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airplane
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2020-04-15
An Unacceptable Wall of Sound
I live in Austin, Texas, in a neighborhood that is both in the approach flight pattern for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and contains a hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center and a helipad. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the soundscape of neighborhood abruptly changed. The first thing I noticed, in the early days of a city-wide “stay-at-home” order was that I could hear more birds in the trees outside my second story apartment. It took a few days for me to realize that it was because the birdsong was not being drowned out by the sound of airplanes landing at the nearby runway. At the time I remember thinking that, perhaps, the sound of the birds was something I could look forward to every morning as I navigated suddenly having to find a new job due to the pandemic. Soon, the sound of landing airplanes was replaced with a sound that much harder to ignore. Ambulance sirens. It became noticeable after the first week, with ambulances arriving at the hospital several times an hour. By week three, it was a near constant drone broken up only by helicopters bringing even more critical patients into the city for care. By week eight, I stopped even noticing the sound of ambulances at all. The sound of the pandemic became so commonplace that my brain learned to filter out the wall of sirens as background noise. I often wonder how many ambulances carried patients who never left the hospital and how much suffering, fear, and sadness became “background noise” for us all. Given that we are entering into year three of the pandemic, and the United States has registered nearly one million COVID-19 deaths, it pains me to realize to know that number is far higher than any of us should have accepted. -
2020-11-04
American Airlines Clean Commitment
This video was sent via email from American Airlines, it explains how wearing masks, forward-facing seats, and filtration systems help keep passengers safe on airplanes. There's no mention of actually cleaning the planes, just the assurance that flying during a pandemic is relatively safe. -
2020-10-29
Airlines Conduct Tests to Prove that COVID-19 Spread is not High in Airplanes
United Airlines, Boeing and the Defense Department conducted tests to gauge the risk of getting infected with the coronavirus on a plane. They used a mannequin that would use a spray to stimulate a cough. They concluded that the spread of infection is not high. However, the test failed to test many other factors, such as the patient turning their head to the side to cough, coughing while walking around the cabin, and other common locomotions of airplane passengers. Thus, the test was inconclusive, and seems like a desperate effort for the airline companies to get their customers back. -
2020-10-07
マスクめぐり機内で乱闘 フェースシールドは着用(2020年10月7日) - Brawl on the plane about the mask Wearing the face shield (October 7, 2020)
This is a news where on an airplane, a fight happened because a man was wearing a face shield, but not a mask. I would think wearing a face shield is better than nothing, but not enough and for himself and others on the plane, the man should have worn a mask. マスクの着用を巡ってまた、乱闘騒ぎです。 アメリカのアリゾナ州からユタ州に向かっていたLCC(格安航空)の旅客機の中で2人の乗客がもみ合っています。2人はマスクの着用を巡って口論となり、その後、取っ組み合いのけんかになったということです。たまたま機内に乗り合わせた警察官が仲裁に入ったため、大事には至りませんでした。この航空会社では乗客に常にマスクの着用が義務付けられていますが、騒ぎを起こした乗客はフェースシールドを着用していたもののマスクをしておらず、トラブルになったとみられています。 There is another brawl over wearing a mask. Two passengers had a conflict on an LCC (low-cost carrier) airliner heading from Arizona to Utah in the United States. The two argued over wearing a mask, and then became a brawl. A police officer who happened to be on the airplane came in between and calmed down the matter. The airline requires all passengers to wear masks at all times, but it is believed that the passenger was involved in the fight because he wore face shields but not a mask under the face shield. -
2020-09-09
Smoke over the Pacific Northwest
Flying from Portland to San Francisco on September 9th, the skies below were visibly smoky. It was hard to distinguish normal fog from smoke from the fires, but two huge plumes of smoke can be seen in the time-lapse. The air smelled like smoke when I took off from Portland, but was much worse in San Francisco- the sky was orange and visibility was greatly reduced. -
2020-09-25
Avoiding Sickness while Traveling
I’m sitting in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport waiting for my flight to go to Chicago Midway airport while I’m geared up like doctor. I have my goggles on I purchased for my biology labs in college and my black face mask. I’m going to be seeing family, and much of my family is very old. I feel guilty being roped into going but I have to go. I’ve seen many people take off their masks for no apparent reason and I’m essentially blind because my goggles keep fogging. If there’s any obvious errors in this, that’s why. -
2020-09-03
Fewer planes and much less noise
I was offered a job at Arizona State University at the last minute. How last minute? I had already started teaching on campus in my previous position when I got the official offer. We moved to Tempe, AZ in the offseason. The rental market was full of pricey AirBnBs, but not a lot of homes for rent. I have two kids and a dog, so we set our sights on a house. I also wanted to be close to ASU, preferably walking distance, but I knew that was a big ask. We did, however, find a home. It’s walking distance to Rio Salado, downtown Tempe, and ASU. The catch is that it’s in the flight path for the Phoenix airport. When a plane flies overhead it sounds like a long, dull roar. It’s so loud you can’t hear yourself talk or talk to anyone around you (if you’re outside). Before COVID, the planes flew in and out of the airport like taxis. I counted how often they flew overhead, and it was about every 54 seconds for most of the day. Sometimes it felt so loud you didn’t want to sit outside. Post-March, however, everything has slowed way down. There are fewer planes, and that means we sit outside a lot more and enjoy our outside space. I recorded the sound of a plane passing overhead while I hung up laundry to dry. It gives a sense of how long the sound takes over the area.