178

Screams NO GIBWAI?!?!?!

where are you now?
once I traveled to venice and my ears had so much pressure that I went to bathroom to take my shirt off and scream on it. that constant pressure caused no damage to me but it hurt me A LOT. almost 40 flights in one month, every one of them was normal, but this one was shitty as hell.

Heinkel He 178

Wikipedia
Military Factory
Aviation History
Video about the He 178 and German jet history in general
Part 2 of that video

The Heinkel He 178 was the world's first aircraft to fly under turbojet power, and the first practical jet aircraft. It was a private venture by the German Heinkel company in accordance with director Ernst Heinkel's emphasis on developing technology for high-speed flight. It first flew on 27 August 1939, piloted by Erich Warsitz. This flight had been preceded by a short hop three days earlier. [From Wikipedia]

Operational Histoy [From Aviation History]

Although the first flight was successful, it was not accepted by the German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium or RLM) after a demonstration flight on November 1, 1939, to Ernst Udet, Erhard Milch and engineer Helmut Schelp. The aircraft achieved speeds to 598 km/h (380 mph), but combat endurance was only 10 minutes. Udet, Milch and Schelp were unimpressed and saw no practical value for the airplane.
Heinkel attributed his rejection to the failure of the leaders of the RLM to understand the advantages of turbojet propulsion, but from the standpoint of Udet, Milch and Schelp they rejected it for the following resons:

• The war was on.
• It was not a military aircraft.
• It had no weapons.
• Heinkel was behind on his production schedules and thought to be goofing around with non-productive developmental programs.

Significance [From Aviation History]

However, what Heinkel did not realize was that the Reich Air Ministry was developing its own jet engines. In 1939, BMW was building its 003 and Junkers was working on its Jumo 004 turbojet engines. These were axial-flow turbojets and not centrifugal-flow turbojets. The idea for the axial-flow turbojet had been around for awhile and was patented by French engineer Guillaume in 1921.3 Axial-flow turbojets promised much higher flight speeds unlike centrifugal-flow turbojets being developed at Heinkel and by Frank Whittle in England. The axial-flow turbojet was a more promising engine demonstrating excellent performance with approximately 78% efficiency. With straight-flow air and a smaller cross-section, these features proved to be important for a high-speed aircraft design.
Despite the decision of the RLM to not fund the He 178, Heinkel went on to develop the first turbo-jet fighter, the He 280 which preceeded the Messerschmitt Me 262. Near the end of the war, Heinkel was finally allowed to fulfill his dream and construct his own jet fighter, the He 162.

View attached image.

View attached image.

View attached image.

View attached image.

View attached image.

View attached image.

Too many bad memories of being holed up in the worst places from delays of every form of transportation :(

i was upgraded once. it was the best flight ever!!!

I finally realize the purpose of the numbered threads: SteamGifts has become Jatan's personal blogging site.

On a more serious note, when I was in Japan with a bunch of friends, the flight back to the states was delayed, which also made us miss our connecting flight. Thankfully one of my friend's parent called the airline company and got it sorted out so there wasn't that much of a delay, but it meant that we needed to go to the baggage pick up area and then go through TSA again (they make you go through it once you disembark and are past customs). The Japanese airport workers are so much nicer than the TSA :<

Oh and on the way to Japan the guy sitting next to me grabbed the hot towel from the steward that was meant for me. How rude! (Although it wasn't the airline's fault.)

But yeah, pretty mild compared to you.

I have never flyed, so nope. Enjoy the experience. Free soap

View attached image.

I don't really have any horror stories, but my mom and I are cursed with air travel.

I have always get delayed horribly, like 4 hours+

My mother's planes always have trouble. Usually it's nothing bad, just something small like a tire bursting on landing, but once one of the plane's she was on engines caught fire and the flight had to turn back. So now she has to take very powerful anxiety pills to fly because she's too nervous.

