They are lite…but are they air craft ( AC ) ?

How lite could a plane with protection for the pilot from rain and birds be ?

Well paramotors (and paragliders) are technically classed by the CAA as aeroplanes.

But although I fly them myself it is hard to think of them as ‘aeroplanes’. I carry mine in a big bag that probably weighs less than the avionics in a PA28.

I prefer to think of them as aircraft in the same way a basic microlight is one. To me an aeroplane has a door and instruments, and ailerons and an elevator or stabilator. If it don’t have those kittens it isn’t an aeroplane to me.

I learned to fly in the 1970s on Cessnas and Pipers and all these microlite and ultralight aircraft don’t ‘feel’ like real aeroplanes either. But some of them rock!

aaah, another glass of nostalgia for me please, and make it a large one:)

I will happily drink to that!

Thanks for posting these 1980s EGLL photos.

This was Heathrow just prior to it becoming unrecognisable in my opinion. When it lost the PanAm and TWA slots to other carriers and the viewing area finally died off. This photo was taken about 1989…

TWA – classic airline. This was in the mid 1980s.

PanAm – An iconic giant of an airline. Sad to see it go from Heathrow.

I loved the 1980s British Airways livery most of all. The first BA livery and the current one doesn’t do it for me. This 1980s livery is the closest to the old BOAC markings.

The 1980s was also the time when the first tier European carriers were getting rid of all their old equipment for newer Airbus and Boeing types. So lots of interesting long-haul types on medium haul schedules.

This JAT 707 for instance…

…was taking up the slack until the introduction of 737-300 jets as the old DC9 and 727 types were phased out.

There was still some interesting turboprop types in service at Heathrow too..

Yup, 1980s was the last good decade for Heathrow. 🙁
From there on in everything started looking rather samey.

Mistakes happen. I once landed at Cambridge thinking it was Duxford.

When I finally got to Duxford (shamefaced) ATC told me not to feel too dumb as a few years before a USAF F4 was to do a low-level, high-speed flypast at Duxford at an air day. The pilot made the same mistake I did and went for Cambridge, blatting past the tower at just under the speed of sound. (At that speed and height it is forgivable, I think.)

Well, I like the new BA advert very much. Generally first-tier airlines have made ads for the business class traveller and I find them out of touch with normal travellers. This ad takes us back to a time when the pilot was also the airline’s representitive and would stroll back thru the cabin reassuring the pax.

I enjoyed the excellent computer graphics of the BOAC VC10s. I couldn’t decide if the BEA C47 was real or computer generated. It looked real as did the BEA Rapide (all post war fleet types). My only criticism is the lack of reference to Imperial Airways and its successful Empire flying boat fleet and the trailblazing long-haul route network. they made to Australia and India. We should have seen an Empire class boat there with it’s luxurious interiors harking back to the last days of romantic air travel (pre-war, that is) as it flew at 200 feet agl along an Australasian or Arabian coast line to some romantic destination, as yet untouched by modernity.

I also think they missed out on BEA in its heyday, the 1960s and a Trident would have been nice as that was the mainstay fleet type then. I got the feeling that British Airways sees itself historically as a long haul airline (Imperial/BOAC) with little BEA a poor sister serving local destinations only.

All in all a nice, nostalgic advert that must have cost a lot to make. Well done, BA. (for once.) And wouldn’t it be something to see a 747 in retro BOAC livery at Heathrow?

How very odd. I have never been made to feel guilty or felt like I’ve been blackmailed into making a donation by anyone collecting for charity, whether it be on the High Street or in the foyer of a supermarket. Whyever would you feel emotionally blackmailed. We all have free will (and most of us have a finite amount of disposable income) so if you don’t feel either inclined or able to donate to a specific charity then why on earth feel guilty?

