If I haven’t said it before, having a membership in an airline club is worth it’s weight in gold…
In this day and age of packed flights, delays, etc. That club membership CAN pay off multiple times over…
In the SYD lounge yesterday morning however, we almost had a riot…
Cherry and white chocolate muffins…
These damn things were like crack! People were standing there waiting, and you literally got one to a customer…
I was talking to my favorite moat dragon Anne and she said in her typical understated way, “Oh yes daarling, those are a mite tasty don’t you know.”
And then she got a big grin and said they were done by a little shop outside the field…
And there IS a reason for the seatbelt signs on airplanes as one young (and half drunk) lady found out yesterday coming back from SYD. She dislocated her shoulder when she got ‘bounced’ and ended up landing on it and popping it out. Three plus hours with only an aspirin and a sling didn’t feel too good and she was taken off in a wheelchair at LAX by paramedics, so maybe she’ll learn…
And the food was actually edible coming back. Guess United is listening to the bitching! 🙂 (unlike Qantas, which served ‘chicken’ on the flight from PER, but there was nothing in there ‘I’ recognized as actually being FROM a chicken)…
And one quick story as a follow-up from the P-8 demo and the climb attitude in the previous post…
At NAS Moffett, we had U-2s there that belonged to Ames Research. It was a competition between the pilots to see who could get to the highest altitude by the end of the runway…
Now two points of background, Moffett had 8000 runways, and the U-2s were always cleared unrestricted climb at roughly 85 degrees nose high…
If I remember correctly the ‘record’ was 20,000 by the end of the runway, thanks to a nice little headwind of about 25 kts… Personally I always wanted to drive the IROC Camaro convertible and chase the U-2 down the runway on landing to catch the wingtip… 🙂
My first taste of Vegemite (and other authentic Australian breakfast fare) was in the Lounge after landing in SYD, waiting to go to Adelaide. I didn’t qualify for the lounge yet, but my PSO sure did.
U-2 story: As the Flight Engineer on an EC-130 doing crash-and-dash at Palmdale, I thought I was going to have to call “Go Around” when a U-2 taxied onto the runway just in front of us. The bastard launched, stood it on its tail, and was gone before we got close enough. A sailplane with a jet engine. Outstanding!
Hey Old NFO;
I have though about buying one of those “Crown room” memberships…I can get those at a discount….Yes those are nice especially if you fly a lot. It makes me wonder if United will have to pay for the girls arm. Drunks on an airplane are “interesting”. Nothing like working the line and have to make repairs to an airplane after a drunk did damage to airplane interior.
Yeah, Vegemite ‘chicken’ covered with gravy…standard fare on AUS domestic carriers. They say that there are chicken parts in it. When you add simulated chicken flavored gravy and a TON OF SALT, throw on some mixed vegetables, it’s supposed to be edible.
It is edible if your blood alcohol is 2.0+ and you have the munchies.
By the way, the muffin does look “killer”.
I had forgotten all about the U2s! I never had a problem sleeping through P3s doing touch and goes (even with the barracks windows open), but there was NO sleeping when one of the U2s launched! The Harriers were pretty bad too!
Love the U2 video of bad landings.
NFO, 8000 feet of runway is a lot. How about 363 feet?
Off a Navy Carrier? As well as landing on a carrier?
Bullocks you say?
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/yes-the-cia-flew-u-2-spy-planes-from-aircraft-carriers-ce2b020bfab6
…a membership in an airline club is worth it’s weight in gold…
I’ll second that, especially on those long-ass international flights like you just made.
A semi-private lounge is ALWAYS better than the main concourse, and has the added advantage of offering actual food.
WN- I’ll pass on the Vegemite… 🙂 And U-2s are fun to watch going AND coming…
Bob- Nope, it’s all on her. Seat belt sign was on, along with a verbal warning…
LL- Concur! I got a sandwich when I landed…
N91- You got that right! 🙂
Buck- True!!!
Rudely awakened into the worlds worst hangover on a Sunday morning in the Transient Aircrew “cottages” at RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus by a U-2 launch, the noise of which kept going and going for what seemed like 15 minutes as it climbed away with the jet exhaust pointing straight back at our part of the field!
Were they real cherries or marachino cherries?
Doing the wingtip thing in an IROC might be a blast. My late buddy, Dirty Al, said doing from the back of a pickup in Alaskan winters wasn’t much fun.
Differ- Yeah, they don’t go ‘away’, they go ‘up’! 🙂 I never got to land there, they always made us to go Souda Bay… LOL
Mrs.C- REAL cherries…
WSF- I never saw them doing anything but smiling… Now in AK, nope, NOT volunteering…
Cherry and white chocolate… Ooooooh…
That’s gonna get the baking thoughts flowing this week!
Pedi- It was GOOOOOODDDD!!!!
I’d always heard you should keep your belt on at all times. Found out why many years ago, when out of nowhere, our plane plummeted like a stone for about half a second. Even with a belt on, my head brushed the overhead bin (it was a small plane). The attendant had been serving coffee and it spilled and some sap got a laceration on his temple, because no seat belt.
JMI- Exactly! Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) can and does strike without warning! We once dropped 10,000 feet in CAT near some frontal activity (and had major problems after we bottomed out)…