One important aspect of maximizing the credit cards you carry is taking full advantage of the travel credits and other statement credits they may offer. It's not uncommon to think "I'll use that credit later," thus delaying the use of your credits.
20.11.2023 - 13:13 / afar.com
If you’ve ever taken a photo out the airplane window to brag to the folks back home that you just flew over, say, Greenland or the Grand Canyon or a particularly cool-shaped cloud, you may have noticed that there’s always a pesky pinprick of a hole at the bottom of your shot. Before you panic, yes, that hole is very much supposed to be there. Like every other inch of a commercial airplane, the window’s “bleed hole,” as it’s called, is a highly engineered and functional design detail—and it has come a long way over the past century of aviation design history. Long story short: It’s all about pressure.
When an airplane reaches cruising altitude, there’s a significant difference in pressure between the air outside and the air inside the cabin, which is pressurized to mimic the atmosphere at lower altitudes. The earliest jets had square-edged windows, and their corners took the brunt of pressure-induced stress. In fact, those corners often get blamed for a trio of deadly fuselage breakups of de Havilland Comet jets in the 1950s—though many aviation experts today argue that the windows weren’t the sole cause of the crashes. Nevertheless, jet designers began rounding off their windows into the roughly oval shapes we see today, as a way of dispersing the pressure and stress across the surface.
Later engineers improved upon the designs by constructing windows out of three layers of stretched acrylic, rather than glass: a sturdy outer one that’s designed to withstand pressure shifts as the airplane climbs tens of thousands of feet; a middle one that offers added protection in the case of an emergency; and an innermost layer, called the scratch pane, that acts as a barrier, much like your smartphone’s screen protector. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the bleed, or breather, hole cuts through the central pane.
“Aircraft cabins are pressurized to maintain a comfortable and safe environment for passengers and crew, as the air pressure at cruising altitude is much lower than at ground level,” says Munich-based pilot–turned–content creator “Captain Joe,” who you can find on Instagram and YouTube under the name @flywithcaptainjoe.
Bleed holes, Captain Joe explains, “allow for pressure equalization between the space between the panes of the window and the cabin interior. Without these holes, the pressure difference between the cabin and the space between the panes would lead to stress on the window.”
They come in especially handy during unexpected emergencies and help to keep the plane structurally sound. “In the event of an emergency that requires rapid descent or changes in cabin pressure, the bleed holes play a crucial role in preventing the cabin windows from failing,” Captain Joe explains. “If there
One important aspect of maximizing the credit cards you carry is taking full advantage of the travel credits and other statement credits they may offer. It's not uncommon to think "I'll use that credit later," thus delaying the use of your credits.
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In November, 2023, Time Out magazine named Mexico City as the #1 city in the world for culture. In the 1990s and early 2000s Mexico City, was known for smog, sprawl, and street crime, and was not usually near the top of the list of cities most international tourists wanted to visit. But, over the last ten to fifteen years, local government officials and private sector entrepreneurs have worked to spark a new wave of urban renewal and transformed the way Mexico City is seen around the world. In 2016, The New York Times listed Mexico City as its number one recommended destination to visit. While urban planners, architects, and police have all played big roles in Mexico City’s evolution, a new group of globally renowned chefs has also helped catalyze Mexico City’s transformation, and also helped boost Mexico’s soft power by elevating Mexico’s gastronomy to be more universally regarded as one of the most complex and tasty cuisines on the planet.
The Belgians love their cycling, but the Flemish worship it. The Flanders half of Belgium is laced with dedicated cycle routes carefully delineated and signposted. Whole towns close for road races. Bike sculptures lurk in fields. Posters of famous riders pepper high streets. Cycling runs deep in the culture here: that background hum you can hear? It’s the ceaseless whirr of oiled chain on metal cog.