Crash at Brussels airport

As a complete co-incidence I have ended up staying in a Hotel room overlooking the crashed Jumbo at Brussels airport. It is about 350m from the end of the runway, broken as per the video(seee post below) - it was very lucky - the plane obviously structually failed on the runway and literally ran off the end of it, without really taking off. It is very close to the rail lines into the airport, and if it had got off the ground it would have crashed into Zaventem village.
The thing that strikes you that unlike the recent Heathrow airport incident - there appears nothing happening- a solitary fire engine and van guard ove the site. There are no cranes, no signs of real action or recovery - it's really odd.

Flyglobespan Prosecution

The CAA's planned prosecution of flyglobespan (hattip BBC) illustrates the pressure of the low cost airlines to keep flying "come what may". The frightening aspect that these were transalantic flights, so engine failure could be catastrophic, with safehaven airports being much greater than flying time than within Europe. With rising fuel costs, it will be maintenance budgets and other fixed costs, these airlines will look to minimise.
Certainly as I cris-cross europe you wonder about the age of the aircraft you are travelling in on the budget airlines - Easyjet and Ryanair excepted (as the majority of the planes are less than 6 years old) . Yesterday a series 1 cargo Jumbo suffered catastrophic structural failure at Brussels - the aircraft must be at least 35 years old.

Success comes to Hull

I was not born in Hull, but have lived here for 19 years. My 3 teenage kids have grown up in the city and consider themselves from 'ull. The City does have serious problems in term of povety, education and unemployment, but the people are incredibly friendly and proud of their city. Yesterday's triumph and entry into Premiership is incredibly good news for the city - it is not just the £60m (which will probably stay within the Football team) but the huge amount of the money playing in the Premiership will bring to the City. Hull will also be centre of the Clipper Ship racing in 2009, which brings further funding to help fight the City's issues.
Today the city will wake up with the biggest community hangover ever, the celebratory scenes in the city were like an Italian city on a night Italy won the World cup. Tomorrow there will be 11 mile round the city bus ride for the victorius team and a civic reception - so the party will continue !
And what does this have to do with travel I hear you say- well wherever I travel in the world I always seem to meet Alumni from the Hull University - To a person they all say what a great time they had in Hull & at the University, and how the friendly city was. I note Tracey Crouch is one of the gang. I hope they are all as proud of the City as we are this morning and its favourite son Dean Windass and his "Roy of the Rovers" winning goal......

small planes - Red Arrows - very important

Sorry to divert from the normal thread, however I have just discovered that the UK Govt have banned a Red Arrow fly past at the 2012 olympics. This is a ludicrous decision, please sign this No 10 petition to hopefully reverse the decision:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RedArrows2012/?ref=redArrows201

Easyjet

I have travelled on EasyJet a couple of times in the past 2 weeks, once in Airbus 321 and once in 737 and both times the aircraft has been cold. Passengers have been getting up and putting extra layers on, and there has been no air or cold air coming out of the floor vents - Is Easyjet trying to save fuel - Has anyone else noticed?

Dambusters

I am sure Theo Stark will have this on his blogsite but it's worth watching this Dambusters news item just for the sound of merlin engines
hattip Telegraph TV

How many more ?

You wonder in the days of high oil price and increasing inflation, how many of the UK's smaller Regional airlines will go under ?
I note Flybe stepped in immediately........
At Southampton airport, we have seen the a similar slimming of the market with Scotair withdrawing their Amsterdam return flights and Estern airlines their Brussels routing leaving Flybe only - great for competition right !....................



Euro manx airline goes out of business
May 10 2008 by Neil Hodgson, Liverpool Echo
ONE of the main airlines connecting Liverpool with the Isle of Man has ceased trading.
EuroManx blamed rising fuel prices as one of several factors behind the business.
The Isle of Man-based airline operated five flights a day between the island and Liverpool John Lennon airport.
It started flights in 2002, taking over from Manx Airlines. Last year it carried 140,000 passengers.
Passengers learned of the company’s failure yesterday morning.
Rival Flybe, which started flying the route on March 30, stepped in and offered free replacement tickets for Euromanx passengers.
Liverpool JLA spokesman Robin Tudor said: “Thankfully, they were accommodated by Flybe who have four flights a day from Liverpool. .”
Euromanx employed 70 staff and flew to Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast and London.

Hatip - Liverpool Echo

Hold the Front page - Flybe manage 2 consecutive on time flights

Well a fairly standard week judders to the end ....literally given the standard of my last landing on Eastern Airlines tonight - but with 5 flights in 4 days it's probably worth reflecting on couple of things.
Regular readers will know I am not FlyBe's greatest fan, however they did manage 2 on-time flights this week but it was the difference in the crew's attitude - Tuesday's flight to edinburgh the crew was attentive with their service and announcements and the landing was smooth. On the flight back from Frankfurt, the attendants spent the majority of 90 minutes chatting at the back of the plane, the captain was silent and the landing was fast, furious and spine juddering.
The Lufthansa Edinburgh Frankfurt leg of the week was brutally efficient and on time, but the sandwiches in economy were unpalatable ( I was even offered a second).
And tonight's flight with eastern airlines - the less said the better let's just say a Jetstream 41 was not made for family travelling with 3 kids under 5 - the smell of baby sick is not easily dispersed on such a small plane !

Terminal 5 & BA

Had my first trip thru heathrow terminal 5 on Wednesday night.

Pretty impressive structure - check in & bag drop went well but security will be a nightmare when the terminal gets up to full capacity-

• because of the layout with domestic / foriegn flights mixing, like Manchester airport, they have to photograph all domestic passengers - the queues will be tragic when it get busy.
• The baggage x ray machines will also slow everyone - they have an automated tray return system, which failed 3 times in the 10 mins I was waiting to go thru a particular machine.

BA were awful as ever - 3 hours delayed to Newcastle - the plane was declared unservicable by the engineers as soon as it landed. It took the gate staff 45 mins to be honest with us the passengers and start looking for a new plane. The new plane was smaller than the original, so they had bump off the last 4 rows of passengers (luckily I had moved forward on check in !) and then the weather turned foul, so we had a further 45 mins on the ground.