For those looking for more detail (such as it is), the page in wikipedia is entitled "Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport"; the previous name of Uplands is fairly well hidden.
@@llearch I went ahead and added a few details and primary sources/reports to that Wikipedia article. Funny how little the incident is (was) mentioned there.
A previous video Tom felt Very Old from them all being born in 98 (except Tana who was 97). As someone who was _also_ born in 98, A. reminder that we are 26 years old, and B. Yeah. Fair enough lol
2:53 "It's not that far north" There goes that famous America/Europe latitude thing again. Ottawa is only about as far north as Venice, roughly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole.
Right yeah, hard for the brain to parse. They get better light than us, but the temperatures aren't as good because they're west of the gulf stream. Or something like that
It's worse than this - they are talking about light, not weather, and in August. Even if it was at the North Pole, there'd be more light if anything in August.
What's funny is that this happened again in Brazil in 2012. A low supersonic pass by some Mirage fighters shattered many of the windows on their supreme court building. It was a viral video back in the day. Humans never learn, it seems! Making jets go BOOM BOOM is just too much fun. "I'm gonna go sooo fast..."
My initial thought (once I, too, metagamed the “light and airy” comment) was that there was so much glass that it created one of those “death ray” type scenarios where it reflected all the sunlight into a single location-in this case, I guessed it would have been the primary runway, so any pilots coming in would be blinded by the sun’s reflection.
I have no concept of how cold it is in August in Ottowa so I thought the plane slid on ice right into the light and airy terminal bc he didn't stop soon enough not being able to see the brand new clean glass façade
Wait until winter... Montreal and Ottawa are forever finding out that their normal climate is outside of engineering tolerances. Montreal once took delivery of a whole bunch of hybrid busses whose batteries failed entirely below -20C. That's a temperature we reach several times every single year. They eventually got fixed, but it was chaos the first time it happened.
FYI: The F104 starfighter is a fairly small plane with short stubby wings (google indicates wingspan of 20 feet). But they were wicked fast. First operational in 1958, so August 1959 is consistent. Yeah, and of course, they were doing a rehearsal. And it was a low-level flight over a non-operational airport. So they probably weren't *too* super-concerned about staying below the sound barrier, so the pilot probably just punched it for the low-level pass and got a bit fast. Oy. Youch. I hope no one was hurt, and I hope the pilot's career survived.
If you want to get a bit grim, I'd argue that being a starfighter pilot was punishment enough for the pilot. Those stubby wings and general sleek design meant that its stall speed was only slightly below its landing speed. Consequently, a *lot* of pilots ended their careers in a fireball of starfighter parts.
Lucky the plane didn't crash into the building. The Widow Maker was immortalised in the the concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters by Robert Calvert (often in Hawkwind) - the plaintive "Catch a falling Starfighter" being the most memorable song for me, though the much more upbeat songs like "Ejection" and "Widow Maker" are fun.
Yes indeed; the F-104 Starfighter was not large but it was very, very fast; it was just the thing if what you wanted to do is go very fast in a straight line. It wasn't as dangerous as some legends make it out, but it was a plane that rewarded the skilled pilot and wasn't a flexible do-anything airframe. It was designed as a fast interceptor and was the right tool for that job.
Definitely not a big plane. Just very fast. A similar incident happened (I think) in the 1960s at USAFA. A couple of planes went supersonic while doing a flyby and blew out lots of windows.
Thought that was going to be what this one was about. I was going to say it'd be more like "How To Never Open an Airport", but looks like they finally got it open in 2020.
yes, probably every German is now laughing and saying "the opening of the airport was delayed by one whole year? how cute! - the opening of our new airport near Berlin was delayed by more than 8 years"
@@robertk1701 yeah, i actually live in berlin so i can attest that yes, it is open (finally) xD it is pretty nice though it doesn't nearly have the scale that the airport of a nation's capital should have, imo, and it's being hit really hard efficiency-wise by outdated procedures and lack of airport staff. still, i like the decor and the vibes 😸
I am not a native, so when you mentioned, in a very matter-of-fact way "light and airy", I was a bit confused as to what it meant. I even wondered if it was some kind of very Brit saying, like "tired and emotional".
