Manual Pushback of 747-400

Esta tarde salen varios espoñoles del Aeropuerto Ramón Villeda Morales de SPS, luego que España activara el Mecanismo Europeo de Protección Civil para hacer una operación en Centroamérica que permitiría dar salida a unos 400 turistas de ese pais que se encuentran en la región. pic.twitter.com/zLm3e5Jg9Z

— Hondudiario.com (@hondudiario) March 27, 2020

While overall demand for air travel is low at the moment, we are seeing a number of rescue and repatriation flights to pick up stranded travelers, as well as a bunch of extra cargo flights to get supplies around.

Wamos Air is a Spanish charter airline that has a fleet of over a dozen planes, including four 747-400s. They often operate these on behalf of other airlines. One of those planes has been in Central America the past few days.

The 747-400 in question has the registration code EC-KXN, and is 26 years old. The plane flew:

• From Madrid to Guatemala City (10hr20min) on Thursday
• From Guatemala City to San Salvador (26min) on Friday
• From San Salvador to San Pedro Sula (35min) on Friday
• From San Pedro Sula to Madrid (9hr19min) on Friday

 

While I have no inside knowledge here, my assumption would be that they didn’t have a pushback tug that worked for the situation. I’m not sure if that’s because the airport just doesn’t have one for a 747, if they didn’t have the part needed to connect the plane to the tug, or what.

The airport does see regular Boeing 787 service from Madrid on Air Europa, so it’s not like the airport doesn’t get big planes. However, a fully loaded 747-400 has nearly double the weight of a fully loaded 787-8, and can weigh over 900,000 pounds.

Kinda cool, eh?

Orangutans Playing with Otters - CNN & Pairi Daiza Zoo

From CNN:

Otterly adorable: 24-year-old Ujian seems smitten with his little friends.

A zoo in Belgium has shared some amazing photos of a blossoming friendship between a family of orangutans and their otter neighbors.

The animals live together at Pairi Daiza zoo in Domaine du Cambron, as part of a program designed to maintain the primates' wellbeing in captivity.

Here, otter, otter!

According to zoo spokesman Mathieu Goedefroy, they "must be entertained, occupied, challenged and kept busy mentally, emotionally and physically at all times."

As part of the program, the family of Asian small-clawed otters were allowed to live in the river that runs through the enclosure that houses the orangutan family: 24-year-old father Ujian, 15-year-old mother Sari and Berani, their three-year-old son.

"The otters really enjoy getting out of the water on the orangutan island to go and play with their big, furry friends," said Goedefroy, adding that Berani and Ujian have developed a particularly strong bond with their neighbors.

You're never alone with an otter.

"It makes life more fun and interesting for both animal species, which makes it a very successful experiment," he said.

The orangutan family arrived at the zoo in 2017. Another two orangutans also live there: Gempa, a male, and Sinta, a female.

Peekaboo! Three-year-old Berani has formed a strong bond with the otters.

Orangutans share 97% of their DNA with humans and as a result require a lot of attention to keep them occupied, Goedefroy said.

"Our keepers entertain them all day long with mind games, riddles, puzzles, and other stuff to train their intelligence," he added.

Orangutan populations are threatened by palm oil plantations in their native Borneo and Sumatra. Goedefroy told CNN that the zoo has raised funds to plant 11,000 trees to restore a forest in Borneo.

Cats and Domino - Cat Navi Desk

Line after line of dominoes fall in front of, around, and sometimes because of two calm bell-ringing cats in Cats and domino, a beautifully composed screen-link video by Japan-based YouTuber Cat Navi Desk. See each cat watch and interact with the domino chain reaction that ultimately leads them to their prize: Freshly-dispensed cat food.

You can follow Cat Navi Desk on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Pretty Little San Francisco

How to Pass the Salt While Social Distancing

Teapots pour. Laptops slide. Apples roll. Ping pong balls hover. Mushrooms and carrots rotate into place. An amazing amount of intricate food-themed contraptions come together to Pass the Salt in this collaboration between quirky Rube Goldberg machine creator Joseph’s Machines and chain reaction YouTuber Sprice Machines.

How did the screen-linked machine come together? A lot of fails and adjustments. Joseph Herscher notes, “That mushroom was so annoying because it was drying up and kept changing how it rolled the longer it took to film. Took about 10 takes.”

After you’ve watched the video above, check out Sprice’s Secrets Revealed video. It goes behind the scenes with how the chain reactions were created, including fails, LEGO wheels for laptops and heavy, hacked apples. 

LEGOs Waffle and Coffee Stop-Motion Video

Created with 3,200 photos, YouTuber Bebop cooks up some LEGO waffles and coffee in this stop-motion cooking short film.

Have you ever put melted cheese on your waffles? Or is that butter? Also: Don’t eat your LEGO.

Catscapes - Lim Heng Swee

A Malaysian artist named Lim Heng Swee shared a big secret with the whole world. Turns out, we live on a cat planet, because they're everywhere around us. They smartly blend into landscapes and become roads, clouds, and even mountains.

OSU Master Gardener Program's Vegetable Gardening Course is FREE

A lot of folks are suddenly interested in learning how to grow their own food. So, through the end of April, Oregon State's Master Gardener Program is making OSU's online Vegetable Gardening course FREE.

Sign up HERE

AGU's Collection of Virtual Field Trips

Spring in the northern hemisphere is the time for students pile into vans with camping gear, rock hammers, pocket transits and field notebooks, and head out to explore the marvels of the Earth’s surface. It is a wonderful part of learning Earth science. But those trips are off as another kind of science — epidemiology — takes precedence. Luckily for students today, the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t mean they have to lose every aspect of field trips. Virtual field trips like those highlighted below are a way for students to experience geology, and at very least prime them for the real thing, when we’re all on the other side of the current societal crisis.

Check out all of the HERE

The Car Cassette Adapter - Vice

Read this great article HERE