The Anonymous Widower

The Nut Behind The Steering Wheel

This used to be an answer to a very old joke, which asked what is the most dangerous part of a car.

After the plane crash a few days ago in France, never was a truer thing spoken in jest.

I am someone who has done a lot of flying, both as a passenger and in command for more than a thousand hours in light aircraft,

In my time, I’ve done a lot of reading about the causes of air accidents. Some are predictable and others have such long odds no-one ever thought they would happen.

The only thing we must do is be ever vigilant and update our procedures so that the risk is reduced even more.

As to this Germanwings crash, the rule of two on the flight deck at all times, that is mandatory in the US and used by Ryanair and others in Europe should be brought in.

March 27, 2015 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | 3 Comments

A Pocket Dog

I saw this little puppy on a 56 bus.

A Pocket Dog

A Pocket Dog

Her name was Bella and I think she was a Cavalier cross poodle.

She didn’t seem to mind being on a bus.

But then one of my bassets didn’t mind flying in my aircraft. She just wedged herself between the seats and went to sleep.

December 17, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 5 Comments

Who Needs Guns And Bombs When There Are Crap Programmers About?

Last nights problems with the UK Air Traffic Control, are an illustration, that increasingly our complex world, is prone to the problem of bad software or systems. It only needs just one bug or failure, accidental or deliberate, to cause all sorts of chaos.

I have always held the view, that those that design and manage technology like banking systems, on-shore oil fields, should live in the community.

The banks have off-shored much of their programming in recent years and I believe it is a factor in the service they provide. It has happened recently some banks have had cashpoint failures. Suppose you were a programmer doing that work for the Bank of Mattress and like many, after a stressful week, you perhaps had a drink with mates in the local on a Friday night. Imagine the conversation, if your bank had had a serious failure in the previous week. So to not lose face, you make sure you and your team do a good job. But if the system is programmed in say Bangalore or San Francisco, the offenders escape the sanction of their friends.

But it’s not just computer systems.

Look at the problems with extracting oil and gas in the UK. We have had the odd disaster like the very serious Piper Alpha, but I can’t find a serious oil spill in the UK onshore in recent years.

You could say that there isn’t much oil and gas fields onshore in the UK. But look at Wytch Farm. Wikipedia says this about the oil field.

Wytch Farm is an oil field and processing facility in the Purbeck district of Dorset, England. It is the largest onshore oil field in western Europe. The facility, recently taken over byPerenco was previously operated by BP. It is hidden in a coniferous forest on Wytch Heath on the southern shore of Poole Harbour, two miles (3 km) north of Corfe Castle. Oil and natural gas (methane) are both exported by pipeline; liquefied petroleum gas is exported by road tanker.

Most people have never heard of it, but it sits there unnoticed in the heart of the Jurassic Coast. Incidentally, some of the horizontal drilling techniques that are used in fracking were developed in this field, to get oil out of the far corners of the field. Wikipedia mentions that here.

Could, the field’s invisibility in the media and the public’s imagination be down to the fact that no bad news has come from the field? And could this be due to the fact most of those working on Wytch Farm life locally and obviously would never want to soil their own doorstep?

So to return to the ATC problems!

Did management rely on programmers that were less than perfect and not local?

As someone who knows about both programming and flying, I suspect that the design of the system wasn’t what it should have been.

At least no-one suffered anything worse than a delayed flight.

But system failures like this always worry me, as they give terrorists an easy way to disrupt our lives.

We should always remember the Italian Job, where criminals fixed Turin’s traffic computer system, to help them steal the money.

Truth is often stranger than fiction!

 

December 13, 2014 Posted by | Computing, Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

Musings On Airliners And Engines

I flew to and from Iceland in an Icelandic Air Boeing 757. It’s funny, but I think that these are my only journeys in the type, as normally on short-haul flights around Europe it’s a Boeing 737 or a babyAirbus.

The 757s, that I flew on were powered by Rolls-Royce RB211-535 engines. These engines first flew on a 757 in January 1983 and were a launch engine for the airliner.

Incidentally, I wonder when the two Icelandic 757s I flew were built! Not that I worry, as well-maintained aircraft can last a lot longer than thirty years. These weren’t that old and were probably about twenty.

When I was at University, the father of one of the fellow students,  worked at Tesco in Derby. Tesco used to supply Rolls-Royce with time-expired frozen chickens, which were used by the engine company to test the first version of the RB-211 with its carbon-fibre fan blades for bird-strikes. That must have been about 1966, a few years before the RB211-22 entered service in 1972 on a Lockheed Tristar.

