A Fight in the Cockpit, a Plunging Jet, Passengers Who Fought Back, And Progressive Media That Wants To Downplay It

The Omani co-pilot of an Air Dubai flight flying from Dubai to Israel with 174 passengers on board including mostly Israelis, attacked and repeatedly stabbed the Indian Captain of the plane and attempted to crash the plane.

Fox News: FlyDubai pilot stabs fellow pilot, attempts to crash plane, Netanyahu says 

The Captain, during the fight ,was able to open the cockpit door and Israeli passengers  on the flight then entered, subdued the Omani attacker, and were narrowly able to prevent the plane from crashing and a relief crew on board was able to then land the place. An Israeli dentist on board helped treat the captain's stab wounds.

Lots of serious heroism all around, this was moments away from becoming a total disaster. 

The plane suffered severe damage to its tail section, including loss of most of the rudder during the terrorist-caused descent, which was in excess of the never exceed speed of the aircraft by at least 100 knots, which is one heckuva lot.  

The New York Times in a fit of deliberate understatement, reported this Muslim terrorist attempt, which was complete with an "Allahu Akbar",  as an "Altercation".  

Yep, it was just an altercation between the pilot and co-pilot and no mention of the attempt by the co-pilot to crash the plane. Just like the NYT to bury the lede like that when a certain "Religion of Peace" is involved.

ABC News, similarly, also reported it as "an incident took place inside the cockpit". 

Interestingly, the Detroit Free Press has not covered this story at all, but if they had, I assume the headline would've looked something like this:

 

Probably better the Free Press has ignored it then. 

It's likely unremarked upon by them as the incident is too close to the election of their endorsed Muslim Brotherhood supporting candidate Abdul El-Sayed for US Senate, I suppose.

London Trip 7 - IWM Duxford

Leaving the first building, we got to hear the sound of the Merlin engine in flight. Then we got to see a Spitfire actually flying.

 

 

 This was very cool to see a Spitfire put through its paces.

Duxford, an aerodrome since World War One, is still an active airfield with both grass and paved runways.

 The Spitfire is a great looking and sounding plane.

But that wasn't the only Spitfire that became airborne during our visit.

After this Spitfire landed, two double bubble Spitfires took off in tandem.

 

The double bubble Spitfire is quite a rare variant of the Spitfire. The ones at Duxford carry passengers who get to experience the thrill of flight in a Spitfire.

They flew around for awhile and then came in for nice smooth landings.

 

In addition to the Spitfires, their historic foe also took to the skies.

The Messerschmidt BF-109.  In this case a very close copy, the license-built Spanish Hispano Aviacion Buchon.

It was fantastic to see these warbirds flying.

 

London Trip 5 - IWM Duxford

On the way to the next room you pass through a corridor with a Polaris Missile.

Helpfully marked inert, this missile and others liked it formed the underwater component of the UK's nuclear deterrent from 1968 to 1996.  Kinda neat to see one in person.

The next room had airplanes.  Lots of airplanes.

 We'll look at the jets first:

The Harrier:

The English Electric Lightning:

 With it's rather neat vertically stacked engine arrangement:

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The amazingly fast English Electric Canberra:

The Avro CF-100 Canuck:

The Sepecat Jaguar:

The Panavia Tornado:

An Avro Vulcan Bomber:

and a DeHavilland Comet, the first commercial jet airliner that began service with some significant flaws.  This one is a later model, the Comet 4:

 

There's also some interesting prototypes on display:

The British prototype TSR-2:

The prototype Concorde:

You could get into the Concorde and look around:

 

Narrower than your typical passenger jet, and this one has lots of test and monitoring equipment in that aircraft. There was even an escape tube to evacuate the aircraft in flight should the tests go wrong.

Those were just the jets in this airplane heaven of the first main display.

Saturday Fun Day - To The Henry Ford Museum

So my dad came in for a visit this week, arriving on Thursday evening.

This weekend has been marked by rain that would not cease, and it was full on overcast, windy and wet the whole weekend.

To entertain him, I took him to the Henry Ford Museum Saturday afternoon as he had not been there before. 

We entered, paid the admission fee, and started looking around.

First, to see the finer things:

The 1931 Model J Dusenberg:

Behind the Dusenberg, the  Bugatti Type 41 Royale:

At $43,000 in 1931 it would, per the helpful information sign,  take a worker at the time with an average wage of $1,388/year a total of 31 years to buy the car - assuming they put all their money towards it.

We then went to check out the performance car section,

Having been a racing physician (he would drive the medical chase car during Formula One races in Ontario), he has quite an interest in race cars.  Truth to be told, he still drives like he's in a chase car all the time.

They've got quite a display of race cars, including the winning Ford GT from Le Mans, 1967:

 

The winning car from the Hoosier Hundred in 1960:

 And of course, Formula One cars drew interest:

We then went by quite a well-done display of the history of the consumer automobile and we found this particular car, which made him exceptionally happy:

Yes, his first car was a 1966 Chevy Corvair (the floor model here is a 1960).  His had air conditioning and he noted that the car would eat fan belts like they were going out of style due to the lousy routing design of the belt.

Definitely a nice trip for him down memory lane.  His Corvair, for the record, was red rather than blue.

We then checked out the aviation section, because, airplanes!

Henry Ford's 1926 Flivver, his attempt to make airplanes like he made Model Ts.  Unfortunately, the Flivver was a Flop, and dangerous to fly, killing its test pilot.

A more successful Ford flying product was the Ford Trimotor:

 

 

A quality passenger and cargo aircraft. Some are still flying and giving rides today - complete with the original wood-and-wicker-type passenger seats for passengers.

We then headed out as the museum was closing and met up with the rest of the family for dinner.  It was a great outing.

A Case Of A Premature Takeoff

An Air Maroc jet had a little problem with catching air at Frankfurt airport.

You're really not supposed to do that on takeoff.

Aircraft Wash, Wax, And Some Hot Cars

Today was the club's wash and wax day.

Planes got scrubbed, rinsed, and then waxed to a shine.

Clean planes actually do fly a bit faster, plus cleaning them is a good opportunity for all the club members to come together and meet up.

Then got to see some of the cars belonging to the club members, or which were in their control.

A nice Mustang

A couple Corvettes:

And the new, literally just unwrapped from the camouflage wraps, 2020 Corvette Stingray:

To say this is a beast of a car is an understatement.

Open the hood and the lack of an engine is a bit jarring,

It's in the middle of the car, leaving some room for a trunk.

The interior is nice too, very comfy form-fitting seats, and the rear-view mirror isn't a mirror at all, rather it is a screen for a camera.

It certainly drew a lot of lookers at the airport and we all got to look it over, sit in and admire it.

The engine just purrs and it's a darn sweet automobile. I think GM has come out with one heckuva winner here.

Good to have a club member with some connections.

A fun morning getting some planes clean and admiring some nice cars.