Shake the child or file charges against the woman?

I’m for the latter (we’re talking about a 3-year old!), and there would have been a lot of other “items” coming her way if it were my child, whom I incidentally always tell to stay away from the seat in front of them when flying.

The fact of the matter is that the real culprits are the airlines who need to realise that passengers are human beings with legs, and that this also applies to children. The constant reductions in seat pitch lead to these problems. Would I be prepared to pay the extra costs? Most definitely (just back from a 5 hour flight with my baby daughter sitting in my lap all the way…)

Does anyone know of a website with info as to which airshows abroad the 109/ Buchons in Germany visit?

There isn’t any.

Your best chance of finding out is to check individual air show information pages and/or flugzeugforum.de. At least one of the Manching-based 109’s usually manages to appear at ILA in Berlin, and the closer the venue is to Manching, the greater the likelihood is of seeing one at a smaller event. La Ferté Alais also seems to be a good bet (EADS connection) while Hahnweide is less so.

I always thought it was the “Messerschmitt Foundation” that owned the three Bf109Gs, the new-build Me262 and a Bf108 Taifun, but Googling that brings up something which has nowt to do with aeroplanes at all!

They do indeed own these aircraft (but are not being very public about it), but they are operated by something called the EADS Historic Flight at Manching/Ingolstadt north of Munich. You can add a static Bf109/Hispano, a static Bf 108, an airworthy Messerschmitt M17 replica, an airworthy Me 163 (glider) replica and an airworthy Hispano Saeta to that list.

I think the DC-3 and the CASA 352 are the ones which are now on display at the visitors centre at Munich airport, the former masquerading as a Swissair aircraft.

Looks like a J-3 Kitten, an older microlight design, to me…

Many, many years ago I had the opportunity to sit for a very long time in the cockpit of the only Spitfire preserved in Denmark. Having a looong and close look at just about every corner of the cockpit I found a Greater Copenhagen train ticket from the early Fifties hidden somewhere in a corner (can’t remember exactly where anymore). I decided to put it back where I found it as I somehow felt it belonged to the aircraft.

However, I left the aircraft having this vision in my teenager mind of a debonair Danish Air Force pilot arriving by public transport (!) to the airfield and taking the Spitfire up for some spirited flying in the wonderful unrestricted and uncrowded air space of the Greater Copenhagen area in the Fifties, thereby loosing the aforementioned ticket from an unzipped pocket of his flying suit (!!) only to be found by me some thirty years later.

Much later it was determined that this Spitfire had actually been hiding behind a false identity for years and that it had never flown while in Danish Air Force service, having been used as an instructional airframe until someone found out it was the last one left and then giving it a new lick of paint and a “proper” identity.

The true origin of that train ticket is thus more likely to be found in an idle erk’s use of one R.J. Mitchell’s products as a dust bin…. sometime in the early Fifties.

Any idea where it was travelling too?

The Duxford Bronco is allegedly in Straubing (EDMS) in South Germany for propeller work these days, so it may have been going or coming from there?

German Lo 120 microlight?