Sometimes Two Heads are Not Better Than One
Soon after I got my PPL(A), back in the dark ages, flying friends suggested that I pair up with another recently qualified pilot. That way, they said, we could share the cost, and also benefit from each other’s experience. One could fly, while the other did the navigation and radio; then we would swap for the next flight. Half the cost, half the work, twice the fun, they told me. A well tried and tested way of gaining...
Boeing 747 Lands at Hartlepool College
Hartlepool College of Further Education, has celebrated the opening of its new Travel, Tourism and Aviation training centre. The centre features part of a genuine Boeing 747 fuselage, reassembled at the college, allowing students the opportunity to train in an authentic environment. Darren Hankey, Principal of Hartlepool College of Further Education, said: “The Travel Tourism and the Aviation departments here at the college have just...
A little support for the journey
If you were contemplating a non-stop flight to Australia who or what would you take for support? Your partner or an entertaining companion? A couple of good books? A pre-loaded ‘box set’ of your favourite TV series? One of those inflatable neck supports? Or maybe a duck. For a number of years now, airline passengers in the USA have been entitled to travel with an ‘Emotional Support Animal’ to help them with the trauma of domestic...
UK to Australia non-stop
Sleep might be exactly what passengers may be craving even more than normal when the first ever non-stop Europe to Australia scheduled flights commence in late March. Long the ‘holy grail’ of long distance airline travel, the Heathrow to Perth service will be flown by Qantas using B787-9s and will be a flight of approximately 17 hours airborne. That sounds like a lot to most of us (somewhere in the region of 14,500km), though...
A Virgin Sleeping Beauty awakes
No – we haven’t regressed to fairy tales (at least, not just yet), but rather a modern fable demonstrating the current buoyant state of the airline business. The Sleeping Beauty in question is an Airbus A340-600 belonging to Virgin Atlantic, named ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and registered, appropriately enough, G-VNAP. They’re not short of imagination at Virgin Atlantic, it’s one of the reasons they’re one of our favourite airlines [full...
De-icing the RAF way, Tad Higher
Ice. Our normal routine is to forget about ice until we see a weather forecast for the next day that causes us concern. If frost is forecast and we have a lesson at 0900, we wait until everyone else has packed up for the night and then stick a Tomahawk just inside the hangar door, hoping Randolph doesn’t notice when he locks up. If he doesn’t spot our aircraft we can get away without paying a hangar fee for the night. We...