I intensely dislike the term chugger. I know what it means and I think it does a grave injustice to the legions of volunteers who give their time and energy to the charity which is close to their heart. To mix up another well known saying, one man’s charity is another man’s waste of money. It’s simply a matter of personal preference.
kev35

Well I DO like the term ‘CHUGGER’. I feel it is often appropriate. Some of these chuggers get paid out of our donations money although that was not the case here. These chuggers stand by the doorway so that you have to pass close by them and either make eye contact or ignore them. It is an emotional pressure tactic. If it were not so they would stand in an out of the way place and allow interested donators to come to them.

Is that opinion OK with you? You don’t mind too much if I have my own opinion?

Frankly, I find ‘chuggers’ in supermarket entrances rather annoying. I wish these shops would not allow chuggers to stand in their shop doorways waiting to bother customers.

While some of these charities have genuine merit I still hate being made to feel guilty as I walk in and out of a shop. If I wish to give to a specific charity then I will do that without being emotionally blackmailed in a public place.

I am fed up with being bothered by religious delusionists, people trying to get me to change my power company and those chugger bugg*rs when I am in town.

As far as Tesco’s are concerned that sounds pretty greedy. I always presumed these chuggers were given free foyer access as a charity ‘donation’.

I only ever give to animal charities, the RAF charity and help for heroes and our local air ambulance. After hearing about the Tesco situation I doubt I will give again in a supermarket without finding out from the chuggers if I am actually donating to the supermarket too. That would be quite unacceptable.

I don’t give a damn about rubbish like “what it was like”.

Here are a bunch of people, paid obscene amounts of money – yet they cannot perform even the most basic of functions – namely keeping the damn even approximately thing straight and level.

People are making loads of excuses for them – incompetence would be a better way of looking at it.

Its like the driver of a car forgetting to turn the steering wheel to go around a corner. Ridiculous.

Maybe I am being unfair – maybe it is unfair to expect well paid long haul commercial pilots to have even the most basic understanding of what is a primary reading, what is an inferred reading, what is cause and what is effect.

The litany of excuses surrounding the whole episode is pathetic.

Hey Amiga500, I can’t believe you wrote this load of dumb propwash (or hogwash)! I will put it down to you having a bad day. 😉 but please don’t expect us to take this seriously. I wonder, have you ever even flown an aeroplane?

What Deano said is pretty much the reality of it. Pilots don’t get paid obscene wages (you are thinking of fat-cat bankers maybe) and pilots are one of a very few of professionals who are regularly tested both for ability and health (twice a year I believe these days). Doctors and other professions do NOT get tested ever, let alone on a regular basis. And a doctor or barrister won’t lose his/her career if they are found to have a heart related problem, etc. Most commercial pilots don’t earn anything close to what a top of the line captain will end up with.

As to airliners falling out of the sky due to incompetence… These pilots are flying complex systems with no real feedback in the controls. When something goes wrong (stall, etc) in a smaller aeroplane it is obvious to any pilot defacto. This is not always the case in larger transport aeroplanes. And even if it were, transport pilots are taught never to fly by the seat of their pants and go instinctive. They are taught to stick with the systems and work through what is going wrong. This takes a little more time and if the systems are faulty then things can go badly wrong, very quickly. The pilot still have to work through the checklists and systems to find the problem. When they don’t do it by the book the wrong engine gets shut down as we saw with the BMA 737 crash.

I for one don’t like modern computer systems in aeroplanes but they are a modern necessity I guess. Auto flight systems should be there to back up the human pilots and not the other way around and I feel it is time we backtracked on this matter. And it is time Airbus got rid of that stupid little joystick control too. How can any pilot maintain a mind sense of stick&rudder airmanship with such a stupid little plastic joystick with which to become one with the aeroplane? Then again, I also like non-glass cockpits so maybe I am just getting old.

We are all just human and if you feel that automated systems in airliners will stop accidents (sometimes apparently dumb ones) you are wrong. Sh*t happens and I for one would prefer to have a couple of experienced humans trying to sort it out when it does.