Archive of entries posted on 19th March 2024

Well, That’s Comforting

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Cockpit Mishap Might Have Caused Plunge on Latam Boeing 787: Flight Attendant Hit a Seat Switch
Wall Street Journal | March 14, 2024 | Andrew Tangel & Sharon Terlep

A cockpit seat mishap might have pushed a pilot into the controls on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner that took a sudden, terrifying plunge on a flight to New Zealand this week, according to U.S. industry officials briefed on preliminary evidence from an investigation of the incident.

A Latam Airlines flight attendant hit a switch on the pilot’s seat while serving a meal, leading a motorized feature to push the pilot into the controls and push down the plane’s nose, these officials said. The switch has a cover and isn’t supposed to be used when a pilot is in the seat.

[How about we change that to “cannot be used”?]

Around 50 passengers on the flight from Sydney to Auckland required medical attention, and some passengers were pinned to the ceiling as the airplane suddenly declined. Latam, a Chile-based airline, has said the Dreamliner suffered a “technical event during the flight which caused strong movement.”

Is she . . . busty?

So the pilot wasn’t in a locked and upright position, huh? Rules for thee, but not for me.

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Straight Line of the Day: Other Ways To Sabotage the Summer Olympics: …

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This Isn’t Going to Go Well: No A/C for Olympic Athletes in Paris
Hotair | 03/14/2024 | David Strom

Olympic athletes are going to be on the hot seat this summer in Paris. 

Not just metaphorically; the Paris Olympic Committee wants this Olympics to be the greenest ever (take that, Classical Greeks!), and one of the measures they have taken is to build the Olympic village without any air conditioning. 

There will be no air conditioning in athletes’ rooms at Paris2024, which pledged to host the ‘greenest ever’ Olympic Games. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo spoke to Reuters about the city’s plans to keep athletes cool— Reuters (@Reuters) March 14, 2024

I think this is one virtue signal that will see plenty of athletes breathing fire and with smoke coming out of their ears. 

The French are very proud of the fact that all these athletes and visitors who flew on private and chartered jets are going to emit fewer pounds of CO2 once they arrive in Paris; sure, their commitment to climate virtue signaling didn’t prevent them from emitting tons of CO2 in preparation for the event, but then again nobody was watching them closely then. 

Not everybody is thrilled with the decision, perhaps because athletes suffering from heat exhaustion might not perform optimally, or even for the simple reason that going to bed sweating kinda sucks eggs. 

“Our clear wish is that there should be air-conditioning in all rooms,” the Norwegian Committee told Reuters, with Brazil saying “the heat forecast” made it “necessary to invest in renting air-conditioning units for the entire delegation”.

Australia’s Chef de Mission Anna Meares said they were “looking at portable air conditioners to offer the athletes should they choose to if it gets hot, if it’s uncomfortable”.

The Canadian Olympic Committee told Reuters it had “implemented a number of heat mitigation strategies in Paris to complement the measures put in place by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee, including air conditioning units in some athlete rooms in case of extreme heat”.

What matters for Hidalgo, however, is that the athletes’ village, which will be home to some 6,000 Parisiens after the Games, is a sustainable project.

Hmmmm. One wonders if the same will be true for the VIP and press pavilions at the venues.