little_details

Hello! Now this is a long one!

SETTING: In the Batman universe (specifically The Dark Knight), near/on a plane close to Gotham city. Characters involved are Batman, the Joker, and various mobster-types. The premise begins with this: a group of mobsters (previously led by mob head Maroni, who in the movie was killed by Two-Face) residing in Gotham want to send a couple of people (around two or three mobsters) to Bangkok to take care of unfinished criminal business (possibly something involving money laundering) in that area. To do this, they wish to have these people take a plane flight from Gotham City to Bangkok. In total there are the couple of passengers intended for the plane, and also some armed musclemen covering their boarding of the plane because of a tip they received about the police wanting to intercept this flight and arrest them. Little do they know, the police aren't the ones they have to worry about, it's the Joker. The Joker arrives on the scene, wanting to sabotage the mobster's plans. Then Batman swoops in. The Joker and Batman duke it out, and during their tussle, end up stepping onto the plane. Distracted with their duel, they don't realize that the plane lifted off until after the fact. Once at that point, in some desperate move, the Joker manages to trap Batman in the plane with him. Trapped together on this plan for several hours, eventually the plane runs out of fuel, and they either crash or make an emergency landing in China. 

SEARCH TERMS: cockpit, flight controls, airplane, small planes, airplane crash, plane crash survival....and with little luck! Have looked into this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-by-wire#Fly-by-wire_.28FBW.29_control_systems) Wikipedia article, but haven't been able to make heads or tails of it.


( Cut because, warning, this is an enormously long question!Collapse )

So I'm writing this story, in which a Victorian gentleman meets a post-apocalyptic assassin from the future. They're encountering each other for the first time. She's fairly strong and healthy, since she's a fighting woman and all, but she hasn't eaten all that well--food's not a certain commodity where she's from, and what there *is* often consists of military rations and canned goods--whereas he's a fairly athletic guy, but has always been well-fed.

What are some specific differences in features that they'd notice about each other, other than the general "my god, she's terrifyingly thin"? I got hollows in the cheeks for her, but I'd like a few more features. Unattractive is fine, especially for Mad Max Girl, but, since it's a romance novel, nothing that couldn't be fixed by a month or two of decent meals.

Googled "malnutrition".

This should be a simple search but my Google-fu has deserted me completely.

I'm looking for how a woman would refer to her in-laws, aunts/uncles.

Do children refer to their parents by different names dependent on their sex?

I'm trying to figure out approximately how much it would have cost to fly coach class from Laguardia or JFK to Chennai International airport (MAA) with one or two stopovers in late 1994/early 1995. I've tried searching Google for rates of inflation in air travel, but no luck.

Cheers so much, thrilled this comm exists.