The fuselages and other parts of the 737's and front section of the 787 Dreamliners are made in Wichita. These photos are from Thursday morning as the dedicated train passed the Wichita railcam.  The 737's are transported by train to Seattle where they attach the wings and finish the planes. The 787's are flown to Seattle on a modified 747 called the Dreamlifter.  Now you know. 

Gen. Chuck Yeager (USAF, retired) is receiving an honorary doctorate from Cal - Bakersfield. Yeager was an ace during World War II and was the first man to break the sound barrier after many others had literally died trying. His story is told in the book and movie The Right Stuf f . 

Wow. I figure if I spent my entire retirement funds I could probably afford to fly it from Wichita to Kansas City, one way. Enjoy. Three days ago, Boeing announced a private version of the 777 which is even larger than the 787. Wow.

It seems that airports are the blog's theme of the day. Fox News tells this story of the passengers of a British Airways flight who were awakened at 3am by two announcements telling them they were going to ditch at sea . So, I guess there are worse places to land than those terminals . By the way, I was on a plane that made an emergency landing (i.e., evacuated the plane in the middle of the runway with fire trucks and ambulances surrounding us). The crew made all of the announcements during that incident. Since British Airways has mistakenly played these recorded announcements before, perhaps they should go back to the crew handling emergencies.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) now has a tiny aircraft to help study hurricanes. Sun-Sentinal photo The aircraft is 3' long and weighs eight pounds. It will be dropped into the eye of hurricanes so it can fly to 100' of the ocean (far too low for humans to safely fly). The goal is to gather data that may help us improve hurricane intensity forecasting. Details from the Sun-Sentinal . 

With a hat tip to David Faulkner, here is the man himself singing "Fly Me to the Moon." Scroll down two posts to read the story of Sinatra, the Rat Pack and a Learjet posted yesterday.

As Learjet (along with Cessna, Hawker/Beechcraft and major operations of Boeing, Airbus, and Spirit  Aerosystem) is based in Wichita, this story of Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, and a Learjet has special meaning. For everyone else, it is a neat story. And, yes, the "FS" in the tail number = Frank Sinatra. Hat tip: D.J. LaChapelle

This year, 2011, will go down as the year of unlearned meteorological lessons. The same nightmares keep playing over and over. Remember how ill-prepared Lambert International was on Good Friday when the tornado moved through the north St. Louis area and seriously damaged the airport? Remember how people were trapped on airplanes when the storm struck? Well, that too, has happened again. Tonight, it was Omaha's Eppley Field. The data below are the official weather observations from 7:25 to 7:47pm CDT (the observations are in GMT [Z] on the 19th; for example, 0035Z = 7:35pm CDT). At 7:31 and 7:35 the winds were measured by the airport weather station as gusting to 80 knots which equals 92 mph! The screen capture below is from a video shot inside an airplane (loaded with passengers) waiting to take off as baseball-sized hail is pounding the aircraft. The video can be viewed here . As the hail pelts the airliner, a second plane, taxiing, comes into view as seen below. S...

A few people got slightly concerned on my flight from Nashville to Charlotte when the cabin appeared to fill with smoke. Actually, what was flowing into the cabin was the equivalent of "seeing your breath" in the winter. The outside warm, humid air was chilled by the airplane's cooling system and the moisture in the air condensed into a cloud/fog. It is harmless.

Seen at Mid-Continent Airport... Where more airplanes are manufactured than any other city in the world.

From the Wall Street Journal.   In a matter of months we should know what went wrong on the ill-fated flight. Accident investigators have successfully downloaded all of the information captured by the flight-data recorder aboard the Air France jetliner that killed 228 people two years ago when it mysteriously crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, French investigators said Monday.

The giant aircraft (Airbus A380) was struck on approach to London. Airplanes are designed to withstand lightning strikes and there were no problems.

The flight data recorder from the Air France plane that apparently came apart in a thunderstorm in 2010   2009 has been recovered after four searches.  It has not been opened. We'll watch this story for you. UPDATE: 8AM Tuesday:  Per the Wall Street Journal  the cockpit voice recorder has been found. I'm now confident they will be able to solve the mystery of this vexing crash.

Short and insightful . Below is a photo of the Aloha Airlines' 737 that blew its top in flight (mentioned at the link) due to metal fatigue and landed safely . Commercial airliners are surprisingly tough! This does illustrate why you should keep your seatbelt on whenever you are in your seat.

From today's Houston Chronicle .  I appreciate the mention of Warnings, thank you Eric Berger. The article discusses using a B-57 bomber, manufactured in Wichita in the 1950's, and flying it at 60,000 ft. into and above hurricanes to gather data that will hopefully lead to further improvements in hurricane forecasting.

This time-lapse video showing the construction of a Boeing 737. Why does it begin with a BNSF Railway train? Because the fuselages (and other parts) are manufactured in Wichita then shipped by train to Seattle for final assembly.  Click on the link, you will really enjoy it! And, what goes under the nose cone? The onboard weather radar.

This 747-on steriods is the Boeing Dreamlifter. It is flying to Wichita's Spirit Aerosystems to pick up another fuselage that will assembled into a 787 Dreamliner airplane in Seattle. I photographed it this afternoon.

There may have been a microburst airline crash in Columbia. This photo of the wreckage suggests the plane was in a flat attitude when it crashed which is consistent with the microburst theory. One news report says, There also was conflicting information about what caused the crash. The initial report from the national police said a downdraft may have shaken the airplane as it prepared to land. But Pedro Gallardo, governor of San Andres y Providencia state, told CNN en Español that lightning hit the plane. The pilot also reported a lightning strike, El Tiempo newspaper said. Of course, a "downdraft" is indicative of a microburst. In the Delta 191 crash , there were initial reports of lightning causing the crash. Lightning was later ruled out as a cause. The good news is that there were apparently no fatalities and that the injuries were -- for an airline crash -- fairly minor. If you want to learn why downbursts and airplanes don't mix, click here . UPDATE:  ...

I'm in State College for the American Meteorological Society's Summer Meeting. I was on my way to McD's (State College is a Pepsi town) to get my morning fix of Diet Coke when I looked up in the parking lot to see the jet plane's condensation trail cutting through the cirrocumulus clouds (click on photo to enlarge). The soot particles attract the moisture from the ice crystals that make up the cirrocumulus clouds causing the ice crystals to dissipate.

I'm sorry to offer another airlines and turbulence posting and if the topic doesn't interest you, please skip right over this one. I'm writing this because I sense a genuine problem and I would like to raise some awareness before something really serious occurs. Some background is in order. Last July, flying on a non-stop between Phoenix and Wichita, the pilot told us before takeoff that "severe" turbulence was forecast and that the seat belt sign would be on most all of the flight. His comment surprised me because I looked at the weather before going to the airport and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. We had quite a few bumps on takeoff (which is usual in summer in PHX) but, once we leveled off, the flight was extremely smooth. Nothing changed the next hour and a half: the flight was very smooth but the seat belt sign stayed on. Finally, after nearly two hours, the sign was turned off near Liberal, KS (getting close to Wichita) to "allow pe...