The project woudn’t have got anywhere without one in the first place. What makes you think there isn’t one? Or should I say, is it necessary that they meet YOUR expectations rather than those required by the HLF and other bodies? I really am quite fed up by this kind of thing.

Yes, I’m sure that there was a business plan. Unfortunately, it seems that it turned out to be inadequate or wrong, hence the current situation. Whether that is the fault of the people who prepared the plan, or whether it is the fault of the HLF and other bodies that accepted a bad plan, its irrelevent right now as it won’t change a thing. Isn’t hindsight wonderful, even if you hold the view that better planning might have avoided the current problem?

I really would like to see the Vulcan fly again and I’m very saddened to hear that people might lose their jobs, but the current confused cash call – how much do they really need, £200-250K or £1.2M as per 558club website – doesn’t help support the belief they got it right way back then, or even that they’ve got it right now.

The business plan DOES have to meet our expectations. Its OUR money they’re spending – its our donations, its our money that the HLF has granted them that could otherwise have gone to other “worthwhile” projects, and its our money they’re asking for now. On that basis, we are all stakeholders and we have a right to understand the truth. And bluntly, if someone has messed up we have a right to expect they hold their hands up, explain what has happened and why in terms we can all understand, and if necessary accept the consequences of past mistakes.

Please note that I am not trying put down the project, I’m just making observations on the process. I still believe that it is important, if the project is still to stand any chance of success, to do what I suggested above: Its time to draw a line in the sand. Its time to take a step back and really assess where the project is. Its time to put a realistic plan in place that takes the aircraft from now to its first airshow and beyond. Its time to assess what financial commitment is REALLY required, in TOTAL, to put this aircraft back on the show circuit and to continue to operate it, with contingency funding identified in case further unforeseen overruns occur. All this needs to be accomplished with the kind of openess that encourages further investment from both individuals and potential corporate sponsors. Without that, I don’t think that there are any more chances after this one – if by chance this funding request gets met and then there’s another call for funds in one month, two months or even before flight, then the project will be well and truely dead. IMHO, better sort everything out properly now than to bimble on for another month or two until the next crisis arises.

Andy

Interesting pics!

I’d like to see the Skyvan preserved!

That Skyvan is airworthy, usually based in Belgium for para dropping (even though its on the G- reg).

Andy

Air France approached similar problems with their Dedicate service. An A319 filled with 82 seats – 54 Economy and 28 Business seats. I presume that the Economy fares on Dedicate service are not exactly rock-bottom…

Dunno, but Dedicate doesn’t operate to destinations that are popular for cheap holidays. In fact, Dedicate mainly serves oil-related markets where yields for business travel are high but where there is little “cheap fare” demand – some companies have an economy-only travel policy but that doesn’t necessarily mean economy is cheap… (Example, not Dedicate, but I flew to JNB at short notice last week on AF… £2129 in Y-class or £2270 in J-class)

And on the transatlantic ferry, there is a demand for economy travel. Where do airlines such as Air Transat get their market from?

Course there is, just like there’s demand for business class and economy class on flights to Europe, or where-ever. Ryanair manages OK on short haul economy only, why shouldn’t Transat on economy long haul? I wasn’t saying htat there was no market for economy, I was merely pointing out that in some situations an economic business case can be made for an airline to run an all business class operation – some airlines will chose to do this, whilst others may go the opposite way, and others more will continue to maintain both types of service. Whilst business-jets have skimmed some of the premium market, none the less I foresee more business-class-only services springing up in future in some markets, particularly if the rigours and hassles of travel become even more onerous in future.

Andy

Why is the upper deck so preferrable? Unlike A380, B747 does not have option for upper level jetbridges!

Because its nice and peaceful, and the proles don’t tend to come wandering up from the back to clog up the toilets like they do on the main deck! :diablo:

Do the business class fares really subsidize the cheap seats? If they do, why isn´t the economy class simply left empty?

Incremental revenue is better than no revenue. You might be able to fill a 737BBJ or a 757 with business/first seats, but not so easily a 747-400.

However, if there are any economy seats on a route at all, it would make sense to make sure economy and business are on the same planes. After all, this gives everyone a better choice of times. 1 plane daily with 48 First Class seats only would give much less choice of departure times than, say, 6 planes daily with 8 First Class seats in front of each, and the rest filled with paid Economy seats…

Lufthansa’s position on the BBJ services to EWR and ORD was that the markets (from DUS and MUC) featured strong premium/business demand but the economy demand was mainly very low margin leisure travel, or there wasn’t much leisure demand. Likewise KLM on AMS-IAH which has strong demand for business class travel, but very little demand for leisure travel. Better margins can sometimes be had from filling a BBJ or A319CJ with business traffic, than having to offer rock bottom fares to provide incremental revenue that might not even cover the additional cost of operating an A340 or 747.

Andy

All three cater to very different markets. Privatair operates all business class services on behalf of Lufthansa, KLM and Swissair and as such I suspect that they are not taking risk on the services they operate – the aircraft are effectively “leases” (ACMI) to the major airlines.

EOS operates to a near first-class standard, whilst Maxjet offers a low-end business class product. From what I can gather, both are doing fairly well – EOS now supposedly breaking even on a flight-by-flight basis, and Maxjet attracting good loads too. Maxjet do both New York JFK and Washington Dulles, whilst EOS is to go twice daily to JFK in September.

Eos and Maxjet actually fly slower than the ordinary traffic, because their twinjets have to make detours near diversions…

Huh? Both have ETOPS clearance, and in any case the vast majority of UK-US East Coast traffic is on twins these days. Planed block times on Maxjet seem to be 8:30 out and 7:30 back, on EOS 7:45 out and 7:30 back, whilst United ex LHR schedule 7:42 out and 7:12 back and BA typically 7:30 out and around 7:00 back on a somewhat faster 744 (one of the few quad operators, along with VS, on the north Atlantic east coast). Aside from the surprisingly long Maxjet westbound schedule, they all seem fairly even.

How come people prefer flying specialized all-premium planes to front ends of multiclass planes?

As a regular long haul business traveller (although I’ve not tried EOS or Maxjet because I rarely go to New York), two things come to mind – one, anything that avoids the congestion and hassle that is Heathrow is largely good, and two, a service that avoids having to mix it with the chavs at various stages of travel is also usually good (hence why the upper deck on a 747 is so nice and is preferred by most business travellers). Anything that makes travel less stressful, more pleasant, quicker and more convenient is good. For example, the whole boarding experience is BOUND to be more pleasant if there’s only 102 or even only 48 people, as opposed to going through a gate filled with 200 proles, or even if the front-end bags come off first waiting at baggage claim is again going to take less time when there’s less passengers. Sorry if that offends, but for people who travel a lot that’s just how it is. Stansted is also fairly convenient from the east side of London.

The biggest challenge these two airlines face is actually not Stansted nor offering just business/first class, its their lack of integrated frequent flyer programs (integrated with other airlines) which is to some extent mitigated by their lower fares, and their lack of on-line connections in both Stansted, New York and Washington.

As for the business motivation, there is an argument that says that if you don’t have to fill up the back of the plane with the cheapest [often potentially loss-making] economy fares, which you quite often have to do to fill a 777 or 747, then you (a) can offer a better business class service and (b) do not need to charge quite so much as the business class fares do not need to subsidise the cheap seats. As another example of this (although not all premium) BA are going to put 777s with only 130-odd Y seats on some Australia operations this winter – why, because they make all their money from premium traffic and the extra Y-seats they could offer on a 747 in a deeply discounted market just aren’t worth offering.

Andy

British Caledonian had 10 DC-10-30s – G-BEBL, G-BEBM, G-BFGI, G-BGAT, G-BHDH, G-BHDI, G-BHDJ, G-DCIO, G-MULL, G-NIUK – plus two DC-10-10s G-BJZD and G-BJZE. At least one of the -30s was second hand – one came from Ariana Afghan Airlines for sure – and the two -10s came from Laker when Laker collapsed. The rest were new build.

Two were sold – G-BFGI and G-BGAT, and the two -10s were transferred to Cal-Air/Novair. The other eight were aquired by BA when B.Cal was bought by BA. They remained based at LGW until they were disposed of. They mainly operated on the former B.Cal routes ex LGW to the USA (e.g. IAH, SFW, ATL, SAN/LAX), to South America and to a limited extent to Africa.

I flew on several of them in BA service – to ATL and from SAN to LGW via LAX. They were great airplanes to fly on – always seemed slightly more comfortable than the 747s – and the crew were mainly ex-B.Cal people who seemed to be just that little bit more friendly.

All eight BA DC-10s were converted to freighters, and most are still flying including with DAS Air Cargo, Gemini Air Cargo and Centurian Air Cargo.

Andy

I scan at 72dpi for uploading to this site

There are two myths surrounding displaying images on the web – first is that DOTS per inch are important, and second that ANY resolution is important.

You are wasting your time scanning at 72ppi (its pixels per inch, not dots per inch anyway – the latter is a measure of printer ink drop size) for web use, as well as at 300ppi for print. For the web, just use the 300ppi scan, downsized to whatever image width/height you want – i.e pixels across/down.

When displaying on the web, image resolution is irrelevent as the display of the on-screen image is dictated solely by the number of pixels in the image, not the resolution. For example, if your screen resolution is 1600 pixels across and your image is 1024 pixels across, the image will occupy approximately 10/16ths of the width of the screen, irrespective of the resolution of the image and irrespective of the size of the screen. Likewise, if your screen resolution is set to 1024 pixels across and your image is 1600 pixels across, you will see approximately 10/16ths of the image on your screen again irrespective of the image resolution or the screen size. There isn’t even any file size advantage – an image that is 1024 pixels across at 72ppi will have the same file size as an image that is 1024 pixels across at 300ppi.

Andy