You considered approaching a museum with big jets? Duxford or something similar?

I find it strange that BA looks to america for aircraft,when alot of british jobs depend on airbus & it’s success,I expect the A380 to be ordered along with the A350,& 777’s to fill the gaps.

BA is not state owned and therefor does not care about jobs arund the UK. It only cares about profits, and rightly so.

Shame about the weather. If it is a relieve, weather has been like this for over a month. Last weekend with good spotting weather (bar the carnaval weekend) was late january. I hope you did like it here. Don’t suppose you got round to the runways?

The 737-900 ended up nice, but the BBJ is best.

To say it is my pride and joy would be overstating it, but I have had a good amount of joy out of it. 😉

As mentioned in the other thread, the car is cheap in insurance, tax and even consumption. But maintenance wise it is a bitch. Getting a girl friend would have been cheaper! 😮

Bought 2 years ago with 88000km, it is now nearly 18 years old and fast approaching 150000km.

dislaimer: The image of this car may have been changed so it appears well cleaned and without dents, scratches and other marks that would make this car impossible to sell. The seller assumes no responsibility for you not checking out the merchandise properly prior to siging the contract. Tough luck! Start your bidding at 1500 euros.

Nice photos! Can’t wait to get back there.

Did you really drive from LHR to GLA? How long does such a trip take? 6 or so hours?

Again with the sun… getting seriously envious at the MAN weather. How freakish is that?

If this did come to pass, which just isn’t likely IMO,and the US couldn’t find a way to get involved directly,then I’d imagine they’d support the Dutch in any other way they could, such as basing rights, transports,tankers,AWACS, satellite imagery etc…………

In short,it’d be a surefire way for Chavez to get his military to take a hammering

The US have anti drug planes on the islands, including F15s, F16s and I believe even AWACS. There is no doubt in my mind that the US will use these assets if an attack where to happen. As mentioned before the Dutch are a mayor ally in the war against terrorism. On top of that, if one US plane gets a scratch during the hostilities it could already be interpreted as an act of war. I do not think Bush would pass such an opportunity of removing such a pain in the ass!

If the US would be unwilling to help, we ourselves also have a lot of pretty good assets. In particular the HMS Rotterdam amphibious assault ship will be usefull, but also the large fleet of warships and subs (I heard our navy is similarly sized to Canada’s, not much of a feat perhaps but still…). Marines, ships and aircraft are stationed at the islands as well. Probably not enough to last the war, but enough to last the first few days while reinforcements are flown/shipped in.

The KDC10s will bring be able to shuttle planes to St. Maarten, St. Eustasius etc and from there by ship to the war zone. Of course if the situation is safe enough and asuming the runways are not destroyed or blocked landing at Curacao will be possible as well.

Remember also the Dutch F16s stationed in Goose Bay and Nevada (or was it Colorado?). You can bet that they will be due south even before local ATC realise what is happening. 😉

It will no doubt be painfull and costly, but I have every confidence that we could mount an effective counterstrike and retake the islands. Once that is done I do not think we would go further. Attacks on Venezuela itself I would consider unlikely. Unless there where massive casualties on our side I do not think the politicians would commit to it. Quite frankly, I hope they do not.