The Anonymous Widower

Visiting the RAF Museum at Hendon

Yesterday, I went to see the RAF Museum at Hendon.  It is an easy trip from central London by public transport, with just a trip to Colindale station on the Northern line and then four stops on a 303 bus.

It is a museum worth visiting with a large collection of aircraft.  It’s also free to enter and the staff seem a lot more clued up than at some museums you visit.

I didn’t stay too long in the main museum and only took a couple of pictures, as I’d come to see the Grahame-White Aircraft Factory.

April 7, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel, World | , | Leave a comment

Where’s The Mosquito?

The extraordinary obituary of Ted Sismore in the Telegraph is also a catalogue of the amazing exploits of the most versatile aircraft of the Second World War; the de Havilland Mosquito. The Times describes the Mosquito as Britain’s first multi-role combat aircraft, but some of its exploits weren’t actually in combat. The aircraft flew in US Air Force colours to perform high-altitude weather research and also as an airliner to bring valuable cargoes, as varied as ball bearings, the physicist Neils Bohr and Marshall Zhukov across the North Sea to the UK.

In 1962, Queen Elizabeth awarded the Order of Merit to the Mosquito’s designer; Sir Geoffrey de Havilland. He is the only aircraft designer to receive the award, which is a personal gift of the sovereign.

So as we come to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it would be fitting that one of de Havilland’s wooden wonders should be in the fly-past to mark the event. But it won’t be as there are no flyable examples left in the UK. The non-flying prototype sits in splendour at the de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre in the hangar where it was built.

But then the RAF had no policy on the preservation of historic aircraft.

April 6, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel, World | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pilot Loses It

Apparently a pilot from American airline JetBlue lost it as is reported here.

What is interesting, is that The Times says, that a fully qualified pilot was travelling as a passenger.

This is in fact quite common and all those stories where the two pilots eat the same dodgy meal and a passenger then lands the plane are very unlikely.  A survey some years ago, said that most flights had someone amongst the passengers, who could bring the plane safely down.

March 28, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | | 4 Comments

Doric Nimrod Air Two

A small article in The Times today entitled Investors queue up for aviation’s double-deckers,  caught my eye. It talks about a company called Doric Nimrod Air Two, that will buy and lease out Airbus A380 double-deck airliners, giving investors upwards of a nine-percent return on capital.

Would I invest, if I was as rich as Croesus?

You have to admire their innovation, but the aircraft are leased to Emirates, which is a Middle East airline. In that troubled region, there are more nutcases, than on all the peanut farms in Georgia.  You don’t have to actually shoot a plane down, just hit it with something very explosive on the ground.

After all, the share price of the company dipped, when the A380 developed wing cracks.

So it may work, but it is not an investment that appeals to me.

I’d prefer to put my money in Zopa and get around six percent.

March 27, 2012 Posted by | Finance & Investment, Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

If You Can’t Get a Seat on the Train Try Holyhead to Cardiff

In the South-East and many other areas of England, trains may be overcrowded, but not if you want to go from or to North Wales and Cardiff. According to the April 2012 edition of Modern Railways, some trains only carry an average of eight First Class passengers and a chef to cook the free meals. This is subsidised at a rate of £1.7million by the Welsh Assembly. They also subsidise air passengers to the tune of £160 a journey.  There’s more of it here.

March 25, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , | Leave a comment

When Airlines Knew What Service Meant – 3

This is a third tale from about 1985 and again it concerns British Airways, but I suspect in those days any good airline did their utmost for their passengers, as it was cheap positive publicity.

A friend, his wife and another couple had gone for a weekend in somewhere like Malaga.  They had worried about actually getting there, as the French air traffic controllers were having one of their periodic bouts of industrial action.

They werent’t particularly bothered, as if they didn’t get back on Monday, Tuesday would do.

On the Monday, various tour reps arrived at the hotel and said that everybody would get home, but it would be a bit late and they would be picked up from the hotel at the expected time.  But the British Airways rep told her charges to wait in the hotel and they’d be picked up three hours before the flight was to leave.

So about nine, they all trooped onto the coach for the airport, where chaos reigned, as no flights were going back to the UK, due to the French. At midnight, they were called to the departure lounge and pretty soon were on their plane.

They’d been expecting a 737, but the plane was a wide-bodied Tri-Star, which BA filled with other passengers caught up from the Sunday or at the chaos at other airports.

