Friday Fun – Why 2 Pilots?

by balint01

Batman Is Real – Wingsuit Flying

If you will see Batman flying over above you, don’t think you are mad. It is real. Wingsuit Flyers look exactly like cartoon heros, but they live what we just dream of. Gliding through the sky without a plane, without engines, without any disturbing circumstance that would destroy the feeling of free flying.

What is wingsuit flying?

Wingsuit flyers are almost like parachuters – in fact they carry parachutes, too – the difference is that they wear a special suit that forms a ram-air wing between their body and arms and between their legs. With the help of these wings they can glide like birds and they can change direction, increase or decrease their speed or altitude by changing the shape of their own body. They carry a regular parachute as well and they open it for landing as the wingsuit does not slow them down to a speed safe enough for landing. Wingsuit flyers can jump out of a plane, a helicopter or they mmight use any base jump points: buildings or cliffs. Wingsuit flying has become popular in the late 90s and early 2000, when this type of uniform was developed by Jari Kousma and Robert Pecnik. They established the first company (Birdman Inc.) that trained people and sold wingsuits for the public.

Wingsuit Flying clubs

The Bridman club remained active in pioneering and their next big step was wingsuit flying with jet engines attached to the feet of the flyer. The Finnish Birdman was able to achieve approximately 30 seconds of horizontal flight with no noticeable loss of altitude. Besides Birdman new clubs and stores were founded like Phoenix Fly or Fly your body or EG Wingsuits. They all experiment and manufacture their own wingsuits. A wingsuit costs EUR 400-1200. Mostly they are around EUR 1000, but you can find special promotions for older versions. On the website of Phoenix Fly you can even find user manuals for the wingsuits and other articles about aerodynamics and the basics of wingsuit flying.

The fun of being Batman

Although many people have already experienced parachute jumping, the two sports are far from each other and in order to become a wingsuit flier, you have to learn both. Also it requires different techniques to jump from a plane or from a base. Therefore it is wiser to contact these clubs and ask for contacts of local trainers before you get started. They say it requires more than 200 jumps with the attention of a trainer to become expert enough to jump without assistance.

Once you get there and try it, please share your thoughts with us here! In the menatime watch some videos of this fantastic extreme sport!

By Szafi

Special Aircraft Paintings

Hungarian beauty queen, giant salmon, flying panda, Mickey Mouse, Santa hit by a plane. What do they have in common? They were all used by airlines for marketing purposes, thus as aircraft paintings they all made our blue sky more colorful. Following the success of our earlier post about Sexy Stewardess Uniforms, we collected the most extravagant aircraft paintings.

The outfit of the aircrafts is one of the most important image tool of all airlines. Although there have been some airlines that sold the aircraft’s body for commercial purposes, still aircraft paintings are used for image strengthening. Here are the best aircraft paintings.

Sky Europe – Zsuzsa Laky

Zsuzsa Laky was Miss Hungary and Miss Europe in 2003. Slovakian-based Sky Europe had a hub in Budapest (Hungary) as well, so they contracted her to promote Hungary as a destination. Her full body shape picture covered the side of a B737-700. Zsuzsa’s face was also used in 2003 and 2004 by the Hungarian Tourism Board on billboards all over Europe to promote Hungary.

Alaska Airlines – Salmon-Thirty-Salmon

Alaska Airlines is the biggest air cargo company delivering sea fishbetween Alaska and the mainland US and Alaska and Europe. To emphasize their role in sea food transportation, they painted a giant salmon on one of their aircrafts. The name of the aircraft is a word game. Instead of Seven-Thirty-Seven they called it Salmon-Thirty-Salmon. Nice idea. 🙂

Alaska Airlines – Make a wish

The giant salmon was not the only special livery at Alaska Airlines. Together with the “Make-a-wish” foundation they decorated an aircraft with Genie from the Disney movie Aladdin. Alaska Airlines supported the foundation by taking children to places they wished to travel. On the first flight of the plane featuring Genie six children travelled from Seattle to Disneyland in California.

All Nippon Airways – Fly! Panda

To celebrate 35 years of freindly relationship between China and Japan and the 20th anniversary of the Tokyo – Beijing flight, All Nippon Airways chose the character of a Panda to be painted on their aircraft. It is not just the outift of the aircraft, the interior and the uniform of the staff is also themed of the kind, black-and-white bear.

JAL – Dream Express

It was not just Alaska Airlines cooperating with Disney. JAL also painted 5 + 1 of its aircrafts “Disneyish”. The family members were the following: “Friends” with white background, “Sweet” with pink background, “Family” with blue background, 2 planes named “Tokyo Disney Sea” with blueish water-like background and the extra 6th plane with the nose of Mickey Mouse called “Dream story” and its livery is based on the story of an elementary school girl.

Lufthansa – Football World Championship

For Germany 2006 was a historical year. After its reunion the Football (soccer) World Championship was the biggest sport event, when they could finally show thw world they are a nation, they are good hosts and their team is again good at football. They started preparations a year before the event. One of the first visual promotion of the championship was that Lufthansa painted the nose of its Airbus aircrafts looking like a soccer ball.

Air Asia – Manchester United

Air Asia is a low cost airline in the Far-East, where Manchester United football (soccer) club is very popular. The marketing managers of Air Asia found it a good opportunity to aim at this target group by painting one of their aircrafts Manchester United-like. The aircraft was called the Red Devil Airbus and it featured the key players and the trainer of the famous British soccer club. The players painted on the plane were: Sir Alex Ferguson, Park Ji Sing, Wayne Rooney, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alan Smith, Rio Ferdinand.

Christmas

Christmas – as all holidays – is one of the highest seasons in air travel. Airlines naturally prepare a lot for the holiday season. We can see Santa Claus livery on planes many times, especially on Finnair flights as Finnland is the official home of Santa. This is my favorite Santa painting, although I never managed to find out the airline itself.

And here is a collection of paintings not mentioned in the article.

By Szafi

Friday Fun – Autumn Weather Report

 This coming weekend the airline world will switch to the “Winter Schedule” as it is called on the Northern Hemisphere. Every year this change also signals the beginning of the bad, autumn weather on this side of the globe, with cooler temperatures, rains and fog (which sometimes lead to delays). So such weather reports as the one in our Friday Fun cartoon will be more regular these days.

by balint01

Friday Fun – High Fuel Prices

by balint01

Friday Fun – Cockpit

Friday fun

It is Friday again, so I thought it would be nice to have a cartoon post again.

Here we go.

This cartoon is from Time.com

By Szafi

Cartoon – airline industry

Here’s a funny cartoon I have just found on Clay Bennett’s website.

With this the Airline World blog team is wishing you a nice weekend. Please do not forget to bookmark this site and add our RSS feed to your favorite ones.

By Szafi