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My dad, an electrical engineer, was once on his way back from a conference with a Concorde flight full of other EEs. In the air, the stewardess asked, "Is ther
by Dove 14y ago
My dad, an electrical engineer, was once on his way back from a conference with a Concorde flight full of other EEs. In the air, the stewardess asked, "Is there an engineer on board?" Everyone responded enthusiastically. She was forced to clarify, "Is there an aeronautical engineer on board," to disappointment all around.
I must admit, some secret part of me always hopes I'll be in a situation on an airplane where they need an emergency perl script written . . .
- JshWright 14y agoThat story seems _really_ fishy to me... Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde? What good would an aeronautical engineer be _in flight_?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIf I'm on a flight and they're asking for aeronautical engineers, I'll be asking for their strongest and most expensive drinks.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- lotharbot 14y ago(Disclaimer: I'm Dove's husband. The man in question is my father in law, and I've heard the story from him firsthand, apparently much more recently than my wife did.) > "Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde?" The airline was moving a Concorde to a different facility (ie, it wasn't part of regular scheduled service). They decided to "upgrade" a bunch of passengers who were scheduled to be on a different type of aircraft. They moved the whole group of engineers together. The stewardess asked for a "Concorde engineer", who was needed for after landing. It had something to do with the way the Concorde hooks up to the loading bridge at the terminal (it may have something to do with the unusual height of Concorde?)
- Dove 14y agoAh. I guess it has been some years since I heard the story. Thanks for the correction. :)
- georgemcbay 14y ago"Is there an aeronautical engineer on board," One of the top 5 questions you don't want to hear over the loudspeaker while flying on a supersonic jet.
- mkuhn 14y agoNow I am intrigued and want to hear the other four.
- TillE 14y ago#1 would probably be asking for a pilot. There have been a number of tests on simulators, and pilots licensed for smaller aircraft have a surprisingly low chance of being able to land a commercial jet.
- lambda 14y agoI have heard someone tell a story about that happening once. They said that the cabin crew announced that they would be playing a game; they would call out an item, and give a free drink to the first person who could find that in their carry on. The first couple of items were fairly standard things; "a fountain pen", "a camera", etc. Then they got to "a commercial pilots license". Someone actually did raise their hand, and the cabin crew escorted them up to the cockpit. There was never any problem with the flight, and he never found out what happened. Probably something like the co-pilot had a problem that prevented them from continuing to act as the co-pilot, and they wanted to maintain sufficient redundancy just in case.
- coin 14y agoThe flight time requirement for a commercial pilot is only 250 hours. All flight instructors are commercial pilots. They are more common than you think.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y agoAlso, isn't there a pretty big distinction (even just in terms of required flight hours) for Commercial versus Airline Transport (ATP)? ISTR that ATP required at least 1k hours.
- Tichy 14y agoSomething like this: http://www.martinsteiger.aero/files/flightforum_ch/2008/fernsteuerung_001.png http://www.martinsteiger.aero/files/flightforum_ch/2008/fern... :-)
- cperciva 14y agoI must admit, some secret part of me always hopes I'll be in a situation on an airplane where they need an emergency perl script written On a flight from Sydney to Vancouver earlier this year, the in-flight entertainment system on my plane was broken. I spoke up: "Hi, I have a doctorate in computer science and I know a bit about these systems... want me to take a look?" I was surprised when they agreed, brought me up to the front galley, and showed me their interface to the entertainment system (alas, the server itself was in the ceiling and not accessible). I ended up pulling out my laptop, borrowing a cat5 cable from one of the flight attendants (all of mine were in my checked suitcase) and running tcpdump on the plane's network. Alas, while that allowed me to diagnose the problem, I lacked the serial cable needed to connect to the server's console and wasn't able to fix it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- benth 14y agoDon't leave us hanging :) What was the problem?
- cperciva 14y agoThe AV server had been replaced after there were problems with it on the previous Vancouver-Sydney flight (the cabin crew told me this) but it looked like the DHCP server had not been updated with the new MAC address (or the replacement server hadn't been programmed to use the same MAC address as the one it replaced). I considered sending DHCP responses to the server myself, but decided that injecting traffic would be too risky during flight... especially since I was flying back from a conference where one of the speakers had been talking about inadequate firewalling between IFE systems and aeronautical control systems.
- philwelch 14y ago> inadequate firewalling between IFE systems and aeronautical control systems How is this possible? Why do they even need to be on the same network?
- lambda 14y agoObligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/208/ http://xkcd.com/208/