Flight Questions

On Sep 3, 7:12 am, Bob Noel
wrote:
In article , "Jed" wrote:
First Officer exited the cockpit and walked the length of the cabin with his
arms outstretched, hands running along the overhead compartments.

Putting your hands on the overhead compartments means you don't
have to put your hands on every single seatback on the way up
and down the aisle.

That's usually what I do. Seems to work ok for balance when the plane
starts to hit some garbage.

Some folks aren't aware or just don't seem to care about their
surroundings as they waddle up/down the aisle.

Don't you just love it when the gomer behind
you has to grab and pull on your seatback?

Indeed. Especially on a long flight when you're trying to grab some
shuteye. Too bad there isn't a device analagous to noise-canceling
phones that work well dealing with loud babies during trans-oceanic
flights, that would cancel vibrations

Then there's the large farm animal in the seat in front that decides
to dump their seat back into your kneecaps when you're working on
dinner or the laptop.

I saw a show on PBS a while back where they went back to through the
history of commercial aviation in the US. International airlines do a
much better job in providing a better overall comfort package these
days; but I was amazed to see how much of a comfort it used to be to
fly in the US in the early days.

They showed passengers eating actual meals (a real cut of steak). Now
they're even cutting out the complimentary "meals" on many flights
(under 5 hours, IIRC?). Guess the bailout didn't quite cover the
margin and now we're the cattle sigh...

Even as recently as back in '98 or so, on a 1-hour morning leg from
Sydney to Brisbane on Ansett, they served a real muffin. Yeah, ok,
Ansett's no longer, but I doubt it was correllated to the oversized
muffin

On any coast-to-coast or longer flight, I make sure I'm stocked with
supplies, just to make the ride tolerable. Call me eclectic, but
grazing on the third pack of mini-pretzels starts to get a little
old

I checked on http://www.acela.com and the Boston to DC Express run
is around 6.5 hours for a little over $200. And it's only that long
due to the fact that they can't sustain 150mph the whole way. Of
course there are stops along the way, but the main impediment is track
restrictions. Between waiting at the airport, taxi in/out times, what
used to be a 1-hour ride checks in closer to 3 these days. If Acela
could get that ride down to around = 4 hours (time is only part of
the package for me), and airline delays continue, rail mode would be a
winner for me.

Just curious, how long does it nominally take the little guys (say a
Piper or something that can make it w/o having to re-fuel) to get from
BOS to DCA, assuming weather isn't an issue?

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

Regards,
Jon