Skylanes Flight 1981

Skylanes Flight 1981 is a location in the Commonwealth. In 2287, it is a completely smashed jet airliner.

Background
The aircraft was a flying wing design with a vertical stabilizer on each wing. There was a glass dome at the tail cone. The fuselage also housed seating as well as a cargo bay above and beneath the cabin floor. Its wingspan is so enormous that the wings themselves contain seats. The plane appears to have been powered by giant engine clusters with 4 turbojet intakes, the outer intake was for the plane's air conditioning.

This airliner was approaching Boston Airport from the west on the morning of the Great War coming in from Chicago with several passengers and crew onboard. When Boston was struck by a nuclear bomb, the shockwave of the blast critically damaged the plane and caused a complete engine failure. In desperation, the captain and first officer attempted to land the plane on the nearby highway. It instead collided with the overpass and crashed hundreds of feet away.

Since the crash, the wreckage has been picked over by generations of raiders and scavengers.

Layout
The main body of the aircraft is in a gulch between two rocky bluffs. The plane seems to have broken apart into 5 main pieces: The two wings and three fuselage sections.

The cockpit section's lower area consists of cargo and baggage areas. The cockpit section is accessible by some debris on the left side through a hole in the hull, the Sole Survivor can gain access to the passenger compartment. The left and right wing of the plane are entirely snapped off.

If the miscellaneous quest Meet Ness at the Crash Site is active, this is the site of the secret compartment Ness wishes to liberate from raiders.

This area may spawn two random opposing factions, which may attack the player character if they have a negative standing with any of them. Although, this area may also spawn hostile scavengers, raiders, super mutants and Children of Atom. The factions will respawn randomly every few days, as will the loot containers.

A Gunner outpost can be found on the collapsed highway southwest of the crash site.

Notable loot

 * Astoundingly Awesome Tales #6 in the bathroom (on top of the back of the toilet) under the cockpit.
 * Skylanes Flight 1981 recording in the cockpit. Added with picking up the flight data recorder (left to the seating, looks like a bright orange globe).
 * Skylanes smuggling manifest located in a Master-locked safe called "hidden compartment" in the cargo section under the cockpit. The hidden compartment also contains an important amount of chems, weapons, ammo and cash.
 * A variety of graphic t-shirts and Letter from Randall in a suitcase.

Companion reactions

 * Codsworth will comment "Unfortunate. The passengers could have easily survived this crash. Not so sure about the fallout," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Preston Garvey will comment "Look at that... Must have been in the air when the war started. What a way to go," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Paladin Danse will comment "This plane is amazingly intact. The pilot must have executed an impressive landing," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Piper will comment "Can't believe the shape this thing is in," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Nick Valentine will comment "No blast burns on the plane. Plenty of foreign rubble nearby. The nukes didn't take this down. That highway did," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Hancock will comment "How the hell did something this big stay airborne?" upon seeing the wreck.
 * MacCready will comment "I can't believe this airliner was stupid enough to be flying during the war," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Cait will comment "I'm bettin' we pry some good salvage out of this wreck... if the Raiders haven't gotten to it first," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Curie will comment "Surely there is a working airplane somewhere. To study the world from above would be very illuminating," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Deacon will comment "And those things flew in the air? No thanks," upon seeing the wreck.
 * X6-88 will comment "I can't think of a worse way to die," upon seeing the wreck.
 * Strong does not have a comment upon seeing the wreck.

Appearances
The Skylanes Flight 1981 appears only in Fallout 4.

Behind the scenes

 * The quad mounted engines are consistent with USAF experiments with nuclear powered turbojets in the 50's where the engines had to be close to the reactors to use the heat generated to expand the intake air.


 * The airliner's wings resemble a proposed but never built variant of Northrop Grumman's 1947 YB-49 flying wing. Both share the same long swept wings, with eight in wing turbojets as well as similar vertical stabilizer shape. The proposed civil variant has the same unusual oblong windows on the wing's leading edge and in wing seating. However, all flying wing designs have blended wings and no distinct fuselage which Flight 1981 has. A nuclear powered variant was actually in the works at the time, but never flew. There are several egregious errors and issues depicted in the crashed plane, the most obvious being the length where the wings were torn from the fuselage is nearly twice as long as the root chord of the wing. And of course casual inspection inside the wing passenger compartments reveal bare framing and no insulation or dampening material. The passengers that survived a trip would most certainly be deaf and near frozen.