And a flight attendant had to help land the plane. Crazy. Glad everyone was ok. It’s strange that one person can’t land a plane by themselves. I would have thought they could have. ...

Last night I ventured across the water and ended up down at Dave’s house in North Vancouver. It was good times, complete with an amazing BBQ, some rum, and a bunch of tech talk. I didn’t really feel like hiking to the bus stop at 1am to head home, so Dave let me crash in his guest room. The one thing about having a huge chunk of plastic under your eye is that you can really tell when your body is a bit dehydrated. For example, right now my left eye is really sore and I have a mild burning sensation, which usually happens when I’m dehydrated, or when I’ve had a few drinks. Obviously that ...

Curious to know what happens in the cockpit on French airlines when your dinner is being served? You might have though that the pilots were busy doing complicated fuel calculations, or checking safety systems. Think again! The stewardesses are coming up from and putting on a little strip show for the pilots. Added union incentives no doubt. Makes me wish I would have gone to pilot school. You can read more about the strip show here. I’m guessing that lady is in need of a new job. ...

JetBlue is about to launch a beta Airbus 320 plane that features in flight wireless. Pretty cool. Check it out here. In a welcome first for domestic airlines, JetBlue will be rolling out free in-flight Yahoo IM and email services to passengers packing WiFi-equipped devices, starting aboard its new “BetaBlue” Airbus A320. Once this test-bed passenger jet reaches 10,000 feet, an in-plane network with three in-ceiling access points is activated, allowing most any wireless gadget with a Flash-enabled browser to view specialized versions of either Yahoo Messenger or Mail through a universal landing ...

You thought this day would never come, didn’t you Air Canada? All your posturing, your laughing. You may not remember us, but we sure remember you. Oh yes, we haven’t forgotten the night we had together, have we precious? We remember landing in Toronto, coming back from a brief trip to Boston, so anxious to finally get into our own bed in Vancouver and fall asleep later that night. And dream. Yes, we dreamed once. Of fields and sunshine. But it took that from us. Yes, took it from us they did, my precious. Upon arriving in Toronto, one of its minions came forth, only to announce that our ...

I’m pretty bagged, so this will be short. The flight leaving Heathrow was pretty much a complete clusterfuck. Apparently they were out of gates, so they just parked the 747 on the concrete a mile away and had to shuttle us all there in small groups.. We took off around an hour late.. About an hour into it, we had some pretty wicked turbulence, which for someone who hates flying basically unnerved me. I popped a few sleeping pills when we hit altitude and managed to sleep for most of the flight home (surprisingly, because I had an aisle seat, and nobody asked me to get up so they could go to ...

It’s sort of funny, because Jason and I were talking about this big bitch tonight. Apparently it’s going to be making a brief appearance in Vancouver sometime in November. It truly is an engineering marvel, but I really don’t want to go on it. Why not? Well, firstly, it’s 590 tons of reinforced plastic travelling at mach 0.85. Doesn’t scare you? How about the fact that during the initial stress test of the new plane, the wings snapped in half. Maybe it will be safe, but considering that nobody really understands the failure modes of composite materials, and that at least one airplane ...