Whew, sorry you had such a bad experience! No personal airline stories here. Too afraid to fly :3

My bad experience: I get motion sickness. :x. It's either be sick or be drugged \o/

Not really, unless you count taking off and landing on an ATR several times. Plane gets shaky as fuck and I was afraid that we will crash.

View attached image.

I've never been in a plane before... My only horror plane experience is the RC Plane mission in San Andreas.

View attached image.

I only flew two times in '00
I don't plan to ever fly again with all the security molestations post-9/11

I was on a 6hr domestic flight so the plane is smaller with only seats on the sides with the middle isle for walking. I was seated between 2 large Australian bushmen. They were both dirty and sweaty. Basically I was suffocating from the smell of stale sweat and earth for most of the 6 hrs.

up until now, I've always had good experiences with airlines I think? maybe I just try to forget the bad ones, I don't know...
I'm glad I didn't have any horror experience up until now.

Nooooo! No Gibs? This is:

View attached image.

no problems recently....no serious problems....and those things happen...not nice...but it happens. Yes sometimes I was angry and hungry...in other cases the airline was really nice and the break from planned schedule was like a wellness-holiday.
Looking back to the 90th , flights in planes like the md-11 (cracking sounds in those where louder than the engines, hard landings on iced strips in gander and so on) and a helicopter-crash-landing within my military service, i'm today more or less happy if they manage to bring me home in one piece.

Well, I've been through a rough landing where one wingtip actually flew into the tarmac and was damaged due to wind shear. The pilot aborted the landing, came around and eventually landed safely. Hey, it could have been worse. :)

How come they didn't give you any food vouchers? As far as I know, they have to do it. You could order a meal at the hotel and have the airline pick up the bill, if they had room service or vending machines.

Well, I think it's good enough that they gave you a place to stay. Some airlines don't do even that - so many people forget to check agreement they made with tranposport companies when buying a ticket ;/

I don't actually had any really bad stories about flying :P

Mine was, and I wish I was kidding, we had to taxi back to the gate from the strip to get more fuel as they didn't put enough in the plane.
They don't make pills stong enough for me to want to fly again.

This was mostly my fault for running slightly late, but...

I just missed my train to the airport (it literally pulled away as I was running toward the platform)
Hopped on the next train, hoping it would go to the same stop (it didn't)
Hopped off at the next station and waited for the right train (about 40 minutes later)
Ran through a fairly large international airport and begged people to let me go ahead of them through security (they did... nice folks) :)
Sprinted to my gate (I was the last to board and the steward closed the plane door immediately behind me)
And... waited over half an hour on the runway before we could even take off, due to some oil and foam in one of the engines that needed to be fixed facepalm

Oh, and when I finally got to my destination, my co-worker who was there to pick me up was pissed that I was late :P

Once the pushback tractor grabbed in a bad way the nose landing gear.
My wife and I had to wait sitting in the plane for like 2h while the engineers decided if it was safe to fly or not.
So our honeymoon in Paris began :P

I don't really have any horror stories. Every time I've flown somewhere things go great getting there, but not so great coming back. I once missed my connecting flight on a flight home. My connecting flight was the last flight of the day. There was only a 30 minute window between my connecting flights and we missed it. We landed at close to midnight and the next flight out was at 8am. What was frustrating was that it was the last hop till I got home, and home was only a 4 hour drive. I asked them if they could just rent me a car and let me drive home, but they wouldn't and the car rental places were closed anyway. They put me up in a hotel that was a 30 minute drive from the airport, and shuttle buses had stopped running for the night. I guess the hotel had to call in drivers so late to pick up everyone that was stranded, so it was another hour waiting for a shuttle bus. I got a few hours of sleep since I had to get up at 6am to have enough time to eat and catch a shuttle back to the airport. I did get a meal voucher for breakfast, which was only just enough to cover the cheapest thing the hotel served.

I once had to stay in an airport for over 20 hours waiting for a delayed flight. :(

Yes. I've never been on a plane.

And I really want to.