The inaugural flight of Qatar Airways' new Airbus A350 from New York will be remembered for a long time by the travel journalists invited to enjoy the next generation of ultra modern planes.
Not so much for their capacious business class seats and champagne, but for the way the plane accelerated to more than 100mph before coming to a screeching halt as the onboard computers aborted take-off.
The whole terrifying 15 seconds was captured on video by Zach Honig, who was reporting on the launch for The Points Guy.
"As you can see in the video above, about 18 seconds after we began rolling down JFK’s runway 22R, the aircraft self-aborted, bringing us from more than 100 mph to a loud, screeching halt in roughly 15 seconds," he wrote.
"For a plane of this size and weight, stopping that quickly required a lot of force. To give you another idea of how abruptly we stopped, as you can see in the picture below, nearly all of the 200+ pillows and blankets landed on the floor, having previously been neatly arranged on each seat in economy.
"Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but some passengers (including myself) were quite shaken."
Qatar's CCO just came by to update me. The A350 got a signal that the runway was too short and the plane auto-braked. #QR7452
— Zach Honig (@ZachHonig) December 11, 2015
Just 36 passangers were aboard the chartered flight from New York to Doha - making Qatar Airways the first airline to operate an A350 from the US.
The plane eventually took off two hours later for an uneventful flight to Doha, where the airline is based.
Qatar Airways is the biggest buyer of A350s, ordering 80 of the new model which is designed to rival the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
More than half of the $295m (£194m) plane is made from lightweight carbon-fibre designed to save on jet fuel, which accounts for half the cost of long-haul flights.
It features an extra wide cabin, high ceilings and panoramic windows with electromechanical shades that go from transparent to opaque at the touch of a button.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét