Nice video! It's always a pleasure taking off from SFO on a trans-Pacific flight and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. :-) I also love to listen to United's ATC radio channel.
Nice video. KSFO is a cool airport to fly in and out of. One of the few airports built during the 1920's in the US that are still in operation (Thanks to the scarcity of land in the bay area).
I had that experience on an Air New Zealand 747 flight from San Francisco to Auckland about 5 years back before they had 777s. But when I flew from Sydney back to San Francisco on a United 747 there were televisions on (I was in Business class anyway by a stroke of luck) and it was the best flight ever :P. Once United gets their 787s and A350s you can probably forget about being uncomfortable.
A unique feature onboard United Airlines is "Channel 9" - From the Cockpit. On pilot discretion, the particular channel on the Inflight audio system will allow you listen to the pilot communicate with air traffic control.
It's called United Airlines Channel 9. It's a feature that only United Airlines have. When you tune into Channel 9 on the audio, you can hear tower chatter.
All of the 7 flights I have been on this year have had good ol channel 9. Headed to Singapore in a couple of weeks, I hope they have it on all 6 flights during that trip.
I loved the fact that United lets you listen to the radio traffic. You can hear when hes gonna bank hard or slow down so you (I) don't freak out. Alto its up to the captin to turn it on. I just landed at SFO a week ago and as soo as the nose was on the ground he started swurving back and forth real bad while on the breaks... i thought we we gonna roll over.
Super vid. I see that you took off from runway 28R and it appeared that the plane was heading due northwest slightly to Asia. I am a MS simmer and am very familiar with San Francisco Intl. Have also flown in and taken off from KSFO on about 8-10 occasions. Thanks for sharing!
I noticed on an ITVV video on the 747-400 that the crew did not use the 'heavy' designation after takeoof at Heathrow. They only started using it over North America. (destination San Francisco)
I've done the SFO-Heathrow flight many times and I distinctly remember that the right turn usually has us banking over the GG Bridge. The plane in this video showed no signs of making the turn, so I think it's reasonable to assume it was a trans-Pacific flight.
The suffix "Heavy" is used throughout the world. It tells the controllers that they must add extra spacing behind you to account for the more severe wake turbulence you cause.
I've flown United 90, the plane taking off after this one to PHL Boeing 757. It lost part of the control surface on the port side wing at take off and had to return back to SFO. The runway was lined with emergency vehicles that follwed us to the gate. That was in June 2004. Pretty scary.
It's also used by airlines typically when a flight is a continuation with a change of aircraft at some point. Typically the flights by United to Asia from the West Coast, and to Europe from the East Coast, start as a domestic flight with another aircraft. To avoid potential conflict should the domestic leg be in flight at the same time as the International, United has its Flight Dispatchers add the Heavy label to the long haul flight plan, even if it isn't actually heavy.
Konrad, if the passengers heard anything on there that was truly distressing it's likely they would not have much time afterwards to worry about it. :)
Where was this flight to? Given the type of aircraft, the direction you were flying and that its UAL my guess would be either, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Osaka, or possibly Hawaii. Which one?
i flew heathrow to san francisco on a united 747 and most of the time was listening to the pilot chat on channel 9 on the seats heasdset,was fun to hear some of the cock-ups that go on!air control was going mental with a 737 doing an econ decent,control said "what the hell is an econ descent,speed up!" to the pilot!he was causing an approach pile-up almost.
heavy is an air traffic control term used for widebody jets mainly for wake turbulence separation purposes. other aircraft should know if "heavies" are in their glide path in order to avoid wake turbulence during landing or takeoff. Under ICAO rules, a light aircraft needs a 10 nautical mile takeoff separation from an A380.
You are correct that "3 point 7" refers to 3,700' altitude. It is sloppy and incorrect but commonly used phraseology. It should be "passing 3 thousand 7 hundred for 6 thousand".
Forgive my ignorence here people but what was that planes destination? It looked like it was heading out over the pacific and when they refer to the plane as "heavy" what does that mean? Is it the size of the aircraft or that it is fully loaded? Or something entirely different.
