Interesting Helicopter and Fixed-wing Facts for Center Point, AL

If you include military helicopters it is estimated that there are more than 45,000 operating worldwide. The first helicopter to achieve completely untethered flight was the Cornu in 1907 which managed to hover one foot above the ground for 20 seconds.

The Wright Brothers first acquired this land in 1910 in the hopes of opening a flying school. Their endeavor lasted only a few months, and Maxwell became a repair depot for planes in 1918. Although it was slated for closure in 1919, delays in doing so gave city leaders an opportunity to petition for new spending to be performed at the newly-named Maxwell field. As a result of the massive spending that took place, the War Department eventually decided to keep it open.

The FAA and Weather

Inclement weather, including thunderstorms, snowstorms, wind shear, icing and fog, creates potentially hazardous conditions in the nation’s airspace system. These conditions are, by far, the largest cause of flight delays. In an average year, inclement weather is the reason for nearly 70 percent of all delays. Delays translate into real costs for the airlines and the flying public. The cost to an airline for an hour of delay ranges from about $1,400 to $4,500, with the value of passenger time ranging from $35 to $63 per hour. This means that delays cost the airlines and their passengers billions of dollars each year. Each kind of inclement weather presents challenges to the FAA’s air traffic control operation, but perhaps the most disruptive are the convective storms that strike in the summer. Winter storms, while potentially dangerous, often form and move slowly. By contrast, summer storms typically form, grow and move swiftly, covering large swaths of airspace. Many start in the Ohio Valley and move east, impacting air travel in the Northeast, particularly New York. Approximately one-third of all flights in the U.S. “touch” New York, flying to or from John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty airports, connecting with those flights or transiting New York airspace, so severe weather impacting New York has a ripple down effect over the entire country.