A Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380 took off on a historic journey Thursday (Oct 25) - the first commercial flight by the world’s largest jetliner that boasts luxurious suites, double beds and the quietest interior ever.
Airbus 380 takes off from the runway
With 455 passengers, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars for a seat in aviation history; the superjumbo soared into the sky on a 7 and 1/2 hour flight to Sydney that launches a new era in air travel. Also on board flight SQ380 are a crew of about 30 including four pilots.
Passengers clapped as the plane disengaged from the dock on schedule at 8am (0000gmt) and taxied to the runway that was widened and lengthened to accommodate the huge plane.
More cheers broke out 16 minutes later as the double-decker aircraft, powered by four Rolls Royce Trent 900 engines, lifted smoothly into the nearly cloudless sky tinged pink by the light of the early morning sun.
Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts.
Mubarak and his homemade helicopter
The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano’s Bayero University.
It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.
For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet. [Yahoo]
Early Sunday morning (July 1), Space Shuttle Atlantis began its journey back to Kennedy Space Center ‘piggy-backed’ on top of a modified 747 jetliner called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA).
Atlantis heads piggy-backed on a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
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