Of times passed

I just spent a pleasant 3 days in Penang, Malaysia.

I’ve been there only once before. Some time during the 1960’s the P&O passenger liner in which I was serving, called there. It might have been the ‘Strathmore’ around about the same time we visited (a very undeveloped) Bali.

I’m not sure how we made the contact but a few of us had been ashore to sample the local nightlife and met up with the Matron of the Military Hospital. This was a middle-aged British lady, a spinster, who had (it seemed to us) totally embraced an expatriate lifestyle with no intention of ever returning to Britain.

Three or four of us ended up in her house somewhere in the hills above the town (it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a city then).

We sat on her veranda and she plied us with Gin and Tonic in return for which we had to update her on all that was happening back home in the UK. Remember, there was no CNN, no BBC World, no TV period. A letter sent by airmail would take up to 3 weeks to be delivered. People in her position around the world were starved of information about what was happening back in Britain.

At some moment in the early hours of the morning, having sucked us dry of anything we could tell her about ‘home’, she threw us out because she had to be on duty at the hospital at some ungodly hour.

In nearly 50 years I have never forgotten that evening and as my Air Asia 737 dropped into Penang International Airport it all came back to me.

Sadly, Penang today is just another Asian city paying lip-service to the tourist trade. That trade is mainly back-packers – a concept totally alien to me when I trolled around the world in the 1960’s.

It didn’t matter. I was quite happy to submerge myself in memories just as I have done in recent years when re-visiting Singapore and Hong Kong, Bali and Brunei, the Philippines and Japan.

But I did spend some time wondering whose memories were the more meaningful – mine or the present-day backpacker.  The average back-packer sees only what the visiting country arranges for them to see.  In Singapore an antiseptic, air-conditioned Change Alley, In Sydney a cleaned up Kings Cross and Bangkok’s Kowsan Road is no different to Chulia Street in Penang.

I think I’ll stick with my 50 year old memories thank you.

On aviation and the media

There used to be a time when newspapers, the so-called ‘quality’ ones at any rate, employed Aviation Correspondents.

These would be ex-air force or retired commercial pilots, or someone who worked at a professional level in the aviation industry. The main thing was that they knew what they were talking about and could write a story accordingly.

All that seems to have gone by the board with today’s, sensation seeking tabloids intent on selling as many copies as they can with scant regard for truth or accuracy. Even worse is TV ‘breaking news’ where the channel is trying to be the first on air with the ‘news’ at any cost.

We don’t have Aviation Correspondents any more. We have people with an ‘ology’ in ‘journospeak’ and a vivid imagination instead.

Time and again an aviation incident is blown out of all proportion or just badly misreported by (so-called) journalists with little interest in establishing fact from fiction before submitting their copy.

Headline: ‘Stricken jet plunges/plummets thousands of feet in seconds!!!!’  ‘pilots wrestle frantically with the controls!!!!’ (Add ‘narrowly missed school/convent/old people’s home/hospital’ etc. to taste)

No it didn’t. Passenger aircraft cruise at up to 40,000 feet, an altitude where the air is too thin and too cold for people to breath. If exposed to such an environment a healthy human has just 12 seconds of useful consciousness at moderate activity levels and 15 seconds with minimal activity. Thereafter consciousness is lost and brain damage can occur.

The lower the altitude the higher the period of consciousness – 5 minutes and 10 minutes at 25,000 feet and at 12,000 feet you can breath and function normally again. Even that is conservative. People have successfully climbed Mount Everest (27,000 feet) without oxygen!

That is why, in the event of sudden cabin decompression, breathing masks drop from compartments above the seats and the flight crew will initiate a speedy and controlled descent to 12,000 feet or lower.

Newspapers please note – this is NOT a plunge or a plummet. It is a controlled maneuver at a descent rate of between 4,500 and 5,000 feet per minute (6,000 fpm in some circumstances) that from 40,000 feet to 12,000 feet will take 5-6 minutes.

A skydiver reaches a terminal velocity of around 120 mph (10,500 fpm) before opening his parachute. Now that’s a plummet!

During a recent Boeing 747 cabin decompression, video footage taken by a passenger during the emergency descent (they were still wearing their masks) showed meal trays still sitting firmly on tables.

QANTAS cabin decompression

One passenger reported that, when the aircraft levelled out at 10,000 feet, his glass of beer was still where he had placed it on his tray table when the masks dropped with not a drop spilled.

Hardly the terrifying plunge that some journo’s would have you believe.

Generally there is little difference in aircraft attitude (nose down) during an emergency descent compared with a normal approach to land at an airport. It’s the vertical speed that matters.

Pilots do not ‘wrestle with controls’. If they did they’d probably break something! At the cruising levels where modern passenger aircraft operate, computers are in control. Even an emergency descent is pre-programmed into the Flight Director and controlled by the Auto Pilot.

Quite often during a flight the seat belt signs will be switched on and passengers will be asked to return to their seats and strap in because of air turbulence caused by weather conditions near the aircraft.

