Now, we can make light of this incident because all 117 passengers and crew walked away from the crash largely unharmed. The only real casualty was the captain’s ego, although I think he’s probably the talk of the terminal this morning. I mean come on — lava!

And check out this crazy quote from MSNBC:

The plane was flying from Kinshasa to Goma, and passengers had warned the crew that there were heavy clouds, Radio Okapi said.

Since when did passengers start doing in-flight risk assessments for the crew? [MSNBC via Geekologie]

Oops! Due to an error you’ve received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Warm regards,

The Velocity Team

From all accounts, it seems they sent the upgrade email to a pretty big chunk of their Velocity membership.

Considering I very rarely fly Virgin, I’m unsure whether or not I should be bemused or outraged at the mixup. Anyone want to suggest an emotion for me this morning?

It’s good to know that British company Design Q—who created the successful first class seats for Virgin Atlantic—has time to think about the rest of us, the air cattle. According to the company, the configuration “shows a generous gap between each of the seats, which could be reduced, but the centre seats are staggered to coincide with the gaps on the outboard seats”.

It seems to offer more leg room than normal seats, but this doesn’t look comfortable at all, even if it’s only for short-distance flights. Then again—like Runway Girl Mary Kirby points out—if these kind of side seats are good enough for the military, why not for the rest of us?

Do you agree? Would you travel like this only to pay a bit less? Isn’t flying cheap enough already? I know I won’t do it myself. Tell us what you think in the comments. [Runway Girl]

The modest distance (and height of about 1.5 metres) isn’t a bad start in human-powered flight for a do-it-yourselfer. Dutchman Jesse van Kuijk hopes to go further in the future, without the bike chain powering his propeller slipping off its cog.

Though he’s never flown in a real plane, Jesse says he studied self-powered craft like the Gossamer Condor and the English-Channel crossing Gossamer Albatross. He also got tips from the Albatross’ pilot, American Bryan Allen, who is now a software engineer for the Mars exploration project.

So, what did you do during the holidays? [Spiegel via Inhabitat]

Crashing in Taiping, Dacre died on his fourth run. According to a witness, the jet shot up about 200 meters into the sky before veering to the left and crashing into flames.

I’m gonna say that this, while an incredible tragedy, is going to set back the plans to have the eight-seat flying taxi ready by 2010. [The Star via Engadget]

(Click on the image to see it bigger.)

I have no idea whether or not all of the stats are true, but I believe the shit out of them. Peach versus baby blue is the new good versus evil. Apply haphazard census information to a bathroom guy graphic and it’s un-freggin-questionable. That’s the bathroom guy, after all. He’s never abused my trust by leading me into a women’s restroom only to laugh and laugh while recording the event for a little YouTube subscriber bait.

That’s restraint.

Having flown both types of carriers, I’d have never known that a company like Air France has 10 times the staff of a company like EasyJet. And I don’t know the last time I was served a meal on a non-international flight, no matter how large or expensive the carrier or ticket. [Flickr via Digg]

I’ll let Boeing tell you the latest snafu, with no snarky blogger filter:

“In two areas on the fuselage, the structure doesn’t have the long-term strength that we want,” said Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter.

What that means is wrinkles. Dangerous, drop-out-of-the-frickin-sky wrinkles that negatively effect the plane in ways I don’t want to think about given I’m already antsy about air travel.

Carbon fibre patches or not, customers were expect the first Boeing 787 order to be filled by first quarter 2010. That’s not going to happen. As we’ve detailed here in the past, the phrase “perpetual delay” has become synonymous with the 787 project, which has cost Boeing billions of dollars. Seventy-two planes have been canceled thus far. [Silicon Valley via Slashdot]

The system was designed by a Melbourne IT developer and will be trialled at Melbourne’s Avalon airport before being rolled out across the country over the next couple of years, according to Geoff Easdown at the Herald Sun.

The obvious beauty of the system is that because it’s based on SMS, it’s completely device agnostic so anyone can use it. Just make sure your phone’s battery is charged before you leave home…

[Herald Sun via Lifehacker]

Last week the Seattle Times reported that the damage observed during a ground test of the Dreamliner happened very late in the test, more specifically:

Just beyond “ultimate load.” That is defined as 50 percent higher than the in-service limit load and is the Federal Aviation Administration’s test target.

That would’ve been just fine and dandy, except that it turns out that they were just a little bit off and the damage actually occurred “well below the load the wings must bear to be federally certified to carry passengers.” Whoops.

The structural flaws are described as

Stresses at the ends of the long rods that stiffen the upper wing skin panels caused the fibrous layers of the composite plastic material to delaminate.

Those long rods lead to the joints of the wings which connect to the body of the plane which lead to a fuselage box where excess load is transferred—-who cares how everything is connected? “Delaminate” as in “to split into thin layers”! Somehow I’m not reassured by being told that the delamination of the wing skin “isn’t likely to lead to catastrophic failure of the aeroplane,” though obviously they’re not changing the design because it’s not an issue. What’s that? They are? Ah, well. What’s another delay when the plane is already two years late? [Seattle Times]

As of now, plane designs that were certified before 1988 are permitted to have seats that can withstand just 9x gravity. And airbags are pretty much only found in cars. But beginning October 27, newly manufactured planes with these old designs will need the incorporate the new seats and airbags in places like first/business class where seats are far apart and exit rows where passengers can simply hit a wall.

So do these standards actually matter, or do they just placate nervous fliers? We’ll let this particularly humorous passage from the NYT answer that question:

In some airline crashes, the strength of the seats is irrelevant because the crash is not what the engineers call “survivable.” In other crashes, still violent but not as much so as exploding in midair or breaking up in flight, the passengers’ survival depends on suffering little or no injury in the first phase of the accident, as when a plane runs off the runway, and then getting out of the plane quickly to avoid a postcrash fire.

Ahh, those witty engineers. [NYT]