Once airborne, the pilot explained the Tri-Star by saying that the French weren’t allowing any planes through their airspace, so they’d used the longer-range Tri-Star and filed a flight-plan on the way out to Bermuda, with Malaga as the alternate. Then halfway across the Atlantic, they’d declared  a minor emergency and as they were just north of Spain, requested they go to the alternate. He said the flight home would be a bit longer, as they were totally avoiding French air-space.

It must have used a lot more fuel, but there were lots of contented passengers.

 

February 6, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | 2 Comments

When Airlines Knew What Service Meant – 2

In about 1979 or so, we ad an awful Christmas Eve in the UK, which meant that lots of aircraft were frozen to their stands at Heathrow and nothing could go in or out.

At the time a colleague in Metier was in Amsterdam and needed to get back for Christmas. He got to Schipol and there were massive queues as no planes were flying to the UK, because most airports were shut. But instead of giving up, as they do these days, British Airways managed to get a Tri-Star to Schipol from somewhere.  But where was it to go? It then turned out that the then small East Midlands Airport was open and during the afternoon and evening, it shuttled passengers across the North Sea.  The last flight arrived in England at three o’clock in the morning, as they kept the airport open late, so as not to ruin Christmas for the passengers. The airline is supposed to have commandeered all the coaches in the area to complete passengers journeys.

But everybody had a good Christmas and British Airways got a lot of publicity.

I can’t imagine it happening today! In fact today, there are reports of incoming passengers to the UK,  stuck in places like  Barcelona and Shannon.

February 6, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

When Airlines Knew What Service Meant

I was just talking to a friend, whose son  had got mixed up in all the delays at Stansted. He had got no sense from an Irish so-called airline and had had to come home.

It got me thinking about how airlines used to know what service meant.

Many years ago all five of us went to St. Lucia on an all-inclusive holiday with British Airways.

I think we were due to come home on the Thursday, but due to an engine failure on the incoming flight, it became obvious that we would have an extra night on the island. We were moved that night to another hotel and were told that although we would get home on Friday or Saturday, they couldn’t be sure how long we’d be stuck.

We eventually heard that it would be the Saturday, as although there would be an incoming flight on the Friday, it would be coming in late as it was carrying the spare engine and the crew to change it, and because of the extra load, it would be refuelling in Bermuda. We did get a view as it flew in to land of one of the strangest sights in aviation; a Boeing 747 carrying an extra fifth engine under the wing root. There’s a video of one here.

So we ad two extra nights on St. Lucia and very late on Saturday, we boarded the 747 to go home. I can’t remember if it was Thursday’s, Friday’s or Saturday’s plane, but it was one of the then new Rolls-Royce powered 747-200s.

The pilot did announce though, that it would be a direct flight to Heathrow, instead of via Barbados, so he apologised if the take-off was a bit noisy, as he’d be using full everything.

I remember he was followed down the runway by a tug and they backed the plane as far towards and over the fence as they dare. It was a noisy but safe take-off and we arrived much earlier than expected non-stop into Heathrow.

The one thing that spoilt the flight, was rather a heavy landing, for which the pilot apologised and blamed the new auto-land system, which as he said needed a bit more tweaking.

February 5, 2012 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | 1 Comment

Confusion Over Whether Captain Was Last To Leave

There seems to be some confusion as to whether the captain of the Costa Concordia was the last to leave his stricken ship. This Australian web site says he wasn’t, but others like Sky say he was.

It does seem to me though, that there was a lot of panic and that the charts may not have been up to the standard that the Admiralty would certify.

But to return to the Captain.  It wasn’t obvious he was last to leave as Captain Knut Carlsen on the SS Flying Enterprise and Captain Chesley Sullenberger on US Airways Flight 1549 were.

It may seem strange that I can remember the Flying Enterprise incident so well, but it was an amazing piece of heroism and probably one of the first to be covered by the television news after we bought a set.  But it is sixties years ago now.  I know that we definitely had a television for the Coronation and that happened only a few months later.  But it was also one of a long list of disasters that have happened over Christmas.

January 15, 2012 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

It’s All in the Figures

In The Times today, there is an article, saying that Boeing’s new airliner, the 737 Max, has acquired its first customer. It has been launched the airliner perhaps earlier than it wanted, as a response to the sales success of the new Airbus A320neo, which offers a 15 percent fuel saving over the A320.

The article states that Boeing are looking for 30% fuel savings by the mid-2020s.

If car and truck makers could achieve figures like this, it might help with global warming.

December 14, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 2 Comments

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