Clear air turbulence or CAT is a bit different. If an aircraft flies into an area of CAT then, yes, there will be abrupt and significant changes of altitude and unsecured people and objects inside the cabin will experience weightlessness and/or positive G forces with resulting injury and damage. It is a thoroughly frightening but, thankfully, quite infrequent experience because most modern passenger aircraft have weather radar that can warn the flight crew of the existence of CAT ahead. Training and experience can also assist the flight crew to predict the possibility.

Headline: ‘Terrified passengers screamed and prayed!!!!’ ‘My life flashed before my eyes!!!!’

Well, mayhap as Catweazle was want to say. Given the standard of driving in Thailand my life flashes before my eyes several times during a routine trip from Chonburi to Bangkok on the motorway!

Look again at the video taken during the Qantas 747’s emergency descent. It all looks pretty calm to me. If anyone was crying it would have been children experiencing ear pain due to the rapidly changing air pressure and not knowing how to counteract it.

As on many similar occasions, this situation was under control and the passengers knew that. It does not need a sensation seeking journo to invent things that were simply not happening nor to embroider the accounts extracted from passengers who have just disembarked and who are still trying to put the experience into perspective for themselves.

Yes – accidents do happen – sometimes unavoidable but more often man-made and it is here that a responsible press can help by drawing attention to inadequacies before accidents happen rather than sensationalising the aftermath.

The 1-2-Go crash at Phuket was caused by management greed in bending and ignoring basic safety regulations and in employing pilots of questionable ability (because they were cheap). There were some badly frightened passengers who survived that tragedy whilst 90 people, including both pilots, died.

By drawing attention to what Udom Tantiprasongchai, the gangster who runs this apology for an airline along with its sister airline Orient Thai, was up to then this tragedy might have been avoided. The press, particularly the Thai press, manifestly failed the public on this occasion.

Then there was the Adam Air crash in Indonesia where a serious mistake by a less than experienced flight crew (they inadvertently switched off the auto pilot at cruising altitude) resulted in loss of aircraft control while both were concentrating on trouble shooting an instrument malfunction that was, in itself, of no particular significance. The aircraft entered an unrecoverable dive and hit the ocean at a very high speed. There were no survivors.

No journalist could possibly know what happened in the cabin during the 2-3 minutes it took for those unfortunate people to die but, by publicising that airline’s well known inadequacies earlier, they might have hastened it’s demise before this needless loss of life.

Thank God we can count on the sheer professionalism of flight and cabin crews generally – like the BA 777 at Heathrow and the above-mentioned Qantas 747 off the Philippines and the way in which they managed their respective emergencies. Consider also that the vast majority of air flights – day by day, year by year, are just as professionally conducted.

The popular press rarely reports the positive aspects of air travel but then, I suppose, such mundane stuff doesn’t sell potential refuse wrapping.

Be prepared?

Many years ago I read a short, science fiction story about a small town in America and its obsession with being prepared against sudden catastrophic attack whether it be from aliens, the sub-culture that threatened the fabric of the local community or nuclear bombardment by the countries enemies.

In the story the government encourages each town to compete with it’s neighbours to raise the level of ‘preparedness’ which, in turn, leads to an unprecedented level of hysteria and angst amongst the people themselves.

It turned out that this policy was not so much designed to keep communities safe but more to keep them under control by diverting their attention away from what the government was really up to.

All in all it was a depressing piece of fiction particularly as, at the time, we were all consumed by the ‘communist threat’ and the nuclear arms race.

Sadly I cannot find the story now. I think it appeared in one of those magazine anthologies that were popular at the time but it wasn’t, as far as I recall, written by one of the big sci-fi writers (Azimov, Heinlein or Clarke for example).

Over the years I kept remembering the story as the world was exposed to one perceived ‘threat’ after another. I am reminded of the story again as we witness what is happening with airport security in the United Kingdom.

Just to give you an example of how airport security has changed. In April 1968 I was Crew Purser on a passenger ship. The Suez Canal had closed a year earlier and our ships now sailed to Australia via the Cape of Good Hope thereby preventing a call at Bombay where we would normally make changes to our Indian and Pakistani crews. As a result the company arranged for the relief crew to be flown Bombay to London by Air India whilst the crew being relieved would fly back on the same aircraft. The change over took place at Heathrow and I was in charge of proceedings.

I was delayed with the in-coming group and the out-going men boarded the aircraft before I had a chance to say goodbye to them. Without thinking too much about it I walked into Departures and unchallenged (I was wearing uniform) passed through the gate and boarded the aircraft. I introduced myself to a stewardess and asked if I could speak to the Chief Pantryman (the senior man in the departing crew). No problem. Afterwards I left the aircraft and walked back through Departures (again unchallenged) and back to Arrivals to rejoin my in-coming crew who were waiting to board buses to take them to the ship at Southampton.

The rise of the Palestine Liberation Organisation changed all that. After a number of hijackings including the spectacular multiple hijack of four passenger aircraft to Dawson Field in Jordan during 1970, airport security measures were ramped up.

