Either Garuda or Malaysian (sorry, can’t remember which) had a habit of landing at LHR with no fuel left in the tanks a while back.

Statistically, African airlines are about the worst you can get. They often fly decrepit aircraft in airspace with no ATC coverage and the security at most airports in Africa (maybe excluding SA and some of Northern Africa) is diabolical. Just look at the number of incidents in Nigeria.

Like this?

Not at all! I live on an island, remember.

Since Jan 03:

…

Haven’t left the ground 😮

Not sure that’s the whole picture, Ageorge.

The relative strenghth of Sterling has been behind a lot of the UK’s attractiveness for foreign investors, but remember a strong pound has a donwside too.

You may actually laugh at this (if you are familiar with the Nazi storm troopers at the Inland Revenue!) but the UK is reasonably tax competitive. I’ll give you a real life example:

A client of mine is a 50% partner in a project to build a shopping centre in a small Bavarian town. He set up a German company, and then created another German subsidiary to do the work. But he’s setting up (on our advice) a UK company first, so the UK company will be the ultimate owner.

Why…well, he plans to sell the shopping centre at some point for a stonkingly large profit. The way it’ll work, the Geman company will sell the shares in it’s subsidiary to an investor and as such, the German co will make a nice big profit. But hang on…it’s owned by a UK company! So it remits its profit back to it’s UK parent company. Tax on the profit is subsequently paid in the UK (it’s also payable in Germany, but this is netted off via the Germany-UK double tax treaty).

Result? A British firm of accontants takes a nice fat fee cheque, a company formation agent in Cardiff gets a little more business, and the UK exchequer has a smile.

All because of a small differential in the rates of tax between Germany and the UK.

Join the Euro….you can kiss goodbye to this kind of stuff.

AA fly to LGW as well though, whereas UAL only fly to LHR so if you look at USA-London as a whole, it may be a different story.

Last time I used T3, I had a late evening flight on Virgin to EWR. Apart from our aircraft, there were about 4 Gulf Air planes and none from US airlines! A funny terminal, T3.

The “B” in BMW means “Bayernische” not “Bavarian” Yes, I spend too long staring at the corner of my windscreen in traffic!

Though I guess it amounts to pretty much the same thing as Bayern is the State of which Munich is the capital, in the region of Bavaria.

More seriously, I believe the BMW/Rolls Royce joint venture is a thing of the past and the BR engines are mainly RR products these days.

I only flew on the 717 twice, and I thought it was a cracking aircraft. Infinitely preferable to a 737 – less cramped (2+3 seats), quieter, and heck – just nice, because it is different to the ubiquitous baby boeing.