Today in the Sunday Times, there is an article which talks about how Airbus and Boeing, instead of designing new aircraft, are redesigning old ones. The article talks about the Airbus A330neo powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines. And what is a Trent engine? It’s a developed and renamed RB-211. Someone got the basic design right fifty years ago.

One paragraph in the Wikipedia entry for the Trent 700 must be shown.

Compared to the A330 engines the Trent 7000 will improve specific fuel consumption by ten per cent, double the bypass ratio and halve perceived noise enabling the A330neo to meet the stricter London airport (QC) noise regulations of QC1/0.25 for departure and arrivals respectively.

But then they’re only following a long tradition of the company or squeezing every drop of performance out of a design, just as they did with the Merlin.

Is it just a coincidence, that another of the UK’s long-lived and much-developed engineering icons; the InterCity 125, also has strong connections to the city of Derby in the years around 1970?

July 20, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Was Flight MH 17 Over Ukraine?

There’s an old saying, that says there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

Over the last week or so, there have been reports of the rebels in the East of Ukraine shooting down Ukranian planes. An ex-British Airways pilot on the BBC this morning, felt that planes should avoid the area. In fact, the BBC has also stated that some airlines have been avoiding the area anyway.

But as Simon Calder, the respected travel journalist, said on the BBC this morning, if you’re flying long haul, you often fly over a war zone.

And then today because of the thunderstorms in the UK, there have been delays and diversions of airliners. So planes are avoiding extreme weather, but not war zones!

But I wouldn’t fly in any plane that went over a war zone, where the participants had the capability and especially the record of shooting down high-flying aircraft.

I sometimes think that my policy of holidaying in the area covered by my EHIC card is a sensible one, because of my health history. There’s still eight countries in that area, that I haven’t visited and they include dangerous places like Finland and Leichtenstein.

July 19, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | Leave a comment

Shooting Down An Airliner Is So Easy

With the tragic loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 over Ukraine probably to a missile fired from the ground, it made me think about what sort of missile was used.

I found this article on the American Popular Science web site. The article says this.

Early information comes from an advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister, Anton Gerashenko. In a Facebook post he says the plane was “hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.”

So what is a Buk  launcher? The system is described on Wikipedia. The operators of these missiles contain some of the usual suspects. So one battery getting into the wrong hands can do a lot of damage.

Now it’s been done once, the odds must have shortened about another idiot following the lead.

We obviously don’t have to worry about Buk launchers in the UK, as I don’t think it would be easy to get the system through the Channel Tunnel.

But there are many man portable systems that if you could get near enough to an airliner would severely damage it and make it incapable of flying. But even smuggling in something like a Russian Igla to a launch point might be difficult. But there are a long list of operators, who aren’t always the most friendly of countries.

I’m no expert on the deployment of missiles such as the Igla, but I do wonder if one could be launched through the cut-away roof of something like a Range Rover. Obviously, the exhaust from the missile wouldn’t do the occupants of the car much good, but the launch could probably be triggered by a simple remote system controlled by a mobile phone.

All you would need to do, is park the vehicle at the end of the runway outside the perimeter fence of an airport, where the planes go over at a couple of hundred metres or so.

And of course it’s very convenient that many airport authorities provide large long term car parks in just the right place. Long term car parks should be well away from the airport, if they exist at all.

The last variable I’ll throw into this post, is beware the innovator. If we believe reports, like this one, terrorists will develop all sorts of devices to down an airliner. So could they develop simpler weapons to shoot down an airliner, as it’ll be much easier than smuggling a bomb onto an aircraft.

July 18, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

How Yorkshire Won The Tour De France

On the BBC last night and again this morning, they have been interviewing the guy who made the decision to bring the start of the Tour de France to Leeds. He said he thought it was a good idea, as he knew the area a bit, but what clinched it, was a helicopter ride over the area to see what it was like from the air. After seeing the superb scenery, he knew it would be spectacular on television.

This has echoes of a story I heard many years ago. GEC were attempting to sell an airport radar system to a country in the Middle East. There was only one in service radar of this type in service and that was at Prestwick in Scotland. So it was decided that the important sheikh and his advisors would be flown up to the airport from London in GEC’s corporate jet.

The demonstration went well and afterwards when they returned to the aircraft, the pilot said that would everybody like to see the Scottish Highlands in autumn from the air on a sunny day, as he felt it was one of the best sights in the world.

So they came back to London, the long way round after a low level pass over the Highlands.

Needless to say, GEC got the order.

 

July 5, 2014 Posted by | Business, Sport | , , | Leave a comment

When Did I Last Fly Internally In The UK?

