The original april fool was good A380 (had me fooled!), the rubbish you are now spouting is worthy of EAL340, Bahnhaus and Skylinerworld. Can we up the status to something a little more grown up?

I never ever tell the passengers lies about a delay as it will always come back and bite you. I will however not necessarily supply all the information IF I believe that the typical passenger will not understand it or misinterpret it. Passengers seem to think that we enjoy being delayed but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If there is a technical fault with the aeroplane you can be damn sure that if it affects the safety of the operation then the flightcrew will not take it. It amazes me how passengers b1tch about things when you find a fault. A few weeks ago I found a leaking actuator for the tilt mechanism on our starboard bogey. This actuator puts the bogey into the classic tilted position prior to retraction. There was a pool of hydraulic fluid underneath on the apron at Las Palmas. I called the skipper and the engineers who fixed the problem after a delay of about 45 minutes. When the passengers boarded you wouldn’t believe the comments we received. Would they really like us to depart on an aircraft with a leaking undercarriage leg??? Would they prefer me to have kept quiet and then had a possible retraction problem that would have caused a return to LPA and a CONSIDERABLY longer delay?

Matthew – water in the fuel is an ongoing problem in aeroplanes. Light aircraft are usually kept with their fuel tanks full as this minimises the air quantity in the tank. When warmer air in a tank touches the cold sides (typically morning dew) it condenses on the inside and runs down into the fuel. The fuel is less dense than the water so the water sits at the bottom of the tank. The fuel is drawn off from the tank via a standpipe which means that the bottom bit of the tank (where the water sits) is unusable. If the water content gets too high you have obviously got a big problem. In commercial aircraft we very rarely have full tanks and fly through many temperature extremes so water can be a big problem. We also have the same problem occuring in fuel storage tanks prior to being pumped to the aircraft.

Brilliant, thanks Martin. Sitting in a classroom plugging away at technical subjects is probably the most dull thing you’ll ever do in your career from this point on. Rest assured that from this point on things can only get better. I remember exactly how you feel when an aircraft goes past the window and it reminds you what this is all about. If you complete the groundschool you are doing now successfully I guarantee you that the groundschool side of a type rating will be straightforward by comparison.

keep going
wys

Doh, you got me! :rolleyes: I was really looking forward to being incredibly smug. Damn! 🙁

also…Martin, I know you are currently very busy but if you get a chance to write a post about your experiences on the course so far I’d love to hear it.

If you want to play with the big boys it might be a good idea to behave like one. My 9 year old is much more respectful than you. Please skylinerworld, drop the childish attitude and act more responsibly.

Solar radiation leads to cataract problems, etc while cosmic radiation leads to increased cancer risks (if i remember correctly!). I believe it’s more the increased time of exposure we are susceptible to rather than being up front.