Post Tagged with: "Small Planes"

The future is here – Terrafugia “Flying Car” Makes First Flight

March 19, 2009 at 11:21 am

(Source:  Jalopnik)

This morning it’s official — the future is now. The Terrafugia Transition (R), the first plausible “flying car” (or more precisely, a “roadable aircraft”), took its first official flight earlier this month. 

 Terrafugia press conference at 9:30 AM this morning offered the following details:  The two-seat aircraft is able to fly 450 miles at over 115 MPH and is designed to transform from plane to car in less than 30 seconds.  Click here to read the entire press release.

The Transition, their first “roadable aircraft” (we’re going to go ahead and call it a Jetsons-like “flying car”), took its official first flight on March 5th, 2009 at Plattsburgh International Airport. It’s the first time we’ve seen an actually plausible“roadable aircraft” work in real life.

 Click here to view the full gallery of Terrafugia.  Also, Here is an awesome video from YouTube showing the vehicle in action.

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Commuter Hell: Business travelers hate small commuter planes

February 25, 2009 at 12:42 pm

(Source:  CondeNast Portfolio.com)

Turbo-prop planes and regional jets are a crucial part of the airlines’ route strategies and are often the only way a business traveler can easily get to a destination, but road warriors hate flying them.

Within minutes of Continental Connection Flight 3407’s fatal crash on the night of February 12, frequent fliers were emailing each other, cursing commuter airlines, and vowing never to board smaller commercial aircraft again.

“I HATE THOSE TINY OLD RJS,” one otherwise rational business traveler I know shouted in his email. “NOBODY SHOULD FLY THEM. THEY’RE NOT SAFE.”

No matter that the aircraft involved in Flight 3407’s fiery end six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport was not an “RJ,” industry shorthand for regional jet. (It was a Q400, a twin-engine turboprop plane manufactured by Bombardier of Canada.) No matter that the 74-seat Q400 isn’t particularly tiny. (At 107 feet long with a 93-foot wingspan, it is about the size of several early versions of Boeing’s workhorse B737 jet and 20 feet longer than Bombardier’s 50-seat regional jet.) And no matter that the Q400 isn’t old. (The Q400 series didn’t enter service until 2000 and the plane that crashed in Buffalo was less than a year old.)

Safe? That is most definitely in the eye of the beholder—and most business travelers eye commuter airlines with extreme trepidation. They don’t like flying them. They don’t like that the commuter lines wrap themselves in the colors and livery of the major airlines. And they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that commuter carriers simply aren’t as safe as the major airlines they mimic.

Clich here to read the entire article.

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