My first thought was "oh it's like Denver International Airport where the terminal is a literal tent" (above the Lizard Bunker guarded by Blucifer) but when they got to the actual definition of "light and airy" I realized I have actually heard this before. Super good question though!
"The great ribbon shortage of 1969" sounds like something I would hear about from TechDiff. To be fair, Sabrina with her description of the plane flying by, would be a great guest on TechDiff. Also, "this is so classic Ottawa" --> not only Ottawa, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport had it worse - if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be opened in 2011/12, but failed some acceptance tests (something to do with fire alarms or fire suppression, they did not know which alarm is which section, or something, and then they found out that the whole electrical cabling of the airport is a mess and no one knows what is what...). Then they were hoping to fix the things in short time (months), but it went on for years... Then in 2018 or so (still not open), a most ridiculous problem - all the years that the airport was "completed" but not open, they had several hundreds screens on, so they began to fail after 7 (or so) years of being on, and needed replacing... That was when I heard of this airport, it was quite a story in the news at the time...
How many Canadians spent this entire video yelling "It's in AUGUST, for f**k sake!! It's not going to be cold or dark, or have ice! ……Okay well probably not cold with ice anyway…"
4:10 F-104? Big? It was one of the smallest fighters made of the jet age. One of its nicknames was the "missile with a man in it". Others were "widowmaker" and "flying coffin".
Immortalised in the the concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters by Robert Calvert (often in Hawkwind) - the plaintive "Catch a falling Starfighter" being the most memorable song for me, though the much more upbeat songs like "Ejection" and "Widow Maker" are fun.
"big" is relative - sure in comparison to military aircraft, but in relation to pedestrians that typically think a car with four doors is 'large'... Also it's STILL a supersonic aircraft, which is the factor at hand here. *Acoustically*, military aircraft - especially in that 'transsonic' era - have a large effect things in that way.
I am thoroughly confused, I was sure I heard this question if not on Lateral then on Tom's video, but I can't find it :( There was even talk that that ceremony organisers asked pilot to showoff and fly really close to airport, and he did.
I thought it would be designed to stay breezy and not get stagnant air, and when they opened the doors it became a wind tunnel and blew out the windows.
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse airport opening than Wellington NZ, I guess I was wrong. During the Wellington opening airshow: - 4 Vampires got lost in cloud during a high-speed dive and ended up 3 meters off the ground. - A Sunderland made an unscheduled touch and go landing (its a flying boat, there are no wheels, but there was a large hole in the hull afterwards). - A Vulcan bomber clipped the end of the runway ripping off one landing gear and puncturing the fuel tanks.
Let’s add trains that don’t run, buses that can’t climb hills or stay on the road when the wind blows, roads that suddenly open up and swallow cars, the list goes on.
Wel I heard of a skyscraper in Moscow during Ussr that had no elevators nor stairs, a multi level dorm in Buffalo NY with no bathrooms, they had to turn the elevators into bathrooms, so there is/was no elevators. Also in Clinton NY or near by an elemetery school tha had a room with no doorway in. I heard that in the '70's.
For anyone wondering, the figure given near the end of the explanation, adjusted for inflation and with the corrected year of 1959, is roundabout 3 million of today's dollars. Whether that's canadian or US I can't say.
Good catch on the canal Tom :) Also very funny (and sad) to see that our many transit woes have managed to make it across the pond, and all over the internet. Their video on Ottawa for those of us interested: ua-cam.com/video/V3yXSD2O95E/v-deo.html
The funniest thing about this situation is that allegedly... (spoilers) . . . . . . . . Everyone was supposed to pack up and go home at the end of the day having finished the rehearsals, but it was an Canadian official speaking from the tower who requested for the pilot of the F104 to do something "special" before they landed. They were this close to succeeding with the rehearsals, but that one maneuver literally cost them an entire year.
