Travel Unravel Archives - foXnoMad

Category: Travel Unravel

The Problem With Boeing Planes

You’ve probably seen the images from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 where a section of the plane was blown out in mid-flight. Fortunately, the plane was able to make an emergency landing and aside from 3 minor injuries nobody else was hurt or killed. Still, this was a brand new Boeing 737 Max 9 – only in service for 3 months before this incident – but since the Max line of planes was introduced, there have been two fatal crashes.

What is going on with Boeing and should you be worried about flying in their planes?

Safe But Less Safe

Previous generations of Boeing 737s have a fatal accident rate of .2 per million flights while the 737 MAX have a 4 in million fatal accident rate, still safe, but twenty times more accident prone. The Boeing 737 line is the most popular passenger plane ever – beginning production in 1968 through the latest generation called MAX which began in 2017. Throughout much of that history Boeing was the dominant jetliner manufacturer. Boeing’s main rival Airbus wasn’t a serious rival to Boeing until the 1990s.

alaska airlines

In the 2000s Airbus overtook Boeing in the narrow body aircraft market and today Airbus has 62% of the share of airliner backlog. Their main advantage: fuel economy.

Savings In The Sky

In the 2010s Airbus starting using a new engine design using with what’s known as high-bypass. Technical details aside, these are engines that are bigger than what was previously being used but 25% more fuel efficient. (And 35% quieter, a nice bonus.) Before this jetliner engines were made to be narrower thinking it would reduce wind resistance.

Over time airlines began gravitating toward these narrower, smaller capacity planes because they saved money on fuel. Those cost savings meant that airlines could run more flights versus the larger Boeing planes which burn more fuel. It’s easier to fill up smaller planes resulting in fewer empty seats. Again, economic benefits.

Boeing Plays Catch Up

Boeing isn’t able to put those newer more fuel efficient engines on their existing larger planes because the wings are too low for them to fit. This leads to the decision to make the Boeing MAX, their version of a narrow body jetliner to compete with Airbus. Building planes takes experience and Boeing didn’t redesign the 737 Max from scratch. The larger more powerful engines being placed on modified existing designs have lead to issues. Boeing had to put the new engines further forward on the wings of the MAX but combined with more thrust they have a tendency to pull the plane up more – in other words give it more lift.

jetliner engine

To compensate, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was implemented. That’s basically a computer than detects when the nose of the plane might be going up too high and then forces the plane to pitch downward. Boeing engineers allowed the MCAS to be fed information from a single sensor with no redundancy because “they calculated the probability of a “hazardous” MCAS malfunction to be virtually inconceivable.”

The Federal Aviation Administration also agreed and did not adequately inform pilots about the MCAS in their manuals. Unfortunately in the case of Lion Air Flight 620 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 in 2019 that lead to two fatal crashes, killing 346 people. Boeing was later charged with fraud and ordered to pay compensation of 2.5 billion dollars for concealing information from the FAA.

Failures For Dollars

There were failures on the part of Boeing and the FAA, who overruled their own engineers in the regarding the 737 MAX 8 and there have been well documented quality control issues with the MAX 9 (the plane involved in the Alaska Airlines incident). A U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure report also pointed to the FAA’s practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers, noting that this structure “creates inherent conflicts of interest that have jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”

The grounding of the MAX 8 cost Boeing 21 billion dollars. Still, the 737 MAX 8 and 9 still have 4500 orders combined so far but it seems like Boeing’s push to make a profit – which that haven’t done since 2019 – has lead to cutting corners in their race to compete with Airbus. Travelers can only hope there are no more accidents before oversight of Boeing, investigations, and changes both to personnel and production are implemented.

How Many Countries Are There In The World?

number of countries

This post is part of Geek Takeover Week 2022.

Many of you have been following this site for years know my goal is to visit every country in the world. One question that comes up often from people who hear this story is, “how many countries are there?” Well, the broad answer is a big “it depends” but there are a few specific numbers you can count on, based on who’s counting.

United Nations (Sort Of)

One way to count the number of countries in the world is to use the United Nations (U.N.) member states. Currently, there are 193 member states of the U.N. Add to that 2 observer states (Palestine and Vatican City) and now you have 195 but you can already begin to see how these numbers can get muddled up, based on who recognizes whom. In practice, U.N. members can only be sovereign states and doesn’t include nations such as Kosovo, for example.

Blurred Borders

One other way to count the number of countries in the world is to use the International Olympic Committee (IOC) list, which includes territories (like Guam) and de-facto states like Taiwan. The number of countries recognized by the IOC is 206. A bit more than 195 and while there is a good deal of overlap between the U.N. and IOC lists, they both don’t include places like Antarctica. Yes, it’s not a country but it’s an entire continent, which should be worth something on any self-respecting travel list.

More Lists

There are other lists which include places like the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus which might not be an official country but on the ground, it certainly behaves as one. Same thing goes for Puerto Rico. Tibet is not it’s own nation and as much as China tries to suppress its identity through ethnic cleansing, lines on a globe don’t tell the whole story.

coffee caye islandia

When you travel to a place, you may feel a stark difference between cultures. Chamula in Mexico behaves like a separate entity. Islandia? The Luhansk People’s Republic is a proclaimed territory within Ukraine, would it make your list?

