Yet another aviation article where the author really has no idea what's going on.......
In latitudes near the South Pole, the prevailing winds, often called the "Roaring Forties" because of the latitude and the wind strength, generally come from the west at a minimum of 40 knots (74 kilometres an hour) but can be 100 knots-plus.
Yeah at sea level........that has nothing to do with the high level jetstream and the 100kt head winds the 777 is pushing into.
The 747 is considered so reliable it faces few restrictions on where it is allowed to fly.
No it has nothing to do with reliability it has to do with redundancy. 4 engines = four sources of electrical power and thrust etc etc. You could lose two engines........highly unlikely and still be ok. If that happened in a 777 then you are swimming.
And hence the regulation over fire suppression......it is about
redundancy.
In its certification program, Boeing flew the 777-300ER as far as 5½ hours from the nearest airport and it performed flawlessly.
Well that didn't help the United crew who shut one down just past the PNR in the middle of the night over the Pacific!!! They then flew for 192 minutes on one engine!!!
Why is it in a age where so much information is accessible to so many people a journalist cannot write an accurate article about aviation in a newspaper??