The remains of a BOAC VC10 airliner after it and 3 other hijacked airliners were blown up at Dawson Field, Jordan in 1970. No passengers or crew were aboard at the time.

No-one minded this. We could all understand the reason for it and whilst the security check was quick and non-intrusive we were all happy to go along with it.

30 years later 9/11 and Al Qaida re-focussed our attention to be followed, over the next 5 years, with several other incidents culminating in the July 7, 2005 attacks in London.

Rather than me trying to repeat it all, you should read this:-

Report from The Register

The article raises the suggestion that many of the current security measures are not actually necessary. Is it possible that, just like the sci-fi story, there is some ulterior government motive in implying a danger that isn’t as great as they would have us believe?

Thanks to the lunatic Richard Reid (shoe bomber – failed) we must all now remove our shoes to have them checked for explosives even though the likelihood of successfully detonating such a device is virtually nil. Reid certainly couldn’t do so after several attempts at setting fire to his shoe which served only to alert people to what he was doing.

If it has a metal buckle then your belt has to come off too, leaving you clutching at your pants to keep them up while you shuffle barefoot, like some Guantanamo Bay intern, through a metal detector that has been tuned so high that the fillings in your teeth will set it off. The sharp pointy bit in the buckle is still a sharp pointy bit when they give the belt back so – what is the point? (the pun is unintentional)

Those tiny little ‘Swiss Army’ penknives that just about everyone carries on a key ring are a big ‘no-no’ – nasty, lethal weapons those!

Thanks to the clowns who thought they could assemble a liquid bomb from otherwise innocent looking substances once on board (subsequently scientifically proved to be an impossible task outside a laboratory), factory sealed bottles of water, soft drinks, baby milk, toothpaste, shampoo, shaving cream, after shave, talcum powder – you name it, it’s all considered potentially lethal. And don’t be fooled by the published limits on bottle/package size. Depending on his (or her) frame of mind on the day, the security operative is quite likely to confiscate it regardless of size.

Having had all these factory sealed items taken then you may visit the ‘Duty Free’ shops run by the airport operators to purchase exactly the same items as replacements but at a cost considerably higher than you paid for the ones ‘confiscated’.

Does that sound like a scam or what?

I have a very nice travel pack of miniature toiletries that was a gift years ago when I was a passenger with Emirates Airlines. It is one of the most useful airline gifts I have ever received and I keep it replenished to take it into the cabin with me every time I travel. Or I used to. Now I’m worried that some ‘oik’ at security will take a fancy to it and ‘confiscate’ it for his own use. So now it goes into my hold baggage where it is of no use whatever as a travel accessory.

And what happens to all the factory sealed stuff that is ‘stolen’ from us? No receipt for these items of personal property is issued and I’ll bet that a lot of it ends up on the shelves of the local ‘open all hours’ or even finds its way around the corner and into shops in the departure lounge.

It’s not just passengers that suffer but aircrew as well. The same people who are charged with the responsibility for getting us safely from point A to B in a 100+ ton aluminium tube filled with combustible fuel and travelling close to the speed of sound are being routinely belittled and humiliated in full view of their passengers.

Some carriers do not provide in-flight meals so flight deck crews take things like soup, yoghurt, sandwiches, pieces of fruit, soft drinks et al to sustain them during their working day which can be 12 hours or more.

Guess what? These items too are now routinely confiscated along with things like eye drops for contact lens wearers and even nail clippers. However, if you freeze the soup it seems, ‘that’s OK then, Guv’.

How insane is that?

As one pilot said in an internet forum on the subject; ‘I don’t need to carry anything air side with me if I decide to commit a terrorist crime. All I have to do is take off, gain a little height and then aim my aircraft at a suitable target like the Houses of Parliament. Job done!’

A story that came out of Southampton airport tells of a pilot who had his nail clippers confiscated so he told the security ‘goon’ that there was an axe in the aircraft. ‘Oh’, said the goon, ‘you’re not allowed to have that – it’s a dangerous weapon’. The pilot went out to the aircraft, took the axe and handed it to the security man. He then wrote ‘emergency fire axe missing’ in the aircraft maintenance log. The aircraft was grounded, the flight cancelled and the pilot went home for the day on full pay. It would be interesting to know what the airport operator’s response to that incident was when confronted by an irate airline.

And in that story lies the crux of the problem – the quality of people that are employed as security personnel at UK airports. These days it’s only the (usually) unemployable who would even consider taking on such a job. Not gifted with any intelligence and ‘jobswerfs’ to a man, they are unable to apply reason to any given situation no matter how obvious the answer might be.

‘I’m only doing my job, Guv.’ and that’s as far as you get with them. Their employers (the airport operators) allow them to to exercise their imagined ‘power’ over their fellow man which they do, indiscriminately and with obvious enjoyment. There are also some serious implications of harassment and sexual abuse that the UK’s PC and ‘elf ‘n’ safety’ culture seems content to turn a blind eye to.

Need further proof? Just look at this: Lethal T-shirt (You may get a random advertisement before the news clip).

I bet they don’t talk about their jobs too loudly in their local pubs though.

President George W Bush has a lot to answer for with his (so-called) ‘War on Terror’ along with the political lapdogs who pander to his particular paranoia.

Thinking back to the sci-fi story, isn’t airport security in the UK one instance of ‘preparedness’ gone very badly wrong?

Fair ’nuff

There is a superb clip on You Tube where the late, great Ray Hanna flying a Spitfire parts the hair of a TV reporter whose name I wish I could remember but can’t.

Spitfire low pass

I play the clip regularly because, whilst it looks dangerous, it wasn’t. It’s just very funny.

I played the clip again a couple of nights ago and it triggered a dim and distant memory of a story that my father used to tell about a Spitfire pilot he knew in Germany just after the end of the Second World War.

My Dad, an army officer, was sent into Germany with the occupation forces in 1945. He was based in Iserlohn where he was initially billeted at the Officers Mess. ‘Z’ Mess in Iserlohn had a reputation for being a tad wild.

There was a Mess party every Friday night that usually ran non-stop through the weekend during which just about anything could happen.

The Spitfire pilot was a Wing Commander who, in civilian life, had been a barrister. For this ‘sin’ he was appointed a war trials judge.

The mental stress of being a Trials Judge must have been enormous. Quite apart from dealing with racketeers and black-marketers, he would, fairly regularly, don the black cap in order to hand down the ultimate sentence on a criminal of a different standing.

All of this took its toll and Tubby (that was his nickname) would hit the bottle hard during the weekend merriment that was taking place in ‘Z’ Mess. As the evening progressed he would slide slowly under the table and assume a foetal position clutching his glass.

His great drinking buddy was a Canadian (nicknamed ‘Moose’) who would keep an eye on him and make sure he stayed safe and sound. Tubby was quite small whilst Moose was a giant of a man. At regular intervals he would reach under the table and, one handed, lift Tubby up from under it by the front of his uniform tunic, still in his foetal crouch, to fill his glass before gently lowering him back under the table again.

Tubby’s only response would be to murmur ‘Fair ‘nuff – fair ‘nuff”.

Being a serving RAF pilot, Tubby was required to fly an aeroplane once a month in order to retain his ‘flying’ pay. Because he was tied up with legal matters during the week, the only days he could fly were Saturday and Sunday.

Shortly after my Dad arrived in Iserlohn, Moose invited him to accompany them to a nearby airfield where Tubby was to take his monthly flight check. This was scheduled for Sunday morning. The mess party that had started on Friday night had been a good one and had extended through Saturday night as well.

Early on Sunday morning Moose and my Dad recovered Tubby from his usual place under a table. He could hardly walk and had to be helped to my Dad’s Humber 4 x 4 staff car occasionally murmuring, “Fair ‘nuff”.

A Spitfire was waiting with its engine ticking over when they arrived at the airfield. Moose guided Tubby to the aircraft, assisted him with his parachute, and helped him into the cockpit. The canopy was slid shut and every one stood back and held their breath.

I suppose that, if you can survive six years of all out war, going head to head with fighter pilots who were as good as and (sometimes) better than you, it says a lot about the instinctive way a born pilot reacts when he finds himself in his natural environment.

The Spitfire taxied to the runway and took off. My Dad’s account of what followed would occasionally leave him at a loss for words when it came to describing what Tubby did with that aeroplane.

My Dad wasn’t a pilot so he didn’t have the right names for the manoeuvres he witnessed but from what he told me it seemed that Tubby began his ’show’ by executing a vertical climb immediately after lift off culminating in a roll off the top (or Immelmann turn) leading to a very low pass over the assembled witnesses, some of whom dropped prone as the aircraft passed over them. That’s why the You Tube clip reminded me of the story.

What followed was a classic demonstration of a man in total control of a flying machine. It was a brilliant display of just what a Spitfire in the right hands was capable of. 30 minutes later the final act was a high speed inverted pass at low level downwind along the runway, so low that my Dad swore that there were only inches between the propeller tips and the concrete. Just beyond the runway threshold, Tubby pushed into an inverted 3/4 loop that left the Spitfire perfectly positioned for a gentle landing right on the numbers.

Painting by Barry A F Clark

The aircraft taxied in, the engine stopped and Tubby could be seen unlocking the canopy and cracking it open. Then – nothing.

Moose walked out to the aircraft, climbed onto the wing and slid the canopy open. He lifted Tubby out of the cockpit and helped him back to my Dad’s car.

Then they drove back to ‘Z” Mess to continue the party.

Next morning, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, Tubby went back to being a Judge. Amazingly, he was able to shrug off the excesses of the weekend as if nothing had happened.

As to whether he could remember flying an aeroplane and putting on an amazing display of flying skills the previous day – who knows?

Sometimes shit happens

The crash of the Air France Concorde in Paris eight years ago has become news again.

It seems that the French courts have decided to launch a case against Continental Airlines, two of their employees, two people concerned with Concorde development and one other person who worked for the French licensing body.

Just to remind ourselves – the Air France charter flight departed Charles de Galle on July 25, 2000 at 2:42 pm with 100 passengers and 9 crew. During the take off roll and at a speed of around 180 knots (200+ mph) the aircraft ran over a strip of titanium that had dropped off a Continental Airlines DC10 that had departed minutes before.

One of the 4 tyres on the left side main undercarriage was destroyed and a large (4½ kilo) lump of rubber flew up and impacted against the underside of the wing. The pressure created by this impact caused one of the fuel tanks immediately above the point of impact to explode leaving a sizable hole through which fuel escaped.

The escaping fuel then ignited and a raging fire developed under the wing right in front of the No 1 and 2 engine intakes. This led to a significant loss of power from these engines.

The pilot knew that something had gone catastrophically wrong but could not know precisely what. He was also aware that he was at a point where the take off could not be aborted and took the aircraft into the air hoping to keep it flying long enough for him to reach nearby Le Bourget Airport.

To do this he needed to raise the undercarriage but damage from the initial tyre burst and the subsequent fire precluded this. The aircraft, powered only by engines 3 and 4 on the right side and already well below the speed needed to maintain height and overcome the drag created by the extended undercarriage, was doomed.

Seconds later it fell onto a hotel at Gonesse, a short distance from Charles de Galle airport. There were no survivors and 4 people on the ground were also killed.

Rumours abounded at the time. The aircraft was over weight. The Centre of Gravity was displaced leaving the aircraft ‘nose high’. The aircraft took off with a tail wind rather than into the wind.

The subsequent BEA investigation proved all of this to be false. Up to the point where the aircraft ran over the metal strip lying in its path, everything was completely normal; nothing that the flight crew had done was out of the ordinary.

Enter the ambulance chasers.

What is the point of pursuing this through the courts? What can they possibly hope to achieve? This was an accident – something that could not have possibly been foreseen just like the explosive decompression of the early Comet airliners – like the DC10 that suffered an uncontained centre engine explosion that took out all the hydraulics to the rudder and elevators. The list is long.

To the French judiciary – forget it. Don’t go there.

Bits fall off aeroplanes all the time. That the bit fell off a Continental aircraft which lead to this sad accident is happenstance. To go after the 5 named people could well be construed as vengeance.

Just leave it alone.

London Airports expansion

We are at a time when airlines are downsizing and mothballing aircraft in order to cut costs, the cost of aviation fuel has reached a record high, is set to go higher and threatening to close down many smaller airlines altogether. Add to that the increase in food prices and the cost of living and the reduced availability of credit which will, inevitably, translate into less people who can afford to travel by air.

In the midst of all this the UK’s elected ‘leaders’ seem determined to move ahead with a ridiculous project costing billions of pounds of taxpayers money that not only destroys whole townships and the environment surrounding them but wrecks the lives of tens of thousands of citizens.

What planet do these people come from?

There is simply no need to expand Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow. Just better utilise the airports that already surround London.

Think about Heathrow and look at this picture. (Note: To increase the size of the picture right click on it and select View Image)

Image courtesy of Google Earth

This is Northolt Airport which is just 5.7 miles north of Heathrow with a 1,684 metre (5,500 feet) 46 metre wide asphalt runway. It is easily accessible. The A40 road runs along its southern fence and the Central Line (part of the London Underground network) passes close to its eastern fence.

Why not make Northolt part of London Heathrow and use it for movements by B737, A320 and MD80 (and smaller) aircraft currently using Heathrow itself? Let Heathrow then concentrate on B777/A330/MD11 (and larger) aircraft movements. We are talking about up to 200 movements a day that could be taken away from Heathrow to ease the congestion.

Northolt will require a terminal building and multi-story car parking (there is plenty of space on the south side as you can see from the picture) and an underground link to the Piccadilly Line that will allow speedy transfer of passengers from Northolt to the various terminals at Heathrow.

That’s going to cost a whole lot less than the present suggestion and will probably remove any necessity for an expansion at Heathrow forever.

Look at this picture.

Image courtesy of Google Earth

This is a map of the biggest airports that ring London today. They’re all active and they’ve been there for years and most of them are totally under-utilised.

In the same way that I have suggested for Heathrow, Gatwick could hive off smaller traffic to Biggin Hill whilst Luton and Stansted could spread their operations by adding Benson (to the west) and Southend (to the East) thereby creating an arc of four airports north of London.

And look at Farnborough just to the south west of Heathrow. It has a 2,380 metre runway – long enough for the biggest aircraft. This airport is ideally situated for passengers coming up from the West Country.

What London DOES need is fast, comfortable rail links between all these inner airports. That is where the taxpayers money should be spent.

I have left London City Airport out of this because its primary purpose is to support the City of London business houses that need fast access into the European capitals. It is not a long-haul, tourist travel facility.

Finally, look at what is available regionally.

• East – Manston
• South – Bournemouth and Southampton
• West – Exeter, Bristol and Newquay
• South Wales – Cardiff
• The Midlands – Birmingham.
• The North – Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds/Bradford.
• Scotland – Glasgow and Edinburgh.

There is more than enough existing airport capacity to cover the nation’s needs for the foreseeable future.

There is certainly no need to expand anything.

Some memorable flights

My first (ever) flight was in an Ansett (Australia) DC3 from Hobart to Melbourne via Launceston in January 1953. My father had been crew on a yacht in the Sydney Hobart Race and we’d gone over to Hobart to spend Christmas and to meet him when he got there. They were late finishers and because he was late back at work in Melbourne we took a plane rather than the train from Hobart to Launceston (about 120 miles and it took a whole day) and then the overnight ferry ‘Taroona’ from Beauty Point, 30 miles from Launceston, across Bass Strait to Melbourne.

The ferry ‘Taroona’ leaving Melbourne

The forward end of an Ansett DC3 cabin. Compare that to today!

The ‘Taroona’ would roll on a wet towel and we’d had a very rough crossing on the way over from Melbourne. This may also have influenced my parents decision to fly back instead.

To say that I was gob-smacked by my first flight would be an understatement. I was 10 years old and I can remember to this day every detail of that flight right down to a rivet popping out of the overhead air trunking and landing in my mother’s lap. The trip was made all the more memorable when my kid sister sprayed the forward end of the cabin with projectile vomit just as we landed at Essendon – Melbourne Aerodrome (they weren’t called airports then). The stewardess was not impressed!

My next flight was 10 years later and whilst I was at sea. During the ships’ call at Sydney I had the opportunity to drive to Wagga Wagga stopping in Canberra for lunch and seeing some really impressive scenery along the way. The return was with Airlines of New South Wales in a Fokker F27 Friendship. The most memorable part of that flight was arriving over Sydney Harbour. Many years later I was able to revisit the memory in a Piper Cherokee from Bankstown Airfield. The intervening years had not diminished the experience in any way.

Sydney harbour – breathtaking! (photo courtesy Airliners.net)

I next flew in 1973 on Playboy Club business with BEA to Belfast, out in a Trident and back in a Britannia. The most memorable part of that trip, apart from escorting the Bunny of the Year, was spending a night at the Maze Prison as a guest of the British Army.

In 1976 I moved to live and work in Saudi Arabia arriving on a BA VC10 and I seem to have spent a considerable portion of my life sitting in aeroplanes ever since.

The first of many memorable flights was my first return on Christmas leave from Dhahran along with 180 or so other wine, women and song starved oilmen fresh from several months in the desert. In those days aircraft were lined up nose to tail in two rows across the front of the terminal. Our aircraft was in the outside line waiting to depart when another aircraft from the inside line tried to cut between us and the aircraft parked in front. There wasn’t room and a collision was narrowly averted.

A call was put out for the only pushback vehicle at Dhahran but it’s regular driver had taken it home! It was three hours before the offending aircraft could be pushed back and we could be on our way.

We couldn’t be disembarked – there was no room inside the terminal so, in order to quell a rising tide of dissent, the crew took the brave decision to close the doors, shut the blinds and open the bar. The result, three hours later as we took off, was a Tristar full of happily inebriated oilmen. The party continued flat out until we reached Athens where we had to stop to pick up more fuel (and more beer – we were in danger of drinking the plane dry) then on to Heathrow where it continued in the bar at Terminal 1 whilst we all waited for our connecting flights.

If the Saudi’s had found out we could all have spent Christmas in jail.

Other memorable flights in no particular order:-

• Arriving and departing the Maldives (the short runway) – flight deck jump seat Air Lanka B737
• My first seaplane flight, again in the Maldives (see picture below)
• The snow covered Alps on a crystal clear moonlit winters night – flight deck visit Air France (Airbus A310 I think)
• Flying low level along a desert runway to scare sleeping camels off it so we could land – Saudi Aramco Fokker F27 1976
• Hong Kong Kai Tak – sadly not the ‘chequer board’ approach to runway 13 that I’d hoped for but the almost as impressive approach to 31 – Cathay Pacific B747 jump seat.
• Legging it across the tarmac between connecting flights as artillery shells started dropping on the airport boundary – Middle East Airlines Beirut 1979
• A Hajj flight to Jeddah in an ancient Saudi B707 in 1977 – open sided luggage racks – it was that old
• Arriving in Baghdad from Amman in 1980 as one of only 12 passengers on a B747 – seemed odd at the time
• Trying to get out of Baghdad to go back to Amman and realizing why there were only 12 passengers on the 747 coming in – 5,000+ in the departure lounge with only 1,500 aircraft seats available that night (Iran Iraq war)

The Afghan highlands. Not quite as good as the moonlit Alps but still impressive

Sun Express Twin Otter on floats – Maldives

But my most memorable flight of all has to be my first solo when I was learning to fly – December 12, 1977 .

Over the years since, the magic, the excitement and the pleasure of flying with the airlines has faded. The ‘pack ‘em in – screw as much as you can outa them’ business model has done that for me. Indeed, I view my next trip to London with so much trepidation that I’ve decided to fork out for Premium Economy.

The best bits, as always, will be take-off and landing when the pilot in me listens to every sound, feels every movement and knows exactly what is happening.

But now, thanks to American inspired ‘terrism’ paranoia, airline Captains are no longer allowed to invite passengers onto their flight decks thereby giving up a major aspect of their authority to lesser people (i.e. politicians and sundry erks) to the detriment of enthusiasts like me.

And that’s really sad.

A flight of fancy

I have long been a fan of airships.

The ones we remember most are the German Graf Zeppelin and the ill-fated Hindenberg. Britain built the R100 and then the R101 which crashed and burned in France on her maiden voyage. America had the Akron, Macon, Shenandoah and Los Angeles among many others. The Norwegians and the Italians were also into airship technology.

The Americans held the upper hand as far as airship development was concerned because they controlled the worlds (then) only supply of helium gas leaving the rest of the world forced to use hydrogen. Whilst helium wasn’t quite as good a lifting agent as hydrogen it was a zillion times safer. Look what happened to the Hindenberg and the R101.

There are some excellent websites with photographs of the passenger experience aboard the great airships. Try www.nlhs.com/interior.htm or just Google (Images) ‘airship cabin’. Weight was a major factor in airship design but the largest carried around 100 passengers and crew and provided private cabins to sleep in, a dining room, promenade decks, in one case a grand piano and (since everyone smoked in those days) a smoking room despite the fact that they were surrounded by something like 7 million cubic feet of inflammable hydrogen!

The sheer size of the airships was breathtaking. The USS Shenandoah was just under 800 feet long (3 times the length of a Boeing 747) and 130 feet in diameter. She could carry, launch and recover a fighter aircraft.

The idea of lighter than air flight hasn’t gone away. The Good Year blimps carrying up to 12 passengers on sight-seeing trips have been around for years. A company called Aeroscraft in America is planning a gigantic airship where 2/3rds of the lift is achieved by 14 million cubic feet of helium whilst the remaining lift is provided by engine power and forward motion. They are talking about a 500 ton payload. See http://www.aerosml.com/main.htm

The proposed Aeroscraft airship built to carry a 500 ton payload

My own theories are much more modest. I envisage a 150 foot long by 40 foot wide gondola half of which is taken up by 50 small 2 berth cabins for 94 passengers and 6 crew while the other half comprises dining/lounge/bar and promenade areas.

A rigid frame gas envelope would be around 400 foot long with an oval cross section 60 foot high by 120 foot wide. The envelope would contain no machinery or moving parts leaving it capable of being quickly detached from the gondola for easy maintenance. The envelope would contain a number of oval, doughnut shaped ballonet’s filled with helium with a separate air bag running through the central core of the ‘doughnuts’ where air will be heated to increase or decrease lift as required.

Construction of the envelope frame and the gondola would use light weight carbon fiber composites.

Power would be provided by two light weight, high speed diesel generators using bio-fuel and driving 4 independently gimbaled ducted electric fans attached to the sides of the gondola to provide a combination of lift and thrust, steering and trim.

The rigid frame construction of the envelope will allow operating speeds up to 150 knots at 12,000 feet with the shape of the envelope providing additional lift.

150 knots means London to Sydney non-stop in 48 hours or so or London to New York in around 18 hours and for a fraction of the cost and environmental damage that a jetliner creates. It takes 20+ hours to get to Sydney using an airliner today. Add at least 24 hours for rest and recuperation. An airship taking the same time in total but offering proper sleep, relaxation and space to move about during the flight must surely be a viable alternative particularly when it comes to cost and passenger comfort.

A flight of fancy? I wonder?

The beginning of the end?

(This is the third and last part of a look back at the beginnings of the airline age. You should read ‘Whatever happened to “the passenger’s always right”?’ and ‘ Ships out! Planes in’ first)

I believe the rot set in with the introduction of jet airliners beginning with the British built Comet and the American Boeing 707 in the mid 1950’s. This opened the door to mass air travel at much less cost and taking up much less time.

In the 1960’s we had inexpensive holiday packages to Spain and other Mediterranean hotspots. Suddenly, anybody with a week’s holiday and £ 25 to spare could jet off to the sun.

The 1970’s saw an explosion in international air travel brought about by the introduction of wide bodied airliners and a proliferation of airlines as each nation set up its own flag carrier.

As seat availability increased and fuel oil remained cheap then fares came down and the whole thing became exponential. Cheaper fares created a greater demand for seats. The greater the demand for seats, the less comfort for passengers as the airlines strove to pack as many as they could into their aircraft.

The latest chapter in the saga unfolded in the late 1990’s with the introduction of low cost/no frills airlines.

A journey in an aeroplane today has become (arguably) one of the most awful experiences that one might experience in a lifetime. The whole experience from beginning to end has become a nightmare.

Passengers passing through airports are routinely belittled, humiliated and degraded by airport security staff with little or no conception of customer relations or service who are responding, doglike to government induced terrorism paranoia .

London Heathrow security queue

Airline personnel, both on the ground and in the air, can be very rude and appear disillusioned, lacking in motivation having abandoned all pretence of enjoying their work whilst they are managed by people more interested in the bottom line of a spreadsheet than in creating and perpetuating a viable service industry with satisfied customers at the receiving end.

Increasing instances of operational delays and management foul-ups lead to rising levels of passenger frustration and fury before and during a flight.

Once in the air the environment for most passengers, trapped for many hours at a time in seats with minimum width and legroom, is not only extremely uncomfortable but downright unhealthy.

The latest we hear is that some airlines wish to sanction the use of mobile phones in flight. That, for many of us, will be the last straw.

Bigger aircraft, more flights, more passengers. The whole concept of air travel in its present form has finally spiralled to the bottom of the swamp and all the shiny new terminals and additional runways in the world will never resurrect it. The recent debacle at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 is stark testament to that.

As passengers there is little we can do to help ourselves since there are few viable alternatives to air travel and the airlines and the airport operators know that and shamelessly exploit it.

Until now, that is. With a world financial crisis looming, a sharp reduction in the availability of credit and disposable income and the soaring cost of fuel, the airlines are going to be experiencing some very lean times and sooner than they might believe.

I believe that, just as the shipping companies had to rethink, redesign and repackage their product back in the late 60’s, the air transport industry as a whole needs a radical reappraisal – airlines, airport operators and aircraft designers alike. It needs people in all levels of management who have actually worked on the front line, facing fare–paying passengers who have every right to expect a better deal for their money.

Never will there be a better time for the industry to step back, regroup and re-organise ready to start again for the benefit of all when the financial climate has recovered.

It’s time, once again, for the passenger to be ‘always right’

Ships out! Planes in.

(You should read ‘Whatever happened to ‘the passenger’s always right’ first)

In the early days there was a glamour and excitement about flying. You could join 23 other passengers aboard one of the big Imperial Airways flying boats on a week long journey from Johannesburg to Southampton – flying low level over the African plains, looking down on grazing herds of wild animals, landing on lakes and rivers and staying in hotels and guest houses each night.

In the 1950’s 60 passengers could cross the Atlantic in a Pan Am or BOAC double decked Stratocruiser, savouring the comfort of lounge chairs or sleeping berths with a downstairs lounge and bar in which to while away the time.

From this ……. Stratocruiser cabin

Trawl through the photo archives on the Internet and you will find hundreds of pictures of smiling and relaxed passengers, many of them well known movie stars and celebrities, enjoying a flight or waving happily as they disembarked.

Because the fares paid by airline passengers in those days were a great deal more than those who chose to travel by sea, everyone was treated with great respect – everyone flew First Class.

At the end of the 1960’s two things happened that were to have a profound effect on the passenger shipping companies.

The first was that the immigration schemes sponsored by the Australian and New Zealand governments came to an end. The second was the introduction of the Boeing 747 in 1968.

I worked in the ships of the Orient Line between 1960 and 1970. My uncle, who had immigrated to Australia in 1947, worked for QANTAS – the Australian international airline. On one of my visits to Sydney in 1962 he invited me to see where he worked at Mascot Aerodrome. During the visit he proudly took me on board one of the airline’s new Boeing 707’s. The aircraft carried about 100 Tourist Class passengers in rows of 3 seats each side of a central aisle. Up front there were 12 or so First Class seats in 2-2 configuration. “Sydney to London in 22 hours with just 2 stops – it’s the future”, my uncle enthused.

I remember standing in the middle of the Tourist Class cabin, looking around and asking myself ‘who in their right mind would sit, cooped up like this for 22 hours?’

7 years later I had my answer. A 28,000 ton passenger ship carried 1,200 passengers and 600 crew. As the popularity of flying grew the shipping companies found themselves in the situation where ships were sailing on scheduled voyages with fewer passengers than crew.

There was some salvation on the horizon in the increasing popularity of holiday cruising but ships designed for multi-class line voyaging could not easily be adapted to cruise passengers needs. New ships specially designed for cruising and a complete re-think on operating procedures was needed and needed fast.

The Boeing 747 was the final straw. It could carry 200+ passengers and whilst it was still many hours of discomfort to get from A to B, airline fares were becoming cheaper by the day and the saving in travel time was so significant that people were prepared to ‘suffer’ the discomfort in order to get to where they wanted to be quickly.

to this ……. (in just 18 years) B747 cabin

It was the end for the passenger liners. I resigned in 1970 and within a few short years line voyaging had ceased altogether. The combined Orient/P & O fleet, 23 big ships in it’s hey day, was reduced to 2 – ‘Oriana’ and ‘Canberra’. Both survived because they were the latest additions to the fleet and both had been designed, fortuitously, with the option of cruising in mind.

Over the years since, holiday cruising has gained in popularity and companies like Carnival, Royal Caribbean and a resurgent P & O continue to build bigger and more luxurious ships.

Today the world’s combined passenger fleet is bigger than it has ever been in history.