Brian Micklethwait

Weirdness blogger deputy dog doesn’t do capital letters, but on the plus side collects strange structures and circumstances.  His latest weirdness is Funchal Airport, in Madeira, which is mostly not on the ground, but up in the air on pillars.  Lots of pillars.  It was on the ground, but was too short for comfort, and this was how they made it longer, apparently.  Underneath, there’s a big car park, which makes sense.

DD has photos of this, but the best photo of it that I found was this, on Flickr:

Whenever you find an interesting object, it’s worth looking for it on Flickr, I find.

This elaborate contraption - which looks rather like an aircraft carrier, I think – illustrates what an economic impact aviation can have on a region.  This is the trouble they are prepared to go to just to have airplanes serving them satisfactorily.  See also: Heathrow.

Patrick Crozier

Last week Michael Jennings and I sat down in a Central London café to record a podcast on low cost airlines.  Here’s my favourite bit.

We talked about how the low cost airlines operate, the lengths they go to to cuts costs, and the lengths they don’t go to, the situation before deregulation (bizarre as well as amazing) and how the low-cost way is now starting to spread to Asia.

Listeners will notice there’s quite a lot of hubub in the background.  I can only hope it’s not too distracting.

Oh, and there’s an odd bit of distortion as the microphone saturates.

Rob Fisher

On tonight’s episode of QI, after an entertaining discussion on the unlikelihood of the whistle on the lifejacket being of any use in a plane crash, Stephen Fry revealed the following fascinating information:

Between ‘83 and 2000, in the US, there were 568 plane crashes.  53,487 people aboard, 51,207 survived.  The main problem experienced is, oddly enough, getting seatbelts off.  We all get bored with the hostess reminding us how this incredibly simple buckle works, but apparently under stress people revert to trying to undo them the way that’s familiar to them in the car.  So it is very unlikely [to die in a plane crash].

The reason you’re made to open the window blinds when you’re landing and then they turn off the cabin lights to make it dark, is if there’s an accident, the emergency services can see in the windows if they need to, and also that passengers’ eyes are accustomed to low light in case they need to evacuate in the dark.

The frustrating thing about QI is that they don’t quote their sources.  A quick Google search for “53,487 51,207” revealed that their source is BBC News, who got their information from Professor Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich.  In the same article, Tom Barth of AmSafe Aviation is interviewed about the company’s air airbag.

Patrick Crozier

I have no idea if this is dangerous or not but it doesn’t look good.  Hat-tip to Rob Fisher who links to a clip of how it should be done - or rather how it should have been done - Hong Kong’s Kai Tak, the airport in question, has since been closed.