Category: Aviation

Yesterday’s flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong was my first ever on Cathay Pacific, and I thought that I might post a few thoughts about it. After all, “CX” (Cathay Pacific’s IATA code) just got voted airline of the year, and where they lead others are likely to follow.
I was sitting in 66A in one of CX’s RR-powered 747-400s. If you’re going to be in coach on a CX 747, row 66 is a good choice: it’s the first row where the tapering of the fuselage causes the seats to go from 3-4-3 to 2-4-2. So I had plenty of space next to my seat, where I was able to keep my carry-on. Given that I didn’t want to put anything in the seat-back pocket (of which more anon), this was very convenient. The downside, of course, is that you can’t actually lean against the cabin wall. And of course being so far back meant that disembarking was exceptionally slow, which might have cost me an hour at the other end.
So there I was, in 66A, with a large man who tended to sprawl while sleeping sitting in 66C, and I was due to be there for 13 hours. So what could CX offer to make it enjoyable?
First, the in-flight entertainment system. Nice monitor in the seat back, with multifunction remote, and tons of content. Video-on-demand, with at least 50 different current and classic movies, plus audio, videogames, and so forth. Unlike US airlines, movies are not censored for content; it’s nice to be treated like an adult.
With all this going for it, it’s a shame that things went so badly. First, you have to use CX’s own headphones, with a unique three-pin plug. The phones are crap, and don’t block the considerable airframe noise that one gets from sitting just behind the wing. Second, the “airshow” moving map wasn’t working. And finally, I managed to completely wedge the system! About 2 hours into the flight, I was distracted by the fact that they offered that most addictive game “Bejeweled 2”. I sometimes play it on my iPhone, and I was curious how the user interface would work on the IFE handset. I played a couple of levels, then chose “Main Menu” and “Exit”, and my screen froze. The flight attendant tried twice to reset my IFE system, without success. She offered to reseat me, but there were no decent seats open.
So much for IFE. How about service? We got two meals, each with multiple choices (listed on the menu – CX still has menus in Economy!). All of the dishes were western-style; there was nothing particularly for any Chinese passengers. ((And speaking of passengers, I was struck by the different demographics of the CX flight compared with my UA trips last month. On UA, the mix was roughly 50-50 Western and Chinese. On CX, at least half of the passengers were Indian, presumably connecting at HKG to Indian flights on CX. The practical difference was that the CX flight was full of babies, small children and extremely elderly passengers. (One more reason why the CX headphones were inadequate.) )) As for the food itself, it was excellent: balanced, well presented, and tasty. The coffee and wines were just right, and the cheesecake was better than most US restaurants serve. In between meals, the water and juice kept coming at 50-60 minute intervals, and the flight attendants seemed happy to take special drink requests.
And that just leaves the seats. CX are introducing the so-called “shell seats” in Economy. The seat structure does not recline; instead the “recline” button causes the seat bottom to slide forward. The obvious benefit is that the guy in front of you can’t encroach on your space, but how well do they work? For someone like me, the answer is “not well”. I prepared for the experience by buying myself an inflatable lumbar pillow. (Some people use inflatable neck pillows for that purpose, but in my experience they aren’t firm enough.) This helped, but couldn’t make up for the uncomfortably firm seat bottom. I removed the magazines from the seat-back pocket to try to give my knees some extra space, which made things a little less cramped.
When large people sit in adjacent seats, the biggest area of conflict is not at the waist, but at the shoulder. (That’s why some airlines are looking at slightly staggered seat rows.) The good thing about the classic seat recline mechanism is that adjacent passengers can tilt their seats at different angles, reducing shoulder contact. With the shell seats, this possibility is eliminated.
The bottom line for me is that the seats in CX are so uncomfortable that I probably won’t fly them again. This is a shame, because in other respects it’s a great airline.
What of the trip itself? Boarding was well organized and accomplished quickly. We left late, and there were spells of severe turbulence, but we arrived on time. Disembarking took so long that I just missed the 7:30 ferry to Shenzhen Shekou, so I took the 8:30 boat. As I was about to get off the ferry, I realized that no-one had given me an arrival/departure card to fill in. (Who goofed? CX? The ferry crew?) Anyway, I noticed a box of various forms on the counter of the ferry snack bar, and found a blank arrival/departure card; I had just enough time to fill it in before I got to the front of the Immigration line. From there it was easy: I lined up for a red taxi (fending off all of the cowboy cabbies), gave the driver the cheat-sheet I’d prepared, focussed on my cellphone and ignored the crazy driving, and sat back until I saw the distinctive “KFC” a block from the hotel.
And here I am.

July is going to be a busy month for me. Between the 1st and 25th, I’m booked to fly nearly 18,000 miles. Here’s how the Great Circle Mapper lays it out:

I spent this morning visiting the Boeing plant in Everett and looking around the Future of Flight center. Herewith a few notes and photos, probably of interest only to hard-core aviation geeks. Click the thumbnails for full-sized images.
I got there just after 9, and was scheduled to take the 10:00am plant tour. While waiting, I checked out the exhibits and gift shop:

(Via One Mile At A Time.)

I just learned from my mother that an old friend of ours, Ken Binning, died last weekend. Ken was an extroverted, larger than life man, with a booming laugh, a firm handshake, and a slight stutter which enhanced rather than interrupting his jovial repartee. I first met him when I was a child: Ken was a colleague of my mother’s at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and we visited him, his wife Pam, and their children several times.
In 1968, when I was trying to decide how to spend a “gap year” between school and university, Ken suggested that I join him at the UKAEA. By that time he was running a small research group at Harwell, the Programmes Analysis Unit (PAU). Their mission was to perform a cost-benefit analysis of the various science and technology programmes funded by the British government, in areas such as computer technology, energy, aerospace, materials science, nuclear medicine, and atomic power. I spent a year with the PAU as a mathematical assistant, as I discussed recently. By the time I was next working at Harwell, in 1971, the Conservatives were in power, and I think the PAU had been dissolved.

From Bruce Williams, a longtime member of the FS development team at Microsoft, comes sobering news:

The cuts announced at Microsoft yesterday include closing the entire ACES studio, the group that produced Flight Simulator and related products. […] I don’t know yet if there’s any hope that the code could be spun off to a third party, but as of January 22, the most important asset–the team that has produced FS for so many years–has been disbanded.

James Fallows has more, including a couple of evocative screenshots.

I’m in the middle of planning for my next visit to Amazon global development centres. This time I’m going to Beijing and Hyderabad, departing March 8. It’ll be my second time in China, and my fourth trip to Hyderabad. (I was there in 2005 and 2006 for Sun, and 2008 and now 2009 for Amazon.) As on my last Asian trip, I’m going to take a round-the-world route to minimize the effects of jet lag:

Here’s a nice picture from my flight home on Saturday:

Don Brown runs a nice blog on Air Traffic Control issues called Get the Flick, but unfortunately he doesn’t accept comments. So instead of responding to his piece on ADS-B Intel as a comment, I’m going to have to do it here.
Here’s the problem: how do we automate the tracking of airliners on oceanic routes? The technology in use today is the same as it’s been since time immemorial: pilots are required to check in via HF radio and make a verbal position report at specified waypoints (e.g. every 10 degrees of longitude). HF radio is unreliable and noisy, and the low frequency of position updates means that the controllers have a very crude and approximate view of what’s going on.
Over land, things are much better. Every airliner carries a “Mode S” transponder which for ADS-B is enhanced so that it “broadcasts the position of the airplane (and some other stuff) to the rest of the world 60 times a minute.” (This is called an “ES” message.) But Mode S is line-of-sight only, so once an airliner is over the ocean, the signal gets lost.
Don considers the satellite option:

If we could get the data relayed through satellites then we would have universal coverage. That would be a huge boost over the oceans where we currently run wide spacing between aircraft because we don’t have radar coverage. But […] it turns out that sending data via satellites is expensive. Prohibitively so. […] That data can be sent through a satellite but it won’t be (very often) because it is so expensive. I understand it’s about $2 per position report to run it through a satellite. That would be $120 per minute if it matched the refresh rates of the GBTs. Oh, and the big catch is that the airlines pay for the satellite transmission. In other words, we won’t get a lot more position reports than we do now (via voice) over the radios.

Bummer. But then he notes that because the signal is line-of-sight:

… any other airplane that is within range will receive the signal. In other words, over the middle of the ocean, controllers won’t know where airplanes are with any great accuracy — they won’t get frequent updates from ADS-B over satellites — but the pilots will know where the other planes in range are with the same once-per-second accuracy. I see an attempt at “pilot-based separation” in the future. How about you?

Well, no, I won’t expect “pilot-based separation” (and don’t we already have that, called TCAS?) But if there are enough aircraft in the air at a time, why not use a mesh network? In the simplest approach, each aircraft could simply rebroadcast the ES messages from other aircraft in its vicinity. If that’s too chaotic, it would be relatively simple (and cheap) to add a smart mesh network appliance to each aircraft, and route the ES data over this network. The FAA has deployed ADS-B transceivers on oil rigs to extend coverage in the Gulf of Mexico, so hybrid ADS-B networks are already possible.
Having said all this, I expect satellite networking will become the preferred approach. As more and more airlines offer wireless Internet access, the cost of satellite data transfer is going to drop. (See my piece First blog entry from 34,000 ft, posted nearly three years ago. How long before the rule is “Make position report via HF or email”?) But I’m a big believer in using redundant technologies which don’t share failure modes, so mesh networked ADS may well have a future.

Over at PlaneBuzz, Holly has posted a link to an extraordinary Airbus presentation entitled “Boeing 787 Lessons Learnt.” I have no idea how long it’ll remain online before some lawyer gets it taken down, so grab it while you can. It’s a detailed engineering analysis of the problems that Boeing has had (and will continue to experience) with the 787 program. It’s obviously a must-read for those of us who follow the commercial aviation industry, but I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in distributed engineering projects.