General

Concorde

Concorde’s First Commercial Flight

January 21, 2018 General

On this day in 1976, the British Airways Concorde (G-BOAA) made its inaugural commercial flight between London-Heathrow (LHR) and Bahrain (BAH), which mostly flew overland and a good part of the flight was sub-sonic. But on this day, yet another commercial Concorde flight took off at precisely the same time as the G-BOAA operating between Paris-Charles de Gaule and Rio-De-Janeiro (via Dakar). Incidentally, this aircraft (with tail number F-BVFA) was also featured in the James Bond movie Moonraker (released 1979). Without a doubt, this supersonic marvel (the Soviet Tu-144 aircraft deserving a handshake too) has proved to be a remarkable achievement in aviation engineering.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Concorde was developed from an Anglo-French government initiative which started in the 60s that combined the manufacturing ingenuity of Aérospatiale and The British Aircraft Cooperation. Its first test flight was on 2 March 1969 and it entered commercial service in 1976. It was a supersonic turbojet-powered passenger airliner that flew transatlantic flights in less than half the time of other airliners. Sadly, after its only crash of Air France Flight 4590 on 25 July 2000 and the decrease in air travel post the 9/11 attacks, coupled with rising maintenance costs, both British Airways and Air France ended their Concorde flights in 2003 after 27 years of service. [/perfectpullquote]

Airline Safety Videos – Here’s One Creative Approach!

January 20, 2018 General

Airline safety demonstration videos shouldn’t feel lifeless. With some ingenuity, they could be designed to keep the users engaged. We all agree that safety demos play a critical role from the perspective of passenger safety and I have flown quite a bit to tell that the audience generally looks the other way. However, I stumbled upon a creative approach in connecting entertainment with information, in which British Airways partnered with a UK-based charity Comic Relief to create a unique airline safety demo video featuring British celebrities.

In a nutshell, it’s a compelling shoot, with the presence of prominent celebs lending their unique acting talents in conveying the pitch. Besides, the perceived gravity of airline safety being delivered using wit and humour which also adds to its overall recall value. Not to mention that the presentation also does a fantastic job of promoting a good cause for a donation. In contrast, the prevailing airline demos continue to be monotonous either through its use of deadpan animation or short films with actors as flight attendants, with absolutely nothing that grabs our attention. Kudos to British Airways, not just for the entertainment value but in inventing a template for the airline industry to emulate.

Grandpa Kitchen And The Simple Cooking

January 17, 2018 General

Several shows on the TV have attempted to promote culinary skills with even celebrities donning the apron, but you may not have seen anything like this. I caught a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers called ‘Grandpa Kitchen’ (not ‘Grandpa’s Kitchen’) featuring an aged man cooking Indian and western delicacies in the open with some youngsters as assistants, and err…peering pets. The delicious stuff is then distributed to some less fortunate beings for charity. But what’s so unique about this cooking “show”? At the onset, I was surprised to watch the straightforward chef bake a huge pizza using basic skills & equipment! Because you’d imagine pizza-making at home might require, besides an oven and the ingredients, some expert culinary skills, but cheers to the grand old cook who never fails to prove you wrong using just the everyday kitchen appliances with confidence. Then with each video, he carries his adept cooking skills to create some more restaurant-styled delicacies such as doughnuts, KFC-styled crispy chicken, french fries, etc. It’s exasperating to watch the endless list of mouthwatering stuff being made in such simple terms. I just have one disagreement with the food being cooked in the open environment which could pose a public health risk.

Weather Woes Welcome 2018

January 5, 2018 General

It’s quite natural to speak about weather systems in Canada, and especially about its infamous winters. So at the time of this writing as I welcome 2018, the area of Southern Ontario (including Toronto) is under a spell of extremely cold temperatures with a warning to this effect also being issued by the Environment Canada. With the mercury dipping staggeringly over the past holiday season and moving towards the new year, the temperatures now feel anywhere between -26°C to -30°C. It would come as a surprise that I am writing about the cold temperatures in the middle of the winter season, but trust me when I say this, that the winter hasn’t been so severe over the past 2 seasons. A few layers of warm clothes was all that I needed to step out in the chill which didn’t last long, however, this season has come as a wake-up call in which I have had to even cover my face from getting ‘burned’ by the frigid cold air! For now, I am eager to see some warmth, and even the slightest indication of a rising mercury would make things better.

Stuff I Didn’t Know About This Image of India

December 15, 2017 General

I am passionate about anything that is even remotely related to space, and this one has stuck with me since schooldays. So, as a kid from India in the 80s’, I would ponder endlessly over this satellite imagery on the back of my geography textbook probably the 6th or 7th grade, that showed the Indian peninsula alongside the island nation of Sri Lanka. All along I was curious to know the origins of this photo, like, who captured it? What was that strange pole? etc., and I was thrilled to have stumbled upon a NASA website carrying this information.

India - Gemini 11 Photo

Picture of peninsular south India was taken from space in the 60s!

So this image was taken by the Gemini 11 crew (Conrad-Gordon) on September 14, 1966 “using a 70 mm lens on a modified Hasselblad film camera”, and I don’t know why but it somehow made it to the geography school textbooks in India and into my inquisitive mind. And as I discovered later, that “strange pole” in the picture is the “7-FT Retractable L-Band Boom Antenna” from the Agena Target Vehicle.

Source: India by Night and Day : Image of the Day