The three Persian Gulf airlines

Quote: Pacomartin

Well that low compared to $200/hour for lawyers time. The 12 property owners affected are already in $60K, and there is no conclusion in 10 years. As far as we know the land under the bridge has not been private property since Thomas Penn died in 1775 . One of the houses was begun in 1790.

1939 aerial photo

It wouldn't be a problem, but the farm road has been destroyed, and there is no egress to the property other than the bridge.

You would still need to pay a lawyer after me ;-)

This is not my real area of expertise but as a guess I would say there is some kind of deed or ROW agreement somewhere that spells it out. Might even be from an older bridge long washed away. Once again as a guess I would think after Mr. Penn died some land was deeded to the government in return for a bridge being built.

Quote: Pacomartin

A little trivia question (which I don't know the answer to) is how far can you fly on three existing air routes?

A theoretical circumnavigation (JNB=Johannesburg) would be:
8,439 ATL-JNB DELTA
6,640 JNB-HKG Cathay Pacific
8,380 HKG-ATL Doesn't exist
23,459 total miles
94.2% of the circumference of the world

But the third leg does not exist. Cathay Pacific doesn't fly it, and Delta is flying to Hong Kong from Seattle.

So my trivia question, is there any existing three legged circumnavigations that sum to over 20,000 miles?

Actually, there is one three legged circumnavigation which is over 22K miles. Two foreign carriers. Over 40 hours in airplanes plus considerable amount of time waiting in airports.

7,970 JFK To JNB |South African Airways
6,640 JNB To HKG |South African Airways
8,050 HKG to JFK |Air China
22,660 total miles
90.7% of the circumference of the world

OMG you're still having problems with that old bridge?!

I'd need an excavator and maybe a hand or two, but for the $60k already spent I'd rebuild the damn thing myself. The abutment looks perfectly fine. Ain't nothing but some "I" beams and a concrete deck.

We're going through a similar thing here with all the flooding. Most people are content with hand wringing and pleas to the gov. Eff all that. All that does is result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of "studies" with not a finger lifted in labor. A bunch are ready to start a movement and do what needs to be done, old world style. The Army Corps of Engineers might look impressive with their giant machinery and surveyor's scopes, but this land was originally built with a shovel and a bucket brigade.

It can be done again. Ain't you got Amish nearby? They'd have it done in three days ;)

Quote: Face

We're going through a similar thing here with all the flooding. Most people are content with hand wringing and pleas to the gov. Eff all that. All that does is result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of "studies" with not a finger lifted in labor.

+26.46

If we had the government we have now in the 1930s they would still be discussing where to put Hoover Dam to this day.

The earlier photo looked to me like a rather narrow pedestrian bridge but the aerial photo makes it look like a one lane vehicular bridge.

Since the aerial photo has a notation of "mill race" there is or was at some time a mill in the area and they probably built the dam and the bridge so look for a "wild" deed with a right of way covenant in it. Or see if there are historical records of the company that built and operated the mill.

Any commemorative date stone at the approach to the bridge?

And yes, the Amish would have it done by now and be serving everyone a great big meal with every table having seven sweets and seven sours and everyone having at least two types of pie being brought to them.

If you do build a new bridge, be sure to throw three small rocks into the water before crossing it. (Gypsy tradition).

Quote: Face

OMG you're still having problems with that old bridge?!

I'd need an excavator and maybe a hand or two, but for the $60k already spent I'd rebuild the damn thing myself. The abutment looks perfectly fine. Ain't nothing but some "I" beams and a concrete deck.

The abutment seems fine. It's just the I beams were not maintained since the 1920's, and they are corroded nearly through. There is some debate over if the concrete deck will maintain integrity if the beams go through. The bridge is a single lane bridge about 12' by 30'.

For $60K we still don't know who is responsible for the bridge. I am pretty sure that someone could have rebuilt it for that cost. They keep threatening to build a bridge for $1.5 million that meets PennDOT standards and put a lien on the 13 houses.

For some reason other small bridges on the creek were turned over to a bridge division run by the county. This one was never turned over, and they don't want it now that it wasn't maintained.
Example of One lane bridge of similar age on same creek maintained by county

On Christmas morning, Etihad was offering some spectacularly cheap fares (for example: New York to Abu Dhabi for $187.) It turns out that the prices were mistakes. Etihad did what every business should always always always do when they make a mistake: they announced that they will honor the tickets. (Much to the dismay of libertarians, the U.S. government actually requires airlines to honor mistakenly low fares. This is a reasonable law, considering that airline passengers often book nonrefundable hotel reservations, car rentals, etc. after buying an airline ticket.)

Just last week I received a generous promotional email from a company I do business with, and when I attempted to redeem the promotion, the idiots refused to honor it. They said the email was only intended for new customers (which is outrageous because the text of the email explicitly mentions that the offer is intended for previous customers.) Even if the email was accidentally sent to me by mistake, they should honor the promotion. Doesn't every company want their brand name to be associated with integrity and trust? Apparently not!

We'll never know if Etihad honored the mistake because U.S. law forced them to, or because they genuinely wanted to do the right thing for their customers & brand name. But either way, some of these tickets were off by a thousand or more dollars. Sometimes doing the right thing can be very expensive.

Quote: reno

We'll never know if Etihad honored the mistake because U.S. law forced them to, or because they genuinely wanted to do the right thing for their customers & brand name. But either way, some of these tickets were off by a thousand or more dollars. Sometimes doing the right thing can be very expensive.

Well there is also the publicity of fighting the lawsuit (where the plaintiffs can argue that Etihad is violating US law).

I see they serve 6 US cities. I presume all flights are nonstop to Abu Dhabi International Airport. Even with low cost connections, I don't know how many people booked a flight to Abu Dhabi during 20 hours on Christmas.

Lawsuits and publicity can be more embarrassing than swallowing the losses quietly.

I just wonder if the prices were calculated by the navigators or pilots or what?

Persian Gulf? I thought it was Arabian Gulf?

Quote: Fleastiff

Persian Gulf? I thought it was Arabian Gulf?

The CIA maps simply say "The Gulf" as they don't want to take sides in this long running dispute.

You read about software errors where someone types in the value of a house as $10 million instead of $10 thousand and the entire budget for the town is thrown off. You wonder how hard it would be to send an alert message that sales of airline tickets are at 10X their normal rate and someone should check the fares.

In a famous case the temperature display at Three Mile Island could not display a temperature above something like 280 degrees. Higher ranges were considered impossible in normal operations. So there was no display at all which meant operators assumed that the gage was broken (not that it was massively overheating because of a stuck valve).