They should go to eastern Europe. After all, it’s where a very significant proportion of their pilots originate from…and I’m not joking.

Another brilliantly made program which I think did itself a favour by just taking the bare bones of the Tenerife crash rather that going into too much detail.

I had always assumed that the bulk of the blame for the Linate accident lay with the German crew of the CJ2 but what I saw this evening showed that they were quite professional. They made quite a statement about their precise location on at least 2 occasions while holding short of the runway. The controller even showed signs of knowing something was amiss and yet chose to ignore it. As for the installation of the ground movement radar – there are 2 fog capitals in Europe, the first is Opporto and the secong is Milan. It was a guilty man who phoned the Norwegians for installation of their GMR a couple of hours after the crash!

You know I never really understood the charter game until I found myself fully involved in the thick end of a summer season. You spend 9 months of the year working at 50% followed by 3 months working at 150%! For an airline to be able to absorb the costs of running at much less than maximum for 9 months they have to work phenomenally hard for the remaining 3 months. These three months are of course July, August and September. In order to remain competitve in a hard market you cannot have aircraft sitting around as spares during peak season. You end up with countless spare aircraft by default for the other 9 months of the year which is why the commercial department are always looking so hard for subcharter work.

During the peak season important defects will be rectified immediatly in accordance with laid down CAA maintenance requirements, however there are many items onboard that are ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘need to have’ which we can classify as an ‘acceptable deffered defect’. Now if I said to a passenger that one of the two generators (for example) were unserviceable the typical unknowing passenger would assume ‘we’re gonna die’ but it is no problem to dispatch with that defect as long as we have a serviceable APU we can run throughout the flight. There is a limited amount of time we are allowed to carry certain defects but the important thing is that all sides take a pragmatic and sensible viewpoint. Off season this aircraft would be pulled off line immediately and replaced by another but no carrier has the spare capacity during the peak (especially an airline trying to resolve former financial difficulties).

Commercial aviation maintenance in the UK is undoubtedly cost controlled to a certain degree but the system that controls is of a high enough standard to prevent aircraft from being dispatched in an unairworthy condition. I, like all the other commercial pilots I know also have enough balls to stand up and refuse to fly an aeroplane which would endanger my life but fortunately I have never been put in the situation to exercise this. With this in mind, coupled with the quality of every commercial avaition engineer I have met would give me every confidence in stepping onboard any MYT aircraft for as long as they never operate the 146! 😉

…but this could just as easily have been TCX, Monarch, Air 2000, Britannia, Excel, Astraeus or anyone. No airline plans to have aircraft go tech, it just happens. It’s just unfortunate that whoever it happens to gets cast as the great sinner.

As Moondance says, in my company we have 757’s declared at 102,000kg, 105,600kg and 113,398kg for take off because of euronav charges.

Matt – you can’t say ‘performance aside’ and then debate about one being overpowered! There is an aviation saying ‘power = performance’!

The 757 may be over performing at low levels but it is this extra thrust which makes it perform at the higher levels where the Airbus doesn’t. There’s more to the power question than just getting the thing off the ground. You could even argue that technically the Airbus doesn’t comply with the required 500′ per minute minimum climb/descent gradient in the airways when being operated as all operators use them today. If that was enforced most Airbus’s would be restricted down in the mid/high FL200’s until they had burnt off a lot of fuel! This same rule has long since been overlooked because of similar performance in aircraft such as the TriStar and most turboprops.

She used to work in Crown House (the curve shaped building) but she retired nearly 15 years ago.

Thanks Phil. The Transco man came very quickly and ascertained there was no leak. In fact he said that to usee 4000 cubic meters would involve such a huge leak it would have gone bang long ago. He also said that as I don’t have a gas fire or use gas for cooking I probably couldn’t consume 4000 cubic meters in 6 months if I wanted to!

Npower want me to take a meter reading every day for a week. I can’t see what this will prove other than the fact the dials go round but it is a hoop I seem to have to jump through before they will get an OFMAT accuracy check done. I need to prove this meter is faulty rather than just having it replaced or I won’t be entitled for any refund.