Here in Germany they were called "Witwenmacher" (= widow maker) because of the high number of Starfighter pilots that crashed and died during training flights. Speaking of Canadian F-104 Starfighters: One day in the early 1980s, a Canadian starfighter pilot lost control of his plane during an airshow in Frankfurt (Germany). The plane fell on a road near Frankfurt airport and killed 5 German civilians (the pilot survived thanks to his ejection seat)
They had a dedication mural commemorating the year it opened and someone pointed out that the public would be too immature about a giant '69 on the wall so they had to wait for '70 because it isn't a funny number.
There is a video on the answer in progress chanel about why north american addiction to cars, where they take trip to ottawa. Would recommend giving it a watch
Correction: question should read "August 1959".
For those looking for more detail (such as it is), the page in wikipedia is entitled "Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport"; the previous name of Uplands is fairly well hidden.
Important in a very small way, because Concorde might have been available in 1969 but not in 1959.
For those wondering, in today's money that would cost about $3,103,000 CAD ($2,294,000 USD, €2,115,000 EUR or £1,808,000 GBP)
while we're on corrections, the subtitles for Taha's last line should read "lighter and airier", not "lighter an area"
@@llearch I went ahead and added a few details and primary sources/reports to that Wikipedia article. Funny how little the incident is (was) mentioned there.
I really enjoy grandpa Tom hanging out with the local teens.
A previous video Tom felt Very Old from them all being born in 98 (except Tana who was 97). As someone who was _also_ born in 98, A. reminder that we are 26 years old, and B. Yeah. Fair enough lol
Srsly lol watching it again, its so clear that he is being constantly reminded how old he is
Like yeah, like great. He's like picking it up.
2:53 "It's not that far north"
There goes that famous America/Europe latitude thing again. Ottawa is only about as far north as Venice, roughly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole.
Right yeah, hard for the brain to parse. They get better light than us, but the temperatures aren't as good because they're west of the gulf stream. Or something like that
It's worse than this - they are talking about light, not weather, and in August. Even if it was at the North Pole, there'd be more light if anything in August.
Suuuuuuurely, Ottawa is basically the Arctic.
Moreover, August would still mean more than 12h of daylight on the Northern hemisphere, so "it's not that far south" would have made more sense. 🤔
@@ornil holy heck how did I miss that, August has almost no night here in the arctic circle. I just completely glossed over which month was mentioned
Just glad that it happened during the rehearsal and not when the airport was in use!
It'd be kind of weird to have a military jet fly so close to an actively used airport though 😅
@@GyroCannon On Opening Day tho - they'd have a 'mini air show' (and probably rethought that)
What's funny is that this happened again in Brazil in 2012. A low supersonic pass by some Mirage fighters shattered many of the windows on their supreme court building. It was a viral video back in the day.
Humans never learn, it seems! Making jets go BOOM BOOM is just too much fun. "I'm gonna go sooo fast..."
the UNESCO world heritage supreme court building
The answer shattered my expectations
My initial thought (once I, too, metagamed the “light and airy” comment) was that there was so much glass that it created one of those “death ray” type scenarios where it reflected all the sunlight into a single location-in this case, I guessed it would have been the primary runway, so any pilots coming in would be blinded by the sun’s reflection.
I have no concept of how cold it is in August in Ottowa so I thought the plane slid on ice right into the light and airy terminal bc he didn't stop soon enough not being able to see the brand new clean glass façade
@@agustinvenegas5238 August in Ottawa probably means t-shirt weather. 25°C and up. They get MORE sun in August than almost any other month.
"But I don't see what the problem is--it's just lighter and airier."
I don't think he's wrong here.
Wait until winter...
Montreal and Ottawa are forever finding out that their normal climate is outside of engineering tolerances. Montreal once took delivery of a whole bunch of hybrid busses whose batteries failed entirely below -20C. That's a temperature we reach several times every single year. They eventually got fixed, but it was chaos the first time it happened.
FYI: The F104 starfighter is a fairly small plane with short stubby wings (google indicates wingspan of 20 feet). But they were wicked fast. First operational in 1958, so August 1959 is consistent.
