Batbay – delighted to help. I’d like to post more along these lines but I don’t want to be considered a bore!

Bhoy – thanks for reminding me of one of my most favourite moments of television…and how relevant your quote!

There are times when I like to let a thread run for a while before I make a comment and this has been the case with the age concern mentioned in this thread. I think it is very easy to say ground all old aircraft as a knee jerk reaction but the reality is more complex than that. An airline is only as good as its engineering department. I would rather fly on a 30+ year old but well maintained jet than a brand new jet operated by some third world regions with dubious line maintenance programs. I know of an outfit that has 5 ex-Russian operated 757’s. The Russian operator obtained the airframes new but there is no known maintenance record for this period of time. The new operator accepted the 5 aircraft on condition that Boeing did a complete inspection on these aircraft before taking up the leases, which they did and now the aircraft are maintained to UK CAA standards. Now if I had to chose whether I’d rather fly on them now or when they were Russian…

regards
wys