airplane

Since I'm kind of an airplane nut--of the amateur variety--this is somewhat of a Homer Simpson moment.

Mmmmmm...A380.

Singapore Airlines flight SQ380, from Singapore to Sydney, took to the air Thursday and in the process made aviation history as the first commercial flight of the long-awaited mammoth flying machine, the Airbus A380.

I've never seen one of these planes up close. But I'm longing to. It recently made its first (test) flight into San Francisco and I was out of town. And sadly, neither Airbus nor Singapore Airlines invited me to take this first flight today. … Read more

Apparently putting your iPhone in airplane mode is not the digital equivalent of returning your seatback to the upright position.

A flight attendant for ATA Airlines recently asked a flier watching a movie midflight on the way to Hawaii to shut off his iPhone, not for the perfectly reasonable reason that the man was watching the inane Jennifer-Love Hewitt vehicle I Know What You Did Last Summer, but because you're not allowed to use cell phones inflight. Casey, the iPhone user, told Consumerist that he tried several times to explain to the flight attendant that the iPhone was in &… Read more

So this month I will have traveled more than 20,000 miles via plane, train and boats to various destinations and various time zones. The iPhone has proven adept and adaptable - so long as you activate the international roaming and data plans - which you have to do in person or via AT&T's operators before you leave the country - as my friend Max found out the hard way.

Anyway, upon landing at each airport the iPhone will find the applicable AT&T network or AT&T compatible network - oftentimes in seconds. But … Read more

Rhino's compilation CD box sets are are not only amazingly consistent; their creative packaging and superb music programming satisfy neophytes and seasoned collectors. Their latest offering from the ever popular Nuggets series, "Love is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-- 1970 " is a trip through the era's psychedelic and ragged glories. You get a healthy dose of greatest hits, gems like the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," and Santana's "Evil Ways" mixed with less heralded but truly stellar tunes like Kak's "Lemonaide Kid." I swear I'… Read more

SONOMA, Calif.--NASA awarded $250,000 in prize money this weekend to teams competing to build and fly a small-seat plane that could one day be a prototype for so-called air cars.

The Cafe Foundation, a nonprofit group of flight test engineers, held the NASA-sponsored race of personal aircraft vehicles (PAVs) on Saturday here at the Charles Schultz Sonoma County Airport. Four teams flying small two-seater planes competed against each other in six categories: speed, short takeoff, efficiency, handling, noise and overall best (or the vantage grand prize).

After all of the race data was tallied Saturday, NASA named its … Read more

If airplanes are your large-scale luxury gadget of choice, News.com has a nice big gallery of exciting shots from July's Experimental Aircraft Association show in the skies over Wisconsin.

For a sampling of home-builts, antiques, classics, electrics, war birds, ultralights and rotorcraft, as well as cameos by both NASA and The Beach Boys, you have only to click on the image at left.

Oshkosh... It's not just for overalls anymore.

TUCSON, Ariz.--I've just finished my tours of the PIMA Air and Space Museum and the Arizona Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) facility here, and boy have I seen a lot of airplanes.

I'm visiting the two facilities as part of my Road Trip 2007 around the Southwest. They are basically side by side, and house approximately 300 and 4,300 planes, respectively.

At the Air and Space museum, it's a mix of military, NASA and civilian planes, including an SR-71, the plane that brought the hostages home from Iran in 1981, plus many others.

At AMARG, … Read more

With summer here in the northern hemisphere, many people are packing their bags, grabbing their plane tickets, and hopping a flight for a well-deserved vacation. Once on the plane, most of us face cramped seats, crying babies, and maybe a couple of bags of peanuts (if we're lucky). Most of the time, the promise of the destination is enough for us to deal with a long flight, and if all else fails, there's always the sweeping view of the country from the window seat.

This week, I rediscovered (it's now in version 2.0) a great screensaver … Read more

Boeing has commissioned DesignworksUSA, a subsidiary of BMW, to design the interiors for its wide-bodied fleet of corporate jets.

DesignworksUSA has released drawings (below) of what a Boeing Business Jet 787, also known as the Dreamliner, could look like for its owner, or group of owners.

Is this a hint that we may be going back to the Pan Am glory days of old?

Only for the lucky few.

The Boeing Business Jet 787 holds even fewer people than its 747-8 VIP.

The intimate design reflects the changing needs of frequent corporate fliers who use their jets as a second … Read more