Why Keep A List?

So how many countries there are changes with time based on who’s counting and how. There’s politics involved. It can be controversial. For many though, 206 is a solid number. Using the IOC list, it includes Taiwan and Kosovo, for examples. Personally, this is the list I lean toward since it’s relatively stable and contains a widely agreed upon list of nations.

But why keep a list at all? For me, it’s a goal post. A target to aim for. Having the journey to visit every country on Earth has lead me to places I never would have thought to visit. It can take me out of my comfort zone. But it’s never really been solely about the list. I go back to places and I’m in no rush to check every country off the list. I’m over 100 countries now and could have been done a long time ago but ultimately, I want to travel the world. See its natural beauty and cultural diversity. Neither of which lines on a map could ever entirely encompass.

How To Pronounce Kyiv And Why It’s Not Spelled Kiev

Ukraine has been on the news a lot recently due to the war with Russia and you may have heard its capital, Kyiv and other cities, being pronounced multiple ways. Due to all of that variation from “keev” to “keyee” from journalists, it can be confusing to know how to properly say these places. To help answer those questions as well as the history behind the names of Ukrainian cities and spellings, Irena Chalupa recently joined me on an episode of the foXnoMad Podcast. Irena is a journalist specializing in broadcast from northeastern Poland who spent 23 years working for Radio Free Europe in Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic as the director of the Ukrainian Service. She has also worked for the Atlantic Council think tank and was a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine during 2016-2017. She is currently an editor at StopFake.

You can watch a clip from our discussion in the video above or listen to the full podcast here.

Could You Visit Every Place On Earth In A Lifetime?

As someone who’s made a career that began from a quest to visit every country in the world, I’ve often thought, could I see more? Could I see every city with a population of over 500,000 or all the world’s countries, UNESCO sites, best and worst cities? It’s a question we’ve tackled here before but in the video above I show just how difficult such a feat would be.

For those of you who love traveling and want to see it all, the answer to the question – can you see the world in a lifetime – will either be discouraging or profoundly inspiring. The choice is a big one and all yours to make.

Would People In Pakistan Be Willing To Say One Nice Thing About India?

India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars and the two countries don’t have good relations with each other. A mild way of putting it, considering the more than half century of animosity and territorial disputes all amplified nuclear bombs. So during a visit to Pakistan I was curious, is there anything nice people could say about India?

You can watch the responses in the video above, they’ll likely surprise you as much as it did me.

Behind The Scenes

Filming around Pakistan, I had this video in mind. Partly as a response to several videos I made comparing both countries which brought a lot of fighting in the comment section (browse at your own discretion). This made me curious, could we boil things down simply: can you say one NICE thing?

burns road karachi

I hesitated before asking the question to the first person, someone I had already interviewed as part of another project. His reaction was positive (aside from a fair amount of camera shyness). Perhaps it was a fluke, I’ll have to ask others and wait for the backlash.

It never came though, people were overwhelmingly positive. As you read this you may be thinking, yeah but well… insert excuse here. Believe me, those caveats bubbled up into my grey matter as well. Across several weeks, cities, and people from all walks of life, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Not a scientific study but a start. We can go from there, whether we’re talking about nation or your next door neighbor or both.

The Outliers

There were a number of people who did have not nice things to say. Want to guess the number? A grand total of two. But the number of people who said nice things? 100%. Yes, those two people also did have a nice thing to say and are featured in the video.

Let’s talk about those two responses that weren’t entirely positive. One of the two aggressively asked me why I’m asking people to say one nice thing (and why I wasn’t doing it in some other country). I explained that it’s a question I had and he obviously didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to. After a moment, he thought about it and did say one or two nice things.

The other went on a bit of a political rant about India’s internal political structure, said one nice thing, and then continued one a bit on politics. A bit off the rails but still he surprised me, he did have one nice thing to say. Hopefully you’ll find this video enlightening, encouraging and you’ll have one nice thing to say about it in the comments.

You’re a beautiful person and have a lot to offer the world. Keep striving to show everyone your best side!

What Is Harry Potter Shifting?

This post is part of Geek Takeover Week 2021.

Have you ever wished you could visit one of the fantasy worlds you’ve read about or seen in a movie? Well, shifters believe they can do just that and transport their subconsciousness to Hogwarts, specifically. There’s a pretty active community on TikTok #shiftingrealities where shifters explain how you can shift, what the experience is like, and what happens if you die in Hogwarts.

It all sounds a lot like lucid dreaming where you can control your dreams through various techniques to train your mind to recognize that hey, you’re in a dream and take over. Lucid dreams can often fly like Superman or transport anywhere in the world or perhaps, even to Hogwarts.

On a recent Geek Takeover Week episode of the foXoMad Podcast I and two Harry Potter experts shifted into reacting to shifter TikToks. You can watch a clip in the video above or listen to the full episode below. Evanesco!

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About Anil Polat

foxnomad aboutHi, I'm Anil. foXnoMad is where I combine travel and tech to help you travel smarter. I'm on a journey to every country in the world and you're invited to join the adventure! Read More

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