Training Airplane News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Tweet Pin It

150,000 pounds, the pilot that is flying the boeing, the modified 747, which is carrying it up here piggy-back style is a pilot named bill rickey, nasa aircraft operator, who has been based out of houston. mark, do you know bill? >> yeah, i do. he's one of our research pilots at johnson space center who flies the 747 but t-38 training airplane, probably flies another plane we have there. and these guys are the ones that ferry the shuttle around the country, sometimes will land the space shuttle at the edwards air force base and we have to get it back to the kennedy space center, this is the sa...

It was so exciting. were you surprised by the reaction? >> i was a little bit. i received a lot of pictures that people took with their cell phones, from washington, d.c., a lot of my wife's former colleagues sent photos of discovery flying over, a lot of excitement. >> your wife being former congress woman gabby giffords. on the plane is bill rickey, the pilot, in nasa aircraft operator is his formal title. do you know him? >> yeah, at our aircraft operations division at johnson space center we have a bunch of research pilots. he's one of those, a pilot in t-38 training airplane we use, also ...

Sensors that projected, was the plane going too slow. if those sensors aren't working correctly. as you mentioned the pilots aren't getting the best information. once you take off those auto pilot systems why would this pilot be going higher? to escape the turbulence? >> to answer your first question, why he would go higher, possibly to try to get out of the turbulence. but at that altitude the air lean doesn't have -- the airplane doesn't have a lot of left because it was heavy. so that wouldn't have had much of an effect. but as far as why the airplane stopped flying. it's just like we do in...