8 Years ago Aurigny paid their Trislander pilots 30 grand. I would guess you should target somewhere around 35.

Have been fortunate enough to avoid redundancy in my 16 year aviation career (although a very close call after 911) but also in full support of Skymonsters post.

I would love to know what the shareholders make of MOL’s happiness to squander a million quid in damages and costs after the fiasco he pulled trying to persecute the pilots on the REPA website. The Judge was very public stating how horrified he was with MOL and Ryanairs management principles.

What worries me most is how some people can be happy with the prospect of the Ryanair principle of setting the standard at the lowest common denominator. Standards-wise, the only way is down. I understand the low cost model is here to stay but dare I say it, even easyJet seems to have some morals rather than solely being interested in making a cheap buck.

As a (very rough) rule of thumb we fly relative to indicated airspeed in knots up to approx FL280 to FL300 and then Mach number above that. Consequently each jet airliner has 2 maximum speeds for their normal operation – Vmo (mx operating speed) and Mmo (max operating mach number). For the A340 Vmo is 330 kts and Mmo is M.86. Therefore up to FL 290’ish we would be limited to 330 kts but above that the controlling speed limit is M.86. The actual altitude that the changeover occurs at is the altitude where the temperature is such that M.86 equates to 330 kts.

One thing that needs to be borne in mind is that when the aircraft reaches high altitude the air molecules (which is what the instruments sense) become much more spread out (lower pressure) so instruments tend to massively underread. This is the difference between Indicated airspeed and True airspeed (any professionals please give me a little latitude in simplifying this explanation!). Consequently an indicated 330 kts at altitude might actually be a true airspeed of over 500 kts. This is how an aircraft can actually fly (‘true’ speed) much faster than Vmo (which is an ‘indicated’ speed).

As you can probably now see, it’s much easier to use Mach numer (easily simplified by pretending that the numbers are a percentage of the speed of sound) as a speed reference when in the higher parts of our atmosphere.

Steve, it’s not really possible to define a high altitude aircraft’s top speed in mph or ft/s as the speed is limited by its proximity to the speed of sound. This in turn is defined by the ambient temperature which is obviously variable. Consequently Mach Number becomes the only useful measure of speed for these aircraft types when up at altitude (where the top end speeds occur).

We had 235 in all our 752’s until they started the transatlantics when they reconfigured a few at a lower count (187 IIRC). We had 280 in the 753.

We used to cruise the 757 at a cost index that gave M.795. If you upped it to M.82 the fuel burn would go through the roof.
Our 744’s have always operated at a typical cruise of M.855 which I gather is the same as BA. My brother tells me that they typically cruise at M.85 in the 777. The typical cruise expected for the 380 is M.86 .
The VC10 and alot of the older low bypass jets did cruise at much higher speeds than modern stuff so in light of Concorde’s retirement I’d hazard that their statement could well be correct in this day and age.

Now if I had my way I’d fly as slow as I possibly can. Slow speed means longer flight times so as I am contracted to fly for a fixed number of hours a year the slower I go the fewer sectors I have to fly and the fewer times I have to go to work. QED 😎

All companies I have flown for have had a maintenance policy that each aircraft must have performed at least 1 full power take off per month. Usually the engineers don’t have to remind us to do it as we chose to do it whenever there are thunderstorms, etc around.

FYI I have flown RB211 757s with engines rated at 41500 lbs thrust.

Tommy, any chance you could start giving your threads proper titles please.