Over the mid-term vacation I went to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe with three friends (and a few more came through at various points during our stay) for 8 days. Zimbabwe is not exactly on the US State Department's Favorite Vacation Spots list at the moment, but Vic Falls was a safe destination within the country. If anyone is interested, the State Department's report on Zimbabwe can be found here. Despite the potential dangers faced by those who express views in any way opposing the government, people were engaged and excited to talk about their country, both its downfalls and positive aspects. Lots of interesting conversations occurred over the week and even though I've been studying Zimbabwe all semester, I learned so much in just that one week from people I met. Overall, Vic Falls was an incredible experience -- one that I will never forget.
The trip began by travelling from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and then to Vic Falls, via Air Zimbabwe (or Air Zim), an airline affectionately called by many "Scare Zim". The plane was unexpectedly small, but the flight was fine and the food was the best I've ever had on any airline.
It was far from being an improved seat. Business Class consisted of 42 seats in a 2x2x2 configuration that proved to be a very cramped seat width. Seats were old style manual operation. Seat pitch around 64inches which was ample, however the foot rest only came up 6inches which made for an impossible sleeping position. Drinks were not offered after takeoff for the over 9hour flight to Buenos Aires. Meal served on a tray with salad, roll, and dessert all at once. Entree was served cold. Breakfast was a cold sandwich with no choice of a hot entree choice. Truly a terrible business class product that I would not recommend |
Investigation attributed the cause of the fracture of the fan disk to a failure of United Airlines maintenance processes to detect an existing fatigue crack.[3] Post-crash analysis of the crack surfaces showed the presence of the penetrating fluorescent dye used to detect cracks during maintenance, indicating that the crack was present and should have been detected at a prior inspection. The detection failure arose from poor attention to human factors in United Airlines' specification of maintenance processes.
The crack in the fan disk was traced back to the Alcoa foundry from which the engine part was sourced. It turned out that there was a defect in elimination of gaseous anomalies during the purifying of the titanium disk ingot. An excess amount of nitrogen was in the material, causing a 'hard alpha inclusion' which cracked during forging and then fell out during final machining, forming a cavity with microscopic cracks at the edges. During the engine's normal running cycle, one of these cracks grew slowly each time the engine was powered up and brought to operating temperature, until it grew large enough for the disk to fail structurally. [3] Newer batches used much higher melting temperatures and a 'triple vacuum' process to eliminate these impurities.
The subsequent investigation and Airworthiness Directive also revealed several other fan disks already in service from the same batch of ingots which had started to exhibit the initial cracking symptoms of part failure.
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