Yeah, and of course, they were doing a rehearsal. And it was a low-level flight over a non-operational airport. So they probably weren't *too* super-concerned about staying below the sound barrier, so the pilot probably just punched it for the low-level pass and got a bit fast.
Oy. Youch. I hope no one was hurt, and I hope the pilot's career survived.
If you want to get a bit grim, I'd argue that being a starfighter pilot was punishment enough for the pilot.
Those stubby wings and general sleek design meant that its stall speed was only slightly below its landing speed.
Consequently, a *lot* of pilots ended their careers in a fireball of starfighter parts.
Lucky the plane didn't crash into the building. The Widow Maker was immortalised in the the concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters by Robert Calvert (often in Hawkwind) - the plaintive "Catch a falling Starfighter" being the most memorable song for me, though the much more upbeat songs like "Ejection" and "Widow Maker" are fun.
Yes indeed; the F-104 Starfighter was not large but it was very, very fast; it was just the thing if what you wanted to do is go very fast in a straight line.
It wasn't as dangerous as some legends make it out, but it was a plane that rewarded the skilled pilot and wasn't a flexible do-anything airframe. It was designed as a fast interceptor and was the right tool for that job.
Definitely not a big plane. Just very fast.
A similar incident happened (I think) in the 1960s at USAFA. A couple of planes went supersonic while doing a flyby and blew out lots of windows.
*laughs in Berlin Brandenburg Airport*
Thought that was going to be what this one was about. I was going to say it'd be more like "How To Never Open an Airport", but looks like they finally got it open in 2020.
@@robertk1701yep, silently during covid when no one was traveling, which no one could have expected to be financially bad
Willy Brandt bitteschön
yes, probably every German is now laughing and saying "the opening of the airport was delayed by one whole year? how cute! - the opening of our new airport near Berlin was delayed by more than 8 years"
@@robertk1701 yeah, i actually live in berlin so i can attest that yes, it is open (finally) xD
it is pretty nice though it doesn't nearly have the scale that the airport of a nation's capital should have, imo, and it's being hit really hard efficiency-wise by outdated procedures and lack of airport staff. still, i like the decor and the vibes 😸
I am not a native, so when you mentioned, in a very matter-of-fact way "light and airy", I was a bit confused as to what it meant. I even wondered if it was some kind of very Brit saying, like "tired and emotional".
No, but sometimes "breezy" is a euphemism for "short / revealing clothing".
My first thought was "oh it's like Denver International Airport where the terminal is a literal tent" (above the Lizard Bunker guarded by Blucifer) but when they got to the actual definition of "light and airy" I realized I have actually heard this before.
Super good question though!
In my head now there's Bill Wurtz's voice singing 'At the airport terminal / it's light and airy' in a loop now. Great job me.
That makes two of us now. Thanks for that.
"The great ribbon shortage of 1969" sounds like something I would hear about from TechDiff.
To be fair, Sabrina with her description of the plane flying by, would be a great guest on TechDiff.
Also, "this is so classic Ottawa" --> not only Ottawa, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport had it worse - if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be opened in 2011/12, but failed some acceptance tests (something to do with fire alarms or fire suppression, they did not know which alarm is which section, or something, and then they found out that the whole electrical cabling of the airport is a mess and no one knows what is what...). Then they were hoping to fix the things in short time (months), but it went on for years... Then in 2018 or so (still not open), a most ridiculous problem - all the years that the airport was "completed" but not open, they had several hundreds screens on, so they began to fail after 7 (or so) years of being on, and needed replacing...
That was when I heard of this airport, it was quite a story in the news at the time...
When Tom said "1969" and before he said there wasn't any "major stuff happening around that time", I thought of the FLQ lol
The answer really took off
No it didn't. The airport's closed.
Tom, whilst there is a canal in Ottawa, called the Rideau Canal, there is also the Ottawa River that runs by/through the city.
But it is the Canal that doubles as a skating rink.
