Not true.
Posted on 04/04/2007 2:54:34 PM PDT by Yo-Yo
Hollywood star John Travolta was forced to make an emergency landing in Ireland on Monday while piloting his private Boeing 707 from Germany to New York.
The actor, who was flying back to the USA after promoting his new movie Wild Hogs in Germany, landed safely at Shannon Airport after his Boeing 707-138B suffered "technical difficulties", thought to be engine-related. He was said to be unhurt but shaken by the dramatic incident. The 53-year-old, the only private individual to own a Boeing 707, serial number N707JT, hired another aircraft and completed the journey while the 707 was grounded for repairs.
Eight years ago the star suffered a similar mid-air drama when his plane lost an engine and he was forced to make an emergency landing in Boston.
That's why they had four engines rather than two.
I think Boeing sort of fixed that problem of the smoke while taking off with the 707 engine, I think they put some kind of injector to inject water in the combustion chamber to reduce the smoke.
Not true.
That, and two engines didn’t push hard enough.
Yep! I live about 15 miles south of his Jumbolair estate and whenever I drive past the place, I can see the tail of that 707 extend just above the man-made berm.
He was in Ocala about 3 weeks ago for the premiere of Wild Hogs - he rode in on his HOG with wife Kelly. The premiere party was held nearby - I believe that tickets were $200 a head, by invitation only. All proceeds benefited the tornado victims of Lake County.
A big deal for Slow-cala!
I know Travolta is some official spokesperson or ambassador for Qantas but I find it odd. Its I guess why he is allowed to retain the livery on his 707. Apart from starring with Olivia in Grease I don’t get the connection with Australia for him. Its also odd to see Qantas livery in Florida since I don’t think they fly there but I could be wrong. It sort of reminds me of that funny scene in Rain Man.
It really should be a DC-9.
That’s what he gets for using union labor.
We don’t.
I like your name. I feel like a prophet in the wilderness quite often.
Trust me, American troops will start coming home within eight weeks.
The fever is going to break soon.
Water injection was used on some of the first-generation commercial jets as a way to provide extra power for takeoff from high, hot, and/or short runways. It definitely did not make anything burn cleaner; just the opposite:
I doubt Travolta's 707 still has such a system operational, if it ever did.
That name is a tribute to the Prophet Elijah, my favorite prophet in the Bible.
That's not correct. The KC-135R is the military version of the 707 and has high-bypass retrofitted engines.
I see.... that’s why I put the disclaimer ( correct me if I am wrong ) in my post, I knew that the water injection had something to do with the engines, not sure what it was.
No, the size of the 707 was determined by the limitations of having the most powerful engine available in the 1950's. The requirement is that a plane must be able to take off if it loses an engine during takeoff. A 707 having four engines does not have to divert if it has one engine shut down during a flight. That is the major reason why QANTAS still preferrs to fly 747's rather than switch to 777's. If an engine is shut down during flight, they can still continue on to their original destination. A twin engined plane operating under ETOPS rules must divert to the nearest suitable airport if one engine is shut down. Currently 777's must use flight paths which are no more than 180 minutes away from a diversion airport at any time during a flight. Aircraft with three or more engines have no limit to their diversion times with one engine out. Boeing is petitioning the FAA and JAA to extend ETOPS times out to 330 minutes which is 5.5 hours from a diversion airport. This extention if approved, would allow twin engined aircraft to fly almost any route in the world except across Antarctia.
Map showing ETOPS 180 limits.
Map showing ETOPS 330 limits.
I think the Braniff livery on 707-138 was cooler than the orginal QANTAS livery. Braniff bought 707-138's second hand from QANTAS in the mid 1960's. Braniff always tended to get high performance hot rod type aircraft like the 720-27, 707-227, and 707-138 due to their South American and Central American routes. Mexico City has an altitude of over 7,000 feet, and La Paz, Bolivia has an altitude of over 13,000 feet. After Braniff bought PanAgra, they inherited PanAgra's DC-8-62 orders from Douglas. These planes had the same engines as the DC-8-71 and DC-8-73 but had a shorter fuselage that weighed less. This allowed for the longest ranged passenger jet in the world prior to the 747, but also allowed higher performance take offs from high altitude airports with less weight.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=0221086&size=M
Well, yeah, that's what I was saying.
Two engines the size of those originally on the 707 left absolutely margin for error on takeoff. As I recall the FARs, a four-engine commercial aircraft must be able to lose two engines on takeoff and maintain a positive flight path angle. A twin-engine aircraft must be able to continue to climb on one engine.
The 707/KC-135 had four engines for the same reason the B-47 had six and the B-52 has eight - they needed that many in order to get that much airplane into the air.
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