I am a ‘bean counter’ with a very ‘human heart’ and believe that substantial profit that generates good organisation sustaining cash flows can be made ethically while also valuing human lives.
The origins of both the Boeing 737 and TU154 are the mid to late 1960s yet a 737 is unaffordable while a TU154 is affordable to poorer nations.
This is the insurmountable mountain unfortunately.

A 737 is not at all unafforable for African airlines. It’s just not a NG. They are ‘200 series, or perhaps high-cycles/hours ‘300s / ‘400s / ‘500s, or operationally undesirable ‘600s. Except for the mayor African airlines (Kenyan, South African, Egyptair etc) they all operate old equipment.

Might I ask what your first car was? Was it a brand new full-spec Mercedes, or did you do with an old VW Golf that barely came through the MoT. That’s how I started my motoring career. Not because I prefer a 15 y/o Golf over a Mercedes… purely because I needed a car for work, but could afford nothing better. I got one of the most reliable cars there is, for a car 15 years old anyway.

The same applies to old Tupolevs. They are not particularly economical, but they are cheap to buy and very strong. You can run them into the ground, sometimes even literally, and still fly them out. Just look at the Alrosa crash-landing into a forest mid september 2010. It will be repaired. I’d like to see a Western design try to pull that of. (actually, no I don’t, the fewer crashes the better but you’ll get my drift)

edited to addd:
Also remember that the former Soviet designs are more tailored towards conditions in Africa. They are designed to operate from ill maintained runways. Some types are even designed to operate from fields, since they where intended to be drafted by the armed forces should the cold war have gone hot. The western types are designed for modern, well maintained airports. Most African airports, in particular the regional and local ones, are in a bad state of disrepair. And that’s assuming they where ever right to begin with!

The best way to do it is to get a job, work until you’ve saved up around £50,000 and then do all the training.

By the time someone saved that amount of cash, they will be close to retirement age! Unless they are working jobs like bank robber, pimp or private security in Iraq or something like that!

Hi all,

I was recently given these two parts which were collected at the time from the crash site of Dornier DO17Z-2 Work Number 3358 which crashed at Cole End Wimbish on 26th August 1940. I would like to know if anyone can identify what part of the a/c that the door would have come from? Size is approx 8 inches x 4 inches. Hope you can help. Thanks.

Left half says: “Valve to refuel / defuel hot oil”.
Top right half says: “Coupling for manual start”.
Bottom right half says: “Pull when prop-area is clear”.
The small black seperated marking says: “when handstarting, remove brushes”. Not quite sure what they mean with that.

So this would definately be at or near the engine.

Weather is bad enough that I made a spin on the A18. Fortunately it was at 2 at night, so the other traffic had enough distance for me not to bump into them. That gave me enough space to put the car back into control and not hit any guardrails! Took two hours to drive/glide a distance I normally do in one hour flat.

Did you leave before the snow, or has Amsterdam not been hit yet? We got several CMs already!

Possibly Air Congo? They got a livery similar to BA’s. Instead of a flag in the colours Red/Blue/Red seperated by white they got Green/Yellow/red seperated by white. I can only find a single photo of one of their planes online, and it has no colours on the lower fuselage. Just white like the rest of the plane.

Neither of their planes are registered in the UK though.

Cyprus’ Finance Minister seems to think that the collapse of Cyprus Airways is imminent. Their losses are expected to total €30m for the year, which I suppose is a huge amount to an airline of it’s size! And since the Cypriot government made no effort to save the state-owned Eurocypria, who is to say that they will lend a hand when the national carrier runs into trouble?

Isn’t Eurocypria part of Cyprus Airways? They might be able to pull of a SABENA. Dump the bad assets of both airlines at Eurocypria, put the good assets of both airlines at Cyprus Airways, liquidate Eurocypria and continue with Cyprus Airways like nothing ever happened. Sure it will screw over shareholders; but that did not stop SABENA/DAT and Swissair/Crossair.

The year may not be over yet, but unless something really spectacular happens I know for sure my photo of 2010 will be from my Moscow holiday.

But picking a single photo out of the 100s that I made is extremely hard. Do I go for a photo that is fine from a technical aspect, or the most interesting subject? Considering the amount of Tupolevs, Yakovlevs, Ilyushins and Antonovs I saw picking the most interesting subject is already a mighty big challenge.

For some reason I quite like this photo. I know that, for a spotter at least, this is not the perfect shot. There’s clutter in front and you can barely read the registration. And yet… it’s an old original Tu-154B-2, it still has the CCCP registration, somehow I like the composition and I like the colours… it ticks all boxes, as overpaid consultants would say.