This is my first (and possibly last!) attempt at a trip report. I have included a load of photos but I will state now that I am no photographer. My camera is a compact and a good one at that but I am basically a taker of snapshots. They are included for the subject matter, not for artistic reasons.
22 July 2007
EGPF/GLA-EGLC/LCY
BA8725
British Airways Citiflyer RJ100 G-BZAV
Online check-in is a wonderful thing. Twenty four hours before departure I checked in online and printed off a boarding pass having first checked to see if the seat was OK. It most certainly was – 2F, second row window seat. Glasgow Airport has undergone some hasty changes following the attack on it three weeks earlier. I was dropped off by my wife further away from the terminal than would otherwise have been the case but it wasn’t too far to walk. Not ideal if you have a load of luggage, though. I entered the airport through the now infamous Door 2 which may be only half the width it was but at least it was open for business – hah! Take that you mindless militant muslim medics! (Apologies for the alliteration).
With no bags to drop off it was through security which, for a change, was a relatively quick process. Wandering down to the BA gates at the end of the domestic pier I got the first sighting of my chariot parked at Gate 18:
Here it is again with the Iceair 757 taxiing out behind:
Sat in the lounge I managed to get a shot of the City of Ottawa departing:
The flight was called a tad late and we boarded by the integral airstairs at the front. I was pleasantly surprised at the seat pitch which was better than previous 146s in which I’ve flown – here’s a picture of my knees as proof:
The flight was about two thirds full and whilst the seat next to me was free, the aisle seat was occupied by a man who spent the entire flight reading the final Harry Potter book that had been released the previous day. No problem to me, I had my window seat and was as happy as a pig in poo.
Following the usual preliminaries, we pushed back and taxied past the tower to the Rwy 23 hold. A short time later we entered the runway and commenced the take off run, rotating about half way down. One of the nice things about the seat I was in was the opportunity to get some photos of two of the four hair driers that power the 146/RJ series.
Luckily, the visibility was good and equally fortunately, we weren’t turned off the DCS SID too early. This meant I could get a decent shot of Troon:
I can actually see my house on this photo. For those of you who follow golf, Royal Troon golf course, which regularly hosts the Open Championship, is in the half past nine position next to the sea. You will also see loads of other golf courses around the town. An equally fine view of Prestwick Airport was had a minute or so later:
The big white building a third of the way across from the left and just above centre is the New Prestwick Centre which will be the home of the Scottish and Manchester Area Control Centres from 2010. The current Scottish Centre – my place of work – is the dark building next door, just below in the picture.
One of the nice things about flying BA is that they give you something to eat:
And something to drink:
All included in the cost of the ticket. The same thing on Ryanair/Easyjet/Flybe, even bmi if you are not flying ‘business’ will cost you seven or eight quid.
Here’s those baby fans again in the cruise above Cumbria at FL270.
A bit more cloud around down south but caught a glimpse of North Weald as we descended:
We were landing on Rwy 28 at the City which meant an approach over some not very scenic parts of Essex
That approach was, of course, twice as steep as a normal approach. I’m quite sure that the majority of people on the flight didn’t realises any difference but thanks to a bit of prior knowledge it was evident to me that we were descending more rapidly than had we been approaching LHR. The landing was also a firm one as a result of the steep approach and lack of landing distance available:
Our stand was at the eastern end of the terminal under the tower:
Here are a few of the aircraft we taxied past to get there:
With no bag to collect I whizzed through arrivals where my brother-in-law was waiting to pick me up. You might be wondering why I was visiting London. Than again, you might not give a toss. I’ll tell you anyway. There were two reasons actually. I’ll come to the second one soon. The first reason was to have a go on a British Airways simulator at their Flight Training Centre at Cranebank, just a stone’s throw away from the threshold of 28L at Heathrow. I had won the experience at an auction at a charity ball I was at back in May. On offer was an hour in an as yet unspecified simulator kindly donated by BA and the minimum bid was £500. In a fit of madness I raised my hand and when no one else bided, I’d won the prize. Arranging a suitable time was a bit tricky as I work shifts and free time on the sims is at a premium but we came up with 19:00 last Sunday evening. Booking the flight down with BA was just a small token of my appreciation to BA for supplying the prize – apparently they donate twelve of these to various charities each year, not a bad commitment when the running costs are in the region of £700 per hour.
The simulator chosen was to be a 747-400. I was hardly going to complain about that, was I? My brother-in-law was dragged along as the other ‘pilot’ (the prize was for two people) and off we went. A quick look at the 777 and 734 simulators preceded the main event and before long I was sat in the right hand seat of G-BNLA at the holding point of 06R at Manchester.
Just to prove it was me (sorry about the blurred pic – photos weren’t easy to take in that light)
Our host for the evening was a lovely chap called Richard Skinner who sat in the left hand seat and basically did all the technical stuff like set the speeds, altitude select, headings and suchlike. All I had to do was steer the thing! Power on and off we went!! We ‘flew’ a circuit with me following the cross-hairs on the FMS with some difficulty before a visual landing. What a blast. It felt incredibly authentic with the six-axis motion and the full daylight visuals. I even greased the landing, though I’m pretty certain I was getting just a touch of assistance from Richard.
My brother-in-law was up next doing a night time circuit at Boston before I got a chance to do the Kanasi approach at JFK. This is the approach that curves over the bay and at night it involves following the sequenced strobe lighting that delineates the curved approach path before splitting to point at two parallel runways (I can’t remember which runways they were). I felt a little more in control with this one, mainly because I had come to terms with the elevator trim so it felt less as though I was hauling an elephant through the sky. Even so, the curved approach meant that there was precious little time to line up with the runway but somehow I managed it and landed at the correct spot. (Part two to follow – too many pics for one posting…)
By: egpx - 27th July 2007 at 10:23
An excellent report. The catering on the return trip looks pretty decent.
You know, it wasn’t bad at all. It is obviously not going to win any Michelin stars but for a one hour hop it did the job quite nicely. The beer wans’d bad either 😉
By: T5 - 27th July 2007 at 10:16
An excellent report. The catering on the return trip looks pretty decent.
By: steve rowell - 26th July 2007 at 00:35
Great report with great pictures
By: caz66 - 25th July 2007 at 23:12
Great report mate , looks like you had good fun on the sim . I also have a lot of respect for all of the hospital donation stuff
By: egpx - 25th July 2007 at 15:40
Great Report. Cant wait to see part two and three LOL:)
Erm, part two is the second posting on the thread whilst part three doesn’t exist, unless you want to hear what me and my wife were talking about on the way home 😉
By: egpx - 25th July 2007 at 15:36
Great report, and hopefully uou won’t refrain from posting more in the future!
Oh, and you inadvertantly let your age slip as well I think. 28L indeed 😀
Ah, fair point. It may well have been an age thing :rolleyes: Actually, if LHR had a 28L the threshold would be closer to Cranebank than a stone’s throw 😀
By: Jet 22 - 25th July 2007 at 15:33
Great Report. Cant wait to see part two and three LOL:)
By: Mark L - 25th July 2007 at 12:28
Great report, and hopefully uou won’t refrain from posting more in the future!
Oh, and you inadvertantly let your age slip as well I think. 28L indeed 😀
By: Manston Airport - 25th July 2007 at 12:17
Brilliant trip report there and nice pictures aswel. like the shot off PIK.
James
By: egpx - 25th July 2007 at 10:04
GLA-LCY-GLA Part two
The piece-de-resistance was yet to come. Richard let us have a go on the 777 simulator – yes!!
The task was a visual circuit at Geneva at dusk in G-VIIA. Wow! What a difference from the 744. The 777 is a hot ship. The acceleration was noticeably greater (even though we weren’t actually accelerating…) and once we were airborne we went up like a homesick angel. It is more responsive as well, not to mention a bit of a beggar when you need to slow it down! As an extra treat we got a TCAS climb instruction with an opposite direction heavy heading straight towards us. ‘Traffic, traffic, climb, climb, clear of traffic, check vertical speed…’
Landing was interesting with the aircraft seemingly floating for ever before touchdown – a consequence of the difficulty in bleeding the speed off – but we managed to stop before the end of the runway – just about! There was still time to do a Cat III autoland at Heathrow. No input at all from me but quite a thing seeing absolutely nothing until a second before the wheels made contact with the runway. I did, however, have to taxi it in (the fog had mysteriously vanished!) to a Terminal 4 stand using the nosewheel tiller which was a lot trickier than flying the thing. The motion on the ground was a bit sick inducing too.
All in all, a great experience, well worth the money, especially as that money was going to charity (a children’s hospice). Thanks to Richard Skinner, BA Flight Training, Naomi House Children’s Hospice, my mate Richard who organised the charity ball and my brother-in-law Martin who came along for the ride and drove us to Cranebank.
Overnight was spent at the Holiday Inn Regents Park, in the shadow of the Telecom Tower:
This brings me to the second reason I was down in London. Now this is not aviation related but I would appreciate it if you would read the next couple of paragraphs. At 09:00 on the Monday morning I turned up at the Haematology Oncology Daycare Unit at University College Hospital. A number of years ago I joined the Anthony Nolan Trust’s bone marrow donation register. Last year, following further tests, I was matched with a patient. Things have moved on since the register was set up and nowadays most donations are not of bone marrow but of blood stem cells. The donor is given a series of injections in the four days prior to harvesting to stimulate production an excess of these cells. The harvesting takes place at the above mentioned unit and involved blood being taken out of one arm, passed through a machine which separates out the cells and then returns the blood into your body via the other arm. The process takes a few hours and a few needles aside, is painless. I underwent this procedure last November and the recipient was subsequently given these cells as part of his treatment against leukaemia.
