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## The solution to NYC’s airport woes?

Gothamist calls it “almost certainly a Swiftian satire,” but there’s something striking about the Manhattan Airport Foundation’s “plan” to convert New York’s long underused Central Park into the closest in on close-in airports.

There are already aviation buffs out there saying “oh please, oh please” — if only to experience an approach that would rival runway 13 at Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport.

## Sunday stumper: optimizing your run from one end of the terminal to the other

Suppose you are trying to get from one end A of a terminal to the other end B.  (For simplicity, assume the terminal is a one-dimensional line segment.)  Some portions of the terminal have moving walkways (in both directions); other portions do not.  Your walking speed is a constant $v$, but while on a walkway, it is boosted by the speed $u$ of the walkway for a net speed of $v+u$.  (Obviously, given a choice, one would only take those walkways that are going in the direction one wishes to travel in.)  Your objective is to get from A to B in the shortest time possible.

1. Suppose you need to pause for some period of time, say to tie your shoe.  Is it more efficient to do so while on a walkway, or off the walkway?  Assume the period of time required is the same in both cases.
2. Suppose you have a limited amount of energy available to run and increase your speed to a higher quantity $v'$ (or $v'+u$, if you are on a walkway).  Is it more efficient to run while on a walkway, or off the walkway?  Assume that the energy expenditure is the same in both cases.
3. Do the answers to the above questions change if one takes into account the various effects of special relativity?  (This is of course an academic question rather than a practical one.  But presumably it should be the time in the airport frame that one wants to minimise, not time in one’s personal frame.)

[H/T: Greg Mankiw]

## Friday fun: “Aviation Dally”

Brett Snyder of the Cranky Flier has put up a variation on Aviation Daily‘s annual satire issue, which has sadly been canceled this year. At any rate, you can enjoy some first-rate aviation in-jokes here. Sample headlines: “American Pilots Fight for Return to 1934 Wages with Adjustments,” “US Airways to Charge Passengers for Smooth Landings,” and my favorite thus far, a highly expletive-redacted “Ryanair Files Latest Lawsuit – Against Itself.” Brett promises to be adding to it in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

## LOL Boeing

Lately, I’ve been reading LOLFed — the fun way to stay on top of the financial crisis. Today, on the heels of the leaking of Airbus’s dossier on the Boeing 787 and yet another round of 787 delays (deliveries pushed to 2010), LOLFed “reports” on some advice for Boeing chief James McNerny: “McNerney, upon calling his predecessor Alan Mulally for advice, received the suggestion that he taxi a 787 from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and ask Congress if they could spare a couple bucks to help the process along.”

## Friday fun: Mary Worth dreads the TSA, too!

One of the blogs I read for fun is the Comics Curmudgeon, whose author, Josh Fruhlinger, has a love/hate relationship with the daily funnies (or not-so-funnies). Today, Mary Worth — a comic I shunned as boring in my childhood, only later to realize that it is boring for adults, too — takes on airport security and New York City air traffic congestion:

Would Mary be in favor of congestion pricing, I wonder?

## I didn’t think Alitalia had a prayer. . . .

. . . but they apparently have advocates in high places.

(H/T: Things with Wings)