How many Canadians spent this entire video yelling "It's in AUGUST, for f**k sake!! It's not going to be cold or dark, or have ice! ……Okay well probably not cold with ice anyway…"
As soon as Sabrina said it I remembered this story from a history class or something. Well done that was a good one!
4:10 F-104? Big? It was one of the smallest fighters made of the jet age. One of its nicknames was the "missile with a man in it".
Others were "widowmaker" and "flying coffin".
Immortalised in the the concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters by Robert Calvert (often in Hawkwind) - the plaintive "Catch a falling Starfighter" being the most memorable song for me, though the much more upbeat songs like "Ejection" and "Widow Maker" are fun.
"big" is relative - sure in comparison to military aircraft, but in relation to pedestrians that typically think a car with four doors is 'large'...
Also it's STILL a supersonic aircraft, which is the factor at hand here. *Acoustically*, military aircraft - especially in that 'transsonic' era - have a large effect things in that way.
I really wish they would put the whole video of the podcast up.
As someone who lives in Ottawa, that checks out
I am thoroughly confused, I was sure I heard this question if not on Lateral then on Tom's video, but I can't find it :( There was even talk that that ceremony organisers asked pilot to showoff and fly really close to airport, and he did.
I thought it would be designed to stay breezy and not get stagnant air, and when they opened the doors it became a wind tunnel and blew out the windows.
Plit twost - Pilot later admits to simultaneously playing his Celine Dion album at full blast in the cockpit . . . : )
It's that Gundam's "HAHA I'm a GENIUS!" "oH NO!!" meme
I really really hope there's some archive film of this lurking somewhere on the internet.
If I find any I'll post a link to below.
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse airport opening than Wellington NZ, I guess I was wrong.
During the Wellington opening airshow:
- 4 Vampires got lost in cloud during a high-speed dive and ended up 3 meters off the ground.
- A Sunderland made an unscheduled touch and go landing (its a flying boat, there are no wheels, but there was a large hole in the hull afterwards).
- A Vulcan bomber clipped the end of the runway ripping off one landing gear and puncturing the fuel tanks.
The blackbird did this to a lot of windows in Toronto. Ever since that incident, all airshows across the world don't allow sonicbooms.
that shot from the old top gun film too
"Permission to buzz the tower? Negative ghost rider the pattern is full"?
I live in ottawa and i feel like stuff like this happens way more than it should
Let’s add trains that don’t run, buses that can’t climb hills or stay on the road when the wind blows, roads that suddenly open up and swallow cars, the list goes on.
My favourite guest team🙌😂❤
1:00 They forgot to invite "Airy Potter" and he used magic to curse the airport.
Wel I heard of a skyscraper in Moscow during Ussr that had no elevators nor stairs, a multi level dorm in Buffalo NY with no bathrooms, they had to turn the elevators into bathrooms, so there is/was no elevators. Also in Clinton NY or near by an elemetery school tha had a room with no doorway in. I heard that in the '70's.
when i read the title i thought for sure this would be about BER Berlin Airport ;-)
Wouldn't that be "How not to build an airport"?
They read the question and my first thought was "The skylight shattered." Hilarious that it's basically my first thought X20
4:44 Tom, that "guy" is Ed Harris! ✈
This is the second one of these where I have gotten the answer just from the question lol
My guess was that in the rehearsal they found that the date on the carved foundation stone to be revealed was the next year.
For anyone wondering, the figure given near the end of the explanation, adjusted for inflation and with the corrected year of 1959, is roundabout 3 million of today's dollars. Whether that's canadian or US I can't say.
My immediate thought was "acoustics," and in a way, I was right, lol.
Initial thoughts: It uses UNIX time (epoch) which starts at January 1st 1970? So the computers would not work correctly until then.
Classic Ottawa transit indeed.
my first thought was that the rehearsal music just happened to be the same as the resonant frequencies as structures in the building
haha after you said river and before you corrected yourself, I had already gone... tom, tom. its a canal!... in my head lol. - Suzanne from Ottawa
Am I alone in never having heard "Light and airy" being used to describe a building?
...have you never had an estate agent show you a house?
