Reminiscing on Virgin America | AeroTime Weekend Reads

Reminiscing on Virgin America: goodbye to a truly fun airline

Overnight, the Virgin America brand flew away for good. Since its acquisition by Alaska Airlines two years ago as part of a $2.6 billion deal, Virgin America was slowly disappearing. To the dismay of many travelers, the carrier took its final flight on the evening of April 24, 2018, marking the last time a “VX” flight made its way across the skies. And now, nothing remains of Virgin America’s branding in the 29 airports it was serving. Feeling nostalgic yet?

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Are there two pilots in the cockpit?

Ever since the early days of commercial aviation, flight safety has steadily improved. Considering the number of flights, accidents are now extremely rare, and 70% of them are attributable to human factors. This has led to research in psychology, cognitive science and, more recently, in neuroergonomics. Researchers have been investigating factors such as drowsiness, stress, attention, workload, communication, and cognitive biases. One that has been surprisingly overlooked is that of social relations within the cockpit.

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Opinion: the navy’s Incredible shrinking drone

When it comes to technology, the Pentagon is always pushing for more—more reach, more destruction, more dollars. That’s what makes the Navy’s quest for its first-ever aircraft-carrier-based drone unusual: what started out as a push for an unmanned attack drone evolved into a more modest goal of a spy drone, before surrendering to simplicity and deciding the drone’s mission would be to supply fuel to thirsty, and manned, Navy fighters.

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Pilot Career Show – a new way to land a job as a pilot in a day

Despite growing concerns over pilot shortage in global commercial aviation, kick-starting one‘s career as a professional aviator still poses its difficulties. Aside from the ever increasing requirements, training costs and strict regulation, landing a job in aviation is also time-consuming. But a new type of pilot career fair – Pilot Career Show – is here to change that.

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