30 cool aviation photos for September
That Dreamlifter is freaking awesome. I saw it at JFK one time. The aft section can open at a 90 degree angle to load cargo from the rear.
One actually landed at the wrong airport a couple of years ago. They were flying into McConnell AFB to pick up I believe fuselage sections for the 787. It was a calm clear night, so they gave them the visual approach to the runway. It's just a way of saying, do what you want, just land on this runway. They're coming in doing their approach and see lights. Fixate on those lights and proceed towards them, start their touchdown only to realize it was a small local airport with a 6000 foot runway, not the 12,000 they planned for. They slammed it down, full brakes, full reverse thrust and prayed. Got it stopped barely in time. The next day Boeing sent some test pilots down to see if they could get it off the ground. They sat at the end of the runway engine spinning as fast as they could and shot the sucker into the sky. Just for comparison, the normal take off distance of a regular 747 is around 9000 feet. It was beyond impressive.