Unfortunately for the recipient (who remains anonymous), the disease started to fight back and he required another donation, this time of white blood cells. This was why I was at UCH. The process is the same as the stem cell harvest only without the prior injections. It also takes a little less time. In fact it was a doddle – a nice Australian nurse looked after me (they are all Aussies at UCH for some reason) and even the needles didn’t hurt. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is as a rallying cry for the Anthony Nolan Trust or their equivalent in other countries. There are never enough people on the register and they are especially interested in recruiting young males. So have a look at their website http://www.anthonynolan.org.uk/ and get signed up. (For those of you in other countries, google bone marrow donation to find your local register) There was, of course, some very sick yet very brave people in that unit, hooked up to drips receiving chemotherapy, some looking thin and gaunt, all with a large degree of hair loss. Sign up to your local donor register – it might just make the difference for one of them.
Right, back to the aeroplanes.
23 July 2007
EGLC/LCY-EGPF/GLA
BA8730
British Airways Citiflyer RJ100 G-BZAX
The trip to LCY was via the Docklands Light Railway from The Bank station. The quirky little trains never fail to amuse me. I mean they have windscreen wipers on the front yet no driver. However, they are a good way of getting to LCY with the station right next to the terminal. I got there early with the intention of taking a few pictures from one of the benches to the side of the terminal that looks across the water to the runway. However, by the time I arrived it was raining quite heavily. This had scuppered England’s chances of victory a few miles away at Lords and was now spoiling my plans. So I checked in using the check-in machines, went up the stairs and plonked myself in the bar by the window that overlooked the runway. Took a few snaps but the weather and glass conspired against me:
The Titan Airways 146 was operating an earlier BA flight to Glasgow and was late. I passed through security into the departure lounge which was very crowded. Not surprisingly there was a large number of ‘suits’ amongst the passengers with laptops flashing and mobiles bleeping all over the place. Plenty of seats were available with every spare inch of space seemingly covered. I know expansion is difficult there but they could do with a bit more space. The flight was called for Gate 8, a surprisingly long walk away. Managed to get a shot of the aircraft through rain covered windows:
Down at the gate it became apparent that the flight was not going to be busy – there were only fourteen passengers. We boarded (quickly, it was pouring down after all) and guess where I was sitting – yes, 2F again. With ninety spare seats I guess I could have sat almost anywhere but I was more than happy with the reservations computer’s allocation!
Photo opportunities were limited due the weather but I did manage to get the Euromanx as it taxied out ahead of us
We were a bit late pushing back but before too long it was full power against the brakes then we were hurtling down LCY’s rather short runway and disappearing into the low overcast:
Dinner was served quickly, not surprising with so few passengers. There is a chicken breast beneath the mixed pepper sauce. It wasn’t half bad:
Not forgetting:
Of course I had to take another engine shot, in the cruise at FL280:
We had company in the form of an Easyjet A319, probably at FL320 and slowly overtaking us. Alas, my camera failed to cope with full 12X zoom through plexi glass at a tiny target against a blue infinity:
Around the MARGO reporting point, our tracks diverged which suggested he was off the Edinburgh whilst we were routed direct to LANAK, the Glasgow holding fix. This took us west of a smallish CB with a classic anvil top:
One trip round the LANAK hold was required before vectors to the Rwy 05 ILS. We turned final above this loch:
Passed over Paisley’s Phoenix retail park, the site of the former Triumph sports car factory, now an Asda and a cinema:
You would not guess the aircraft type from the shadow cast by the late evening sunshine as we were about to touch down:
Our trip to the stand took us past the Titan 146 I’d seen earlier at LCY
We parked next to the Loganair Twin Otter and had the bonus of the airbridge, something the 146/RJs tend not to use. The missus duly picked me up from the same position that she had dropped me off at the previous day and my trip was complete.
Overall I was impressed with the service offered by BA Citiflyer. BA obviously feel that LCY is a good revenue earner for them as this was the only part of BA Connect’s business (along with the MAN-JFK route) that didn’t get taken over by Flybe. The service is good, the cabin crew were friendly yet professional and the aircraft was surprisingly comfortable. Passing through LCY is a more pleasant experience than you sometimes get at LHR or LGW and the DLR connection to central London makes getting to and from there so much easier. Fares can be had for a similar price to the GLA-LHR/LGW services – I paid £112 for my ticket but it is possible to get them for as low as £80. Sure, the locos get you to STN or LTN for less but sometimes it is worth paying a bit extra. I hope that the low passenger numbers on the return flight are not typical and that the service continues for the foreseeable future.
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July 25, 2007 at 10:00 am