This weekend we enjoy an inflight safety briefing from a creative Southwest flight attendant, we see a new way of lighting roads being tested in the Netherlands, and Baltic Air shows us a fascinating view of how they prepare customized meals for their flights — both business and coach.
“As you know, it’s a no-smoking, no-whining, no-complaining flight. It’s a ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘you are such a good-looking flight attendant’ flight”
This creative in-flight briefing had every passenger paying attention, some perhaps for the first time. They were lovin’ it. We learn about formerly mundane equipment that is available to all Southwest passengers such as their special-issue Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. And, the flight attendant’s instructions about donning oxygen masks is priceless.
Glow in the dark roads
Anyone getting up in years knows the problems of seeing while driving at night. And, anyone who has driven on a freshly-painted road at night knows how much easier seeing the road markings setting the lanes and the edges of the road make driving. Now, a Dutch company has invented glow-in-the-dark, luminescent road paint to make driving safer for all.
Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m (0.3 mile) stretch of a highway in the Netherlands; this is just a test, and if everything goes alright, then authorities will implement them over longer and longer sections.
If this test works, the Dutch may roll out this paint technology on more roads and look into other inventions of this innovative company, Roosegarde studio.
The glow in the dark roads use hi-tech photoluminescent paint, which charges up during daylight hours before “turning on” at night.
Created by Dutch companies Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure, the roads can glow for up to 10 hours at night, reducing or even removing the need for street lighting.
The researchers have also developed a temperature-sensitive road paint which shows ice crystals when the temperature falls below freezing to warn drivers of slippery conditions.
Getting in-flight victuals from the caterer to the plane
Ever wanted to see how an airline caterer gets an airline meal to your seat? Inflight Feed, the tasty online guide to airline food, revamped its website this week and the team decided to put together a brief video on how Latvian-based airline Air Baltic gets a meal to your seat.
The video takes a look at how business and economy class meals are prepared at the airline’s catering facility, then arranged on meal trays and kept fresh all before being delivered to your flight. Air Baltic is famous for their 2013 invention of the website concept which allows economy class passengers the option to pre order up to 70 different inflight meal options up to 48 hours prior to departure.
This rather cool system allows passengers to choose whatever meal, drink and dessert they would like on their airline meal tray. You simply pick and choose exactly what you want on your meal tray and the meal is then served to you inflight as per your exact order! At their facility in Riga, their catering partner LSG make around 4,500 meals every day and the airline sells around 14,000 cups of coffee every month.
