PMN1, well that is certainly something I had not considered previously 😮

As said above though the Sea King Commando HC4’s must be getting long in the tooth. Last time I looked there were something like 40 of them. They will need to be replaced by Merlins in due course.

Guys, Wasn’t there an announcemnet recently that the MOD had appointed someone to look at options to completely rebuild the remaining Pumas ? They may not be being replaced at all ……………..

The snowplough drivers are usually made up of various Ops folks as said. Usually anyone whom can be spared by their company who is twiddling their thumbs due to the snow; fuellers, baggage, waste, air tug drivers etc. Its not as ad-hoc as that though as some of the machines are actually quite specialised and need several days training to learn so there is an active list of trained operatives who usually get a 1-2 day annual refresher in Oct/Nov.

My brother does this at Stansted, and usually gets about 4-8 days a years work on ‘snow patrol’ which usually means sitting in the hanger waiting for the white stuff, and maybe only 0-3 days a year actually clearing at most. As you can imagine the equipment spends most of its life doing nothing and even after 20 years might only have seen a couple of hundred hours usage down south.

I am sure I remember reading somewhere that the F-117 had no flaps. That combined with the angle of its wings must have meant an extremely high landing speed. Certainly way too high for a carrier approach. Anyone know for sure ?

Fedex “only” operate 58 of the estimated 191 MD11s still active worldwide. 😎

Don’t the RAF operate a similar proportion of the remaining Tristars ? Their paint scheme is nowhere near as cool though :diablo:

And ?

(I missed it) 🙁