Airlines | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Sep 04 2019

Air travel, Planes, Technology, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Qantas Airways – New York to Sydney.

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19 hours nonstop from New York City to Sydney, 40 passengers and crew monitored by scientists on board to determine the effects of the mammoth endeavour. What the fuck do you do to amuse yourself on a plane for 19 hours? Halfway through my 11-hour flight to Tokyo I began to feel like a part of me had died inside, though this may have been the effect of the new Planet of the Apes movie I was watching. On those chimp movies, I don’t get all the fuss over them. Fucking drivel. If I want to see chimpanzees I can just wander around some of the rougher enclaves of Edinburgh.

A typical Dalry boozer.

This flight, however. You’re going to need climbing frames and batting cages in the cabin, or a circus show to pass the time. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive feat. Nearly 10,000 miles in just a day. Not bad at all.

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MH370 – five years on.

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MH370 is the 2010s very own version of Amelia Earhart, and we may never definitively know what happened; even if the black box somehow washes up on a Tom-Hanks-and-Wilson island, it’ll be beyond repair given the more than five years of aimless swimming.

Its disappearance has irrevocably changed aviation, though.

The FAA has mandated that by 2020 all commercial aircraft are to be equipped with transponders having ADS-B out capability, meaning the plane’s location can be detected in real time.

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The Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS) will from January 2021 ensure that airlines report all of their planes positions every 15 minutes. In addition, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandated that on aircraft built from 2022, those flights in distress will have to report their position to air traffic control every minute, and that all underwater locator beacons last 90 days instead of 30.

A further change initiated by the ICAO is the requirement that planes made from 2021 include 25-hour voice recorders so there will be a record not only of the flight but the cockpit preparations.

What one can’t account for is human error and, though a very infrequent event, the mental instability and criminal intent of the pilots. That’s the elephant on the plane; some folk are just nutters undetected by background and periodic checks (if any). In the wake of the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash in 2015, someone suggested to me there should be a system in place for a team of controllers on the ground to remotely override the pilot’s commands were he to go loco. It’s something to think about, however outlandish.

The Airbus A380 superjumbo is done.

5c535331d7ab670292531998-2732-1366 2021 and that’s the end for the Gulliver of the skies. Airbus – Boeing’s apparent nemesis – announced this month that their double-deck four-engine behemoth with its looney range of 8,500 nautical miles (with plush onboard bars), will no longer be made once its last deliveries are finished in 2021. Emirates were Airbus’ biggest customer, but once they cut their orders it was game over.

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It’s another example of the economics simply not working despite the superior aesthetics on display, airlines opting for smaller twin-engine planes, i.e., more efficient, cost-friendly orders.

It’s not exactly a Greek tragedy but a bit of a shame. As James Cameron (perhaps apocryphally) once said, “Bigger is better.” However, we will still see the existing colossal beasts rampaging through the clouds in the decades to come and then, presumably, dwindle away like the Dreadnought battleship of the early 20th century, sold for scrap metal or converted into a niche hotel for plane spotters who habitually wear Concorde pyjamas.

Sad.

Ryanair aren’t even the Lada of the skies.

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Ryanair are fucking dreadful. A flight with them is always an ordeal. The gate is called and you rock up to find a big fuck-off queue with no plane in sight; the staff are pumped-up scavengers, stalking the heaving gate for any carry-on item with dimensions bigger than a tub of Bold 2-in-1 Washing Capsules; their luggage policy metamorphoses weekly from nuts to bonkers to insane then back to nuts; the interior of the plane makes one sick in its tackiness; you can’t get a wink of sleep for lottery or scratch card announcements and trolley-dollies peddling hyperinflated savoury snacks. What else? Oh yeah, there’s quite the high probability that your flight will be cancelled. This is when the ground staff disappear into a bush which features in a Homer Simpson meme.

Ryanair staff in a crisis.

Worst airline ever. Yet we still fly with them in droves because we’re either poor or miserly.

Tagged Air travel, Airlines, Budget, Planes, Ryanair, Travel

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Tag Archives: Airlines

Qantas Airways – New York to Sydney.

MH370 – five years on.

The Airbus A380 superjumbo is done.

Ryanair aren’t even the Lada of the skies.