Tuesday’s flight to Edinburgh was my first internal flight in the UK in years.

C and I went to Scotland several times, but it was usually in my own plane, on the train or occasionally by car. The only picture of our 1969 Porsche 911T, was taken on Skye.

I think we only ever flew internally in the UK once on a commercial aircraft and that was probably in the 1980s, when we had a weekend in Jersey. It must have been before C would fly with me in my plane, as I can’t understand why I didn’t use it. Or it could have been earlier in the 1970s?

I also flew up to Scotland a couple of times with Metier, but normally to see Ferranti in Edinburgh, I would drive up at a speed no-one would be able to today.

I suppose the only time, I’d fly internally in the UK, would be to the North of Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands.

June 6, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | | Leave a comment

The Pilot With More Lives Than A Cat’s Home

I watched the documentary entitled Britain’s Greatest Pilot: The Extraordinary Story of Captain Winkle Brown on BBC2 last night.

The title says his story has been extraordinary and never a truer use has been made of the word. His Wikipedia  entry reads like something penned by W E Johns.

He flew a total of 487 different aircraft types and made a record of no less than 2047 landings on aircraft carriers.

If his flying exploits weren’t enough, as he was a fluent German speaker, he interrogated some of the worst Nazi war criminals.

In the documentary last night he was still bright as a button at ninety-five.

If ever there was a program that everybody should see, then this is the one. This link is to the copy on iPlayer.

June 2, 2014 Posted by | World | , , | Leave a comment

The Row Over Heathrow Expansion

There is a real row going on in the letters column of The Times over expansion at Heathrow.

Akbar al-Baker started it by saying people get used to aircraft noise. What does a Qatari national know about the rights of the individual citizen?

But I think it’s all an argument, where the usual British attitude of do nothing and it will be all right on the night, may be the right one.

Various factors will come into play over the next few years, that will also make Heathrow expansion less important.

I have read somewhere that Heathrow passengers are more likely to be travelling for leisure rather than business reasons.

Tourists on the other hand, are more likely to plan a trip on matters of convenience and cost.

So if you live somewhere like Derby, you probably have two or three airports that are easier to get to than Heathrow, so if say that holiday in Florida is cheaper via East Midlands, why would you go to Heathrow?

Even where I live close to Central London, I probably have a multi-airport choice to make on any flight.

If nothing as this choice of flights and airports increases, it will take the pressure off the need for an extra runway in the South East.

The only people, who probably need to fly into Heathrow are those, who have a connection to make, like a businessman going from say San Francisco to Minsk. These passengers will still fly through Heathrow, but increasingly as London gets to be an even more desirable tourist destination, will a transfer passenger decide to spend the night in London before continuing their journey?

It all goes to show how I would never rely on any statistics given out by Heathrow.

So many travellers are held to Heathrow by all sorts of factors, that clever marketing by alternative modes of travel can erode. Ryanair for instance is thinking about going to the United States.

al-Baker also called for Heathrow to become a twenty-four hour airport. He would wouldn’t he, as one of the big beneficiaries of this would be the gulf airlines, as then they could schedule flights to and from London on a virtually turn-up-and-go basis to and from their own twenty-four hour airports.

The man is obviously a man with no experience of UK politics, as no British politician, would ever sanction a twenty-four hour airport in the UK, except possibly on an island in the middle of the North Sea.

But then he’s paddling his own interests as a Director of Heathrow and the CEO of Qatar Airways.

But there are also a couple of rather large elephants in the room; the next generation of super-jumbos and new and upgraded railways.

Airbus A380’s fly into Manchester and I suspect over the next few years, they and the next generation aircraft will fly into several airports in the UK, like Birmingham, Cardiff, Stansted, Liverpool and Edinburgh to create high-capacity point-to-point services, putting more pressure on Heathrow as the long haul airport of choice.

It could be thought that Crossrail would benefit Heathrow, as it will give a quick, affordable and easy route to Central London and South Essex. But it will also enable long-haul travellers to transfer with ease to London’s next three largest airports; Gatwick, Luton and Stansted, so a convenient flight out of London after a long overnight flight, might not be at another terminal at Heathrow, but at another airport after a restful lunch at Farringdon or some other Central London location.

In future HS2 might have an effect on Heathrow, as when fully developed, Manchester Airport will be just over an hour from Central London.

A twenty four hour three-runway airport at Heathrow will only benefit the airlines and probably those in the Gulf more than most.

But if we don’t create it, nothing serious will happen, as people will find more convenient and affordable ways of getting from A to B.

May 26, 2014 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | Leave a comment

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