact, there were eight times as many bacteria found here when compared to the toilet flush button. So, make sure to take some sanitary wipes with you on your next flight.
A report from the Wall Street Journal found that bacteria, including salmonella and staphylococcus, were found in airplane water, in addition to insect eggs. Just reading that makes you want to puke. Maybe paying for a bottle of water in the terminal isn't a bad idea.
Yeah, even from tiny fishing boats to large container ships, you can find a red (port) light on the left wing and a green (starboard) light on the right wing to signal which way the plane is positioned.
The oxygen masks provided from above your seat in case of an emergency are designed to give out only 15 minutes of oxygen. This might sound like a short amount of time, but it's more than enough to allow the pilot to lower the altitude of the plane to a level where the outside air pressure is breathable, around 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters.