How do the arrangements work for these things?

I would have assumed that an airline will buy all their fuel in bulk from one (or two) companies like BP or Elf or whoever – so their credit would be good at any outlet of BP or Elf, the same way you can get a petrol company chargecard in the UK?

Secondly, it might be an idea for Capts to be issued corportate credit cards for contingency use? That’s what normally happens in industry when employees might need to spend cash on employers’ behalf.

Thirdly, do charter airlines have in-house insurance divisions? I have recently been spending my CPD hours looking into Captive Insurance schemes, which is when a company effectively insures itself by setting up an insurance subsidiary which buys insurance wholesale from the market. Apparently a lot of airlines have these.

18 personnel?!

The RAF badly need to buy a fleet of biz jets or ACJ’s!

Not that I’m trying to muddy the waters, but what does “cost” mean? There are whole textbooks which look at different interpretations of the term!

Do you mean direct costs only?

Do you also want to include overheads?

How about the opportunity costs?

How about the set-up and arrangement costs?

I’m not a pilot, but I have spent some time in a full motion sumulator, a B757-200 one.

The principal difference was initially the motion effect as well as the atmosphere, as it feels and looks like an actual flight deck.

The graphics were amazing for their day (1992) and fairly realistic, although I dare say things have since improved. The main difference graphically, was the entire field of vision you got looking out of the flightdeck windows, as opposed to a screen on a PC which only gives you a sideways view when you press a button, and not when you turn your head. Also the graphics were very smooth – no dropped frames or big hourglass icons suddenly appearing!

The only downer was the sound quality. The engines and so on sounded realistic, but I think the speakers were duff because none of the automated voices were clear. For example when I was “landing” the computer told me “don’t think” which made me confused. Apparently the speaker had a lisp, because it should have been “don’t sink”.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling and non-expert reply, but to conclude I would say that current PC sims are useful, but they still don’t compare at the end of the day, due to the limitations of field of vision, graphics, sound, motion and atmosphere. I don’t know enough to comment on flight physics or anything like that.

Saab,

Some fair points. But some airlines are consistently dirty and others are not. If the fleet flexibility and expense were the reasons for infrequent cleaning, wouldn’t Ryanair or Easyjet be really filthy?

The ATP is perfectly OK as a passenger!

I think the severe techincal failings of the aircraft have been pointed out a few times however.