@@falaise6077 No, I haven't. I'm a Gen Z American. I'm lucky I can afford an apartment.
@@wesleyevans2981 Oh I see, you live in a basement then. One day when you're rich you can move to the penthouse, I'm sure that will be light and airy
What video about Ottawa is Taha talking about? Out of curiosity.
Answer in Progress made a video about public transport in Ottawa. It's rather good.
I nearly got this. I guessed they smashed through the building with the plane lol
This happened in Brazil in 2012. A military demonstration broke the glass off the STF buildings
Good catch on the canal Tom :) Also very funny (and sad) to see that our many transit woes have managed to make it across the pond, and all over the internet.
Their video on Ottawa for those of us interested: ua-cam.com/video/V3yXSD2O95E/v-deo.html
The Ottawa transit quip after AIP did the video about public transit and chose the Ottawa LRT of all places😭😭
The funniest thing about this situation is that allegedly... (spoilers)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Everyone was supposed to pack up and go home at the end of the day having finished the rehearsals, but it was an Canadian official speaking from the tower who requested for the pilot of the F104 to do something "special" before they landed.
They were this close to succeeding with the rehearsals, but that one maneuver literally cost them an entire year.
What do you do when you run out of missiles?
A. Return to base
B. Low fly
Did anybody else come here from Tom's newsletter because you were just curious about those "bricked-up buildings"?
Taha forgot the bit scissors
I wonder if news crews were on site to film the grand opening? A photographer at least?
BER: hold my beer
I'm from Edmonton. Referring to Ottawa as "northern" in any sense is insane to me.
And there's me thinking all those light and airy windows were reflecting sunlight into the view of the landing planes
0:28 Did they test run fireworks that accidentally set it on fire?
I didn't know I had a terminal building 😂
Storm damage?
Well there go any Ottawa viewers.
With that title I thought it was going to be about Berlin's airport
The adjectives are so fragile sounding in the question lmao. I'm just guessing that a firework went wrong and it caused major structural damage.
Everyone wondering if it was too cold has clearly never experienced an August in Ottawa
I'm guessing they broke the glass panels.
If I can't have wings, you can't have windows.
It is just lighter and airier😂
5:28 subs should be "It's just lighter and airier"
F-104 Starfighter? More like F-104 Pilot Killer!
"Widow-maker" (an ACTUAL nickname for the 'rocket with a seat')
Here in Germany they were called "Witwenmacher" (= widow maker) because of the high number of Starfighter pilots that crashed and died during training flights.
Speaking of Canadian F-104 Starfighters: One day in the early 1980s, a Canadian starfighter pilot lost control of his plane during an airshow in Frankfurt (Germany). The plane fell on a road near Frankfurt airport and killed 5 German civilians (the pilot survived thanks to his ejection seat)
I thought the roof blew off.
I wouldn't really call a F-104 'big.' 'Fast,' though, it certainly was.
👍👍
My prediction before watching: They couldn't source the giant novelty scissors to cut the ribbon.
Where are the Ottawans to comment on their burns?
on Ottawa Transit? The Ottowans were tut-tut'ing Sabrina for going to easy on it. (it's a nightmare and a boondoggle)
@@matthewharris-levesque5809 ...and so much MORE, too!
It could have been worse I suppose. Starfighters had a terrible reputation for crashing when flown at low level. Just ask the Germans.
They had a dedication mural commemorating the year it opened and someone pointed out that the public would be too immature about a giant '69 on the wall so they had to wait for '70 because it isn't a funny number.
Ha! Caught out in a total lie! Tom said the year wrong, it was 1958 not '69, so your comment is total BS.
By her "classic Ottawa transit" comment, Sabrina must have had first-hand experience with OC Transpo, including its light-rail-transit woes.
There is a video on the answer in progress chanel about why north american addiction to cars, where they take trip to ottawa. Would recommend giving it a watch
Cheese
Cake
Burger
Guys it's a Canadian question.
Poutine.
Toast
@@DasGanon That's the name of a Russian dictator isn't it?
Sabrina is so pretty I'm gonna die 🙈