Antipodeslonghaul

I'm thinking kids and adults aren't that different and since it's simming and you can crash 100's of times and learn from your mistakes while having fun at the same time, I'd go straight with something big. If MSFS is the present and future over the next few years, I'd just tell him to start by getting that, plus I guess the PMDG 737 that's already available on there. The only recommended non frivolous and fun, ride em cowboy jump right in part, the read the instructions part, is at least do the tutorial flight. Certainly not the best and most sensible way, just imo the least boring, most fun and maybe what a kid with a new computer would do way.

This will count for basically nothing since I've flown neither, but my gut feeling, the 777 would be my number one choice. Any professional pilot on any type of plane will be very familiar with all the systems, but to me somehow the layout of the 777 cockpit seems the most simple, easy to memorize, and it all makes sense. So at least in any sim emergency, I'd pick the 777. But that's just out of the three sim planes I'm most familiar with DC8, 747-400, and 777-200LR. The DC-8 is the most fun but would be my last choice out of those three in a sim emergency. This topic has got me curious about trying an Airbus though.

I had a bit of a theory once on why I never managed to get much sleep on my 787 flights, because I may have been lacking just that hint of hypoxia that may have knocked me out on other flights. But in seriousness, I've seen a fellow passenger on the floor, I think it was on a very crowded A340 flight, very ill, being given oxygen. I don't know what she may have already been suffering from, but imagining the sensation of suffocation and probably panic. What a blessing to just get through a flight feeling healthy and happy and then you finally walk out of the terminal into the fresh air. Who cares if you didn't sleep and are tired. I suppose anything to make the cabin environment as close to that being outside sensation is definitely a good thing.

Purely from a passenger's vantage point. I haven't enjoyed my 787 flights because I don't like the window shades. Also the seats felt uncomfortable, but I know of course that's an airline configuration thing, and not the plane's fault. On the other hand every 777 and 747 flight I've ever been on, including the 747-8 have been great! For some reason I just don't like the 787 that much and prefer the A350, also from the looks. I guess for a pilot the traditional control coulumn is much nicer, more dignified. On the other hand the tray table and extra space in front of you on the airbus might be nice too. As a passenger I also hated the A340-600 with the downstairs bathrooms and seemed always overcrowded. But generally on full economy flights, I guess I've liked 2-4-2 configurations the best. So the good old A330's a while back when I took them on Northwest and Lufthansa between USA and Europe quite a few times were good, even when pretty crowded in economy. Considering all equations the Airbus Boeing rivalry is still neck and neck in my opinion.

I'd like to chime in and say I'm still using FSX Steam. For me it's because of the aircraft I already have, PMDG 747 and 777, Aerosoft DC-8, plus the freemium JF 757 (not bad, if you've already used the navigation systems on the DC-8 and the more modern ones on the PMDG's, you don't feel too left out on the 75, since you know exactly what you're missing, and it isn't that bad). Steam is easy if you somehow mess up, to uninstall it and start over again. Then the scenery up at FL 390 isn't that bad and Active Sky weather is good to. But if I wanted low down close to the ground scenery I know I'd have to start switching to MSFS. Not sure about the cd's for FSX though. I guess if you already have some good FSX aircraft you like, it's definitely worth it to try to get it to work, i.e. try and somehow ignore the messages, leave whatever cd you already had in there when the message pops up (don't eject it), and just keep clicking. Just a frivolous suggestion, but sometimes trying out weird things work.

I always enjoyed their casual, friendly mood, but hated the boarding procedure. I'm definitely a bargain hunter though. I'll gladly go through a great deal of torture to save a few bucks. I'd definitely fly them again. So far zero rude encounters or actual bad experiences with them. JetBlue maybe 1 out of 100 staff I dealt with was rude. Lufthansa and KLM maybe 1 out of 50, plus a few bad experiences. So I think budget airlines are not necessarily worse. Maybe it's a bit like lightning though, one can take precautions to avoid getting hit, but might still unexpectedly get struck out of the blue.

