We’ve got two in the area.

The AME I use is a keen GA man, who was also a member of the local flying club.

The other AME in the area is primarily used by commercial pilots, he also happens to be our Company Doctor along with most other commercial operators in ABZ, and was a little more expensive than the other one – about £170 for an initial Class 2, back in 2000, IIRC.

Its more than likely that the prices have changed in the last four years.

10-15 mins after takeoff from NWI (Norwich)

Inbound to Aberdeen

Mike,

Its difficult to say whether or not United ‘jumped the gun’ in transferring pax to American.

From experience, when an aircraft is unserviceable, the situation is generally very fluid. Say you have a departure in three hours, but the aircraft is unserviceable. The initial estimate from engineering is that the aircraft will be out of service for at least four hours. Now depending on the route and the available options for re-routing pax, you may decide to re-route the passengers.

It is not unknown to then receive a phone call an hour or so later, to be told the aircraft is serviceable. Of course by this time you have probably lost most of your pax.

Of course, after the event, with the benefit of hindsight, numerous questions are asked, by the company management, as to why the situation was handled the way it was. The phrase ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ springs to mind’.

There are of course many more variables to take into account, before actually re-routing pax, as it’s not a decision to make lightly. But in essence, situations like these do occur from time to time.

In fact I’ve most of this afternoon, working out a plan, with our ops desk, for tomorrow’s flying for the company I work for. A classic case of an unserviceable aircraft, but no estimate as to when it may become serviceable.

Mike,

For the pax that were transferred to, and travelled on, the American flight, the revenue from those tickets would be transferred from United to American.

Say a pax had paid $300 for their United ticket, this $300 would be transferred to American. American cannot charge United more than the price printed on the passenger’s ticket.

Its a standard agreement throughout the industry.

In the situation you mention, if United had already transferred pax to the American flight, and still operated their own flight, then they probably would have lost money. Basically United would only have the revenue from the tickets of those 40 pax to cover the costs of that flight.

Darren

Sam,

Re your question, what the person at the back of the picture 5 was doing – he was either servicing the toilet or the ‘potable’ water.

Both service panels are located on the lower right hand side of the fuselage, beside the wing-to-fuselage fairing.

Darren

Many years ago, when the family lived on the Shetland Islands, we used to fly a lot (Father worked for BA). Did about 6 trips (each trip consisted of four legs LSI-ABZ-LHR then LHR-ABZ-LSI) in a 3 year period. (1980 – 1983). All of them on standby tickets and not once did we get bumped (there were 6 of us!!!).

HS748s between Sumburgh and Aberdeen, then usually Tridents or 1-11’s between Aberdeen and Heathrow.

Back then the 737-200 (advanced) was relatively new and on a couple of occasions it was a bright and shiny 737-200 on ABZ-LHR, some of them were in British Airtours colours.

My last flight on a Trident was back in Jan/Feb 83. While we were waiting for check-in, a member of BA ground staff came up to us, to point out one of the ‘new’ BA 757s – G-BIKA “Dover Castle”. I was only 7 and a half at the time, but for some strange reason remember it like yesterday. Always liked the 757’s in the classic BA colour scheme.

Ah those were the days………..sigh……..