Occupational Hazard

[peteryoung]

After my last post from Boston on Friday, the weather deteriorated overnight to the extent that most of Massachussetts was under several inches of snow the next morning. Including the airport. Two photos, not for nervous flyers...





That's easily more than a foot of snow on the trailing edge of the wing. And the snow started falling again in a stiff horizontal wind while it took the de-icing team an hour to clean us up, which is about the maximum time before the de-icer starts wearing off and the snow starts building up again. You don't take chances in this kind of weather, as even a fraction of a millimetre of ice is enough to 're-shape' the wings so that we lose about twenty tons of lift and end up in the water, which is precisely what happened to the 737 that came to a messy end in the Potomac years ago. Oh the joys of international aviation.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Yummy.

I heard that a BA plane had to make an emergency landing at Boston a couple of days ago. I assume that you weren't on that one?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

No I wasn't, and I hadn't heard about that one. Got any details?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,1371,1352395,00.html

This came up on google. It doesn't sound serious but nor would I want to have been on the flight ;)

On the subject of flying and travelling.

I'm back in US 7/12 - 15/12, I'll be flying in and out of Seattle again, but I'll also be in San Diego over the weekend of the 10/11.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I expect I'll hear more about this when they establish the cause. Flights noted.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Cheers. I'll mail you the full details when I get them. Will you be in the area around these dates?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

No, elsewhere (story of my life). You already sent me some details at the end of October for Dec 7th & 15th. Let me know the rest ASAP.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

No prob, will do. The San Diego flights are internal Air Alaska, so I doubt there's much you can do. I was only curious to see if you'd be in LA. There's a bunch of Preston fandom (including Keith whom you met with Jim Burns at a con a year or two back) going to be meeting Seaworld that weekend.

[red-cloud.livejournal.com]

Scared now. Might have to postpone that Christmas shopping trip to NYC until May.

[scarlatti.livejournal.com]

Scared now, too, especially since I'm flying to LHR in less than a month! But I was already scared anyway. :) And D.C. usually gets much less snow than Boston...

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Ha! At least it had stopped snowing. I remind you of my Boston experience (http://www.livejournal.com/users/feorag/35172.html).

[tvor.livejournal.com]

Oy... i leave for lhr on Dec. 27. *crosses all bits*

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Looks like the east coast is getting our weather again. Here it is, well, kind of like Britain, which is Just Wrong.

Personally I am looking forward to all the moisture in the air freezing solid and falling to the ground, so it don't get in my bones!