As far as simming goes, this topic has brought me back to the 744 QOTS. I'd been flying the Aerosoft DC-8 quite a bit recently and love it, otherwise my defualt PMDG 777 with 3 aux tanks for the really long long hauls. But they get quite boring actually. I love the preflight phase in the 74, as you add passengers it heats ups more. I've given quite a few of those virtual pax heatstroke these past few days. I'm so used to the 777 packs coming back on after engine start. I keep forgetting to turn them back on in the 74. Holding short at the departure runway wondering whether I should turn some packs off, I realize they've been off all along, a quick check and the cabin temp in some segments is something like 47C.

This is just what I was just thinking of. If we had say 30 straight days of highs in the 30's and lows in the 20's (to an American that might sound cold), and even if no record highs were made, it would probably feel quite hellish, worse than this. Imagine a small apartment facing the sun with maybe only one window, only on one side, hard to get a draft going.

Good one! Definitely recognize all of them including myself, the minimalist. If work and coming back the same day, no need to carry anything. If vacation 2 to 3 weeks, it'll usually be someplace warm, so just a few t-shirts etc. and do laundry once about halfway through the trip.

In some parts of India and Pakistan, there has apparently been the danger of wet bulb temps exceeding what any human can stand, regardless of what they're adapted to. For Europe at the moment though with no AC, one strategy might be to ensure you air out the place properly overnight, then close all the windows around perhaps 9 am, make sure all the curtains are blocking the sun, then air out again in the evening. It depends on the situatuon.

Thanks for posting this, I hadn't seen this one yet. Looks like it comes in at number 16 out of the current 30 longest flights.

I had a deeply religious friend once where any mention of even the remotest possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life was extremely touchy. I didn't understand at the time. I just thought, huh, God could have created us, plus all the other amazing things on Earth, and on top of that he could have created all sorts of other inhabited planets across the universe as well. I can still believe in God and believe in aliens at the same time. But I think what my friend meant was he had a hard time believing God could have created anything more intelligent than us, that we had to be numero uno. I can dig that, but also have to say for me personally, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised nor the least bit offended if there was something more intelligent than us out there. It wouldn't diminish any reverence I might have for a supreme being in the least. But then one might also start wondering whether God created some sort of artificial intelligence that exceeded even his own intelligence, and then we might really have a problem, or be getting into too deep of a religious discussion, but I think the passage you referred to could mean just that, many inhabited planets. Ha! Yes, a bit funny to imagine a bunch of researchers getting all excited over a strange signal when it was just some guy microwaving his burrito. But really, one day, who knows. Whether it's the depths of our oceans, or deep space, we still have so much we can be curious about.

On this long night flight between Europe and China many moons ago, the plane was almost completely empty. I don't know why, I felt so sad and lonely. It was completely dark, there was absolutely nothing to see. I couldn't sleep. Finally played with the FM radio app on my phone and after a lot of static while switching around frequencies, finally picked up a faint signal from a Russian radio talk show. For some reason it felt so good to hear there was someone else out there. I can't help feeling slightly similar with hoping to pick up some sort of a signal from aliens. But the recent furor over radio signals picked up by the Chinese is probably nothing. Being an alien hunter sure requires a lot more patience than just getting a little bored on a 10 hour red eye flight.

This topic reminded me of "The Walled City of Kowloon", HK. Apparently it once had around 1.25 million inhabitants per sqaure km, the most densely populated place on Earth. At that density one could in theory fit all of us roughly 8 billion into either Belgium or Connecticut. Even though where I live doesn't even come close to being as crowded as that, it nonetheless feels quite crowded.

I've watched a few similar videos these past few days, also Paris in the 1920's. Pretty amazing, a hint of time travel. For me San Francisco, the size, the location, its layout, I also think it's the best.