Category: Aviation

From my favourite pilot’s blog ((Well worth bookmarking – only one or two posts a week, but always with a nice photograph.)), Flight Level 390: See what happens when you try to manoeuvre 75 tons of A320 ((“Fi-Fi” to her friends.)) on a sheet of ice:

After we loaded 150 passengers and bags, the tug crew pushed our aircraft shaped iceberg back while the co-pilot started number one engine. Ground control cleared us to taxi to the ice pad. As I advanced number one throttle, Fi-Fi slowly slid on the icy ramp in the direction of the thrust vector. Ooops! Not good… We are forced to start number two for symmetrical thrust. Slowly, very slowly, I taxied to the Ice Man’s ramp which was full of airliners being sprayed with hot de-icing fluid. Ice Man, actually a woman, asked us to proceed to spot #9 and configure the aircraft for de-icing fluid. Then, in a last second change of plans, she asked us if we could proceed to spot #7. I turned the nose wheel left but Fi-Fi kept going straight.
“Tell her we can’t accept spot #7.”

No kidding.

Regular readers will know that I have a longstanding interest in transportation, particularly buses and airliners, and that I built up sizeable collections of models of each kind. Most of these are now packed away (( I’d actually like to figure out how to sell them, but eBay feels so laborious.)) but occasionally I pick up a new item. And so this week I added a new airliner model to my collection, and I have to say that it’s the best small-scale replica I’ve ever seen.

(Click to enlarge.)
It’s a 1/200 scale model of a British Airways A320 by Gemini Jets. It’s one of their new “Gemini 200” range, and the level of detail that they’ve achieved is amazing. All of the antennas and warning lights are there; the engines have detailed metal fan blades; the undercarriage uses rubber tyres and the nosegear steers. And somehow ((Yes, I know, cheap Chinese labour.)) they’ve kept the price under $60. The closest I’ve seen to this in quality is the Herpa Premium line, where a 1/200 Boeing 737-300 costs around $300.
So I suspect I may be adding a couple more Gemini 200 aircraft to my collection. There’s a Monarch A321, and an American 737-800…..

From the BBC:

British Airways has placed an order for 34 new aircraft – the largest the airline has made since 1998.
The airline is buying 12 Airbus A380 superjumbos and 24 Boeing 787s. It also has options for a further seven A380s and 18 of the 787 planes.

Now that BA has made the move to the A380, which of the US airlines will be the first to crack? My guess is United, for their trans-Pacific routes.

I just checked in online for my brief trip to California tomorrow. I’m flying down to Oakland, where I’ll be meeting other family en route to Carmel, CA. Overnight in Carmel, back home to Seattle on Sunday evening. I may not bring a laptop; just a camera, and my Sony PSP (with Brave Story: New Traveler loaded.)
I’m flying on Alaska Air. I think that this is the first time since about 1987: ((Wrong: I flew SEA-SJC in 2004. Oh, well.)) Barry Folsom and I were visiting the Sun headquarters in Mountain View, discussing the 386i project, and we had to make a side trip to Seattle, to talk to Microsoft about running DOS apps on the Roadrunner. I seem to remember that the Alaska DC-9 in which we flew had elastic netting baggage racks instead of overhead bins, and a huge placard on the cockpit door describing the fact that it was leased from some finance company!

From BBC NEWS

Heathrow Airport is still trying to clear a backlog of thousands of bags following last week’s terror alerts.
Despite extra staff being brought in, the system is “under considerable strain”, with about 23,000 bags handled a day, British Airways (BA) said…
BA said could be days before the owners were reunited with their baggage.

Indeed. 36 hours after I landed at Seattle, minus my bag, the WorldTracer system reports that it is still being traced:

Most of the contents of the bag would be easy to replace – clothing (including a bunch of geek t-shirts), toiletries, a couple of books. There’s a first edition of my mother’s book about the Windscale accident, and the charging cradle for my digital camera. (That explains why I haven’t published some of the photos I took.) And I bought my first ever Oasis album; I was browsing round Tesco’s in Abingdon, looking (unsuccessfully) for noise-cancelling headphones for Lorna, and I came across the double CD “best of” Oasis for £5. Easy come, easy go. At least I still have the bottle of single cask 16 year Laphroiag which I bought at Heathrow…

Two weeks ago I blogged about the fact that Air Canada had lost my bag between Seattle and Dublin. I wrote:

I was trying to remember the last time this happened. It might have been that terrible trip that I took in the mid-1990’s, when British Airways managed to lose the same bag twice! (The first time when I was flying from Heathrow to Stockholm, the second when I was flying from Lyon to Heathrow a few days later.)

Today, I got to Heathrow nice and early. I checked in, dropped off my bag ((double-checking that it wasn’t too early – if bags stay in the system beyond a certain time limit, they get “embargoed”, which sounds bad.)), and several hours later I boarded a 747-400 to fly home. 8 hours and 46 minutes after take-off, we landed in Seattle; after I’d deplaned ((ugly term)) and cleared Immigration, I went down to the baggage carousel. After a few minutes, I heard them paging half a dozen passengers, including me.
Yup. British Airways had left my bag in London.
I was really looking forward to blogging about how well this trip had gone, especially the final Saturday. But right now I think I need…

• a litre of cold water
• some real (i.e. non-airline) food, and
• a stiff drink

… in that order.

I have an interesting trip coming up this week. On Friday I’ll fly from Seattle to Toronto, and thence to Dublin. I’ll be working at Amazon.com‘s Dublin facility from the 25th to the 28th, and on the 29th I’ll fly to Edinburgh. I’ll spend July 2nd and 3rd at the Amazon development centre in South Queensferry (where hopefully the weather will be better than my last visit!). Then on the Fourth of July, I’ll drive down from South Queensferry to Oxford, where I’ll spend a few days visiting my mother. ((Hopefully I’ll get to see Alec – and perhaps Jeff.)) And on the following Sunday I’ll brave the horrors of Heathrow and fly back to Seattle.
I’ll be flying on three different airlines:

• Air Canada for SEA-YYZ-DUB. This will be my first trip on AC, and also the first time in six years since I’ve flown across the Atlantic in something as small as a 767.
• Aer Lingus for DUB-EDI, I have fond memories of EI. My very first flight was LHR-DUB in an Aer Lingus Viscount, back in 1960. (We were going on holiday to a farm in Donegal, and my mother took it into her head to fly to Dublin and drive up to Fanad.) And then on July 9, 1998 I flew DUB-BOS in an EI A330; for some reason I got upgraded, and it was possibly the best transatlantic flying experience I’ve ever had.
• British Airways for LHR-SEA. What can I say? When they’re good, they can be great… but in recent years that’s been the exception rather than the rule. At least it’s a direct flight.

I’m presently in the RCC at Denver Airport, waiting for my flight home to Seattle. The flight from Boston was “interesting”, to put it euphemistically. As we approached Denver from the northeast, there was a wall of severe thunderstorms ahead of us. A couple of flights managed to slip through a gap, but everybody else coming from the east was routed south, flying right along the storm front, until we were south of Pueblo, CO(!). This caused lots of grumbling from the pilots (channel 9 was buzzing), and several flights were close to declaring fuel emergencies. (Or perhaps they were just trying to pressure the ATC folks.)
It was a good weekend in the Boston area, especially the opportunity to take my grandson, Tommy, to both the zoo and a farm. Best moment was when a silverback gorilla lumbered up and sat down next to Tommy, separated only by a sheet of glass…..

I’ve noticed a lot of impressions of this Flash web ad for a well known bank:

Obviously they are trying to reassure their customers: “Emigration is a stressful process; let us relieve you of some of that stress.” What caught my eye was the choice of graphic. The airliner sweeping in to land is clearly a Tu-154, a Russian airliner flown mostly by airlines in Russia and other CIS countries. It’s a notoriously uncomfortable plane to fly in, and both the airliner and the airlines that operate it have questionable safety records.
So why would you use this in an advertisement that was intended to reassure? ((Of course the most likely explanation is that they had the artwork done by an agency operating in a country where the Tu-154 is the most common type of airliner.))

Patrick is writing about us! Me and the thousands of airliner geeks that hang out at airliners.net, and subscribe to Airliner World (and even Airports of the World). We listen to channel 9, and some of us even prefer to fly on United for that reason. We know about Passur’s Airport Monitor (and wish it was available at our local airport). We have been known to kibitz at PPruNe. We probably have one or two (or two hundred!) models from Dragon Wings, Gemini Jets, or Herpa on our bookshelves. We loved Pushing Tin, and when we watched United 93 we were humbled and impressed by the way that it captured the gestalt of commercial flying and the heroism of the moment – but we were also distracted by the anachronistic details. We all have our favourite photographs of airliners, as well as our personal stories.
Thanks, Patrick.