Behind The Yoke

Here is a very cool panorama of an A380 cockpit. And below is a landing of an one in Vienna. I just love the angle/positioning of the camera:

I just received some exclusive news from a trusted source that London Heathrow just installed a new landing approach lighting system as a result of their recent incident. Looks pretty good to me. The only thing they have to figure out is how to tackle the problem during the daytime.

Here is a good write up of the world’s most dangerous airports to fly in and out of. The criteria is based on length of runways, amount of wind and lack of visibility. Some of these, especially Courchevel Airport in France, I couldn’t imagine landing or taking off. Gots to have nerves of steel.

On a related note, Yahoo! has a video on the worlds worst airports. Here Martin Hickman, a consumer affairs reporter for London’s Independent, explains why these airports are just plain unsafe and precarious. At some of these you may risk being shot down before you even land.

For the past five years or so, I have constantly thought about where the aviation business is heading. With all these canceled flights and delays I just knew that the public would have a breaking point of tolerence. The days of waiting in the baggage check line for two hours, going through security check-points, having to take your shoes and clothes off just to get on a plane will one day end.

I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details but in my opinion large carrier companies like Delta, United and American are going to have to shift their business plans completely in order to compete with low-cost carriers, specifically low-cost regional on-demand carriers like Day Jet (an article from NPR explains Day Jet’s concept) and fractional jet ownership companies like NetJets and Jet-Alliance.

Common sense should tell you that as the number of travellers go up every year something will have to change. The trend is already well on its way in business aviation. Regional business jet travel is exploding by leaps and bounds. Business jet sales are up so high that companies have to wait years for their planes to be delivered because suppliers are stretched to the limit. In other words, maufacturers like Boeing can’t build planes fast enough for their customers. Even used jets that go on the market are gobbled up immediately. So what has to happen?

I’m entertained by the idea of the site Share Your Flight which “allows pilots, whether they own or rent, to post upcoming flights which have available seats. The pilot basically takes the total amount of the flight expenses and divides it by the total number of seats on the aircraft This dollar amount is what the pilot is asking in return to help pay for a share of the operating costs.”

Pretty cool idea. Doesn’t make the pilot or company much money but the concept has potential. Its my feeling that the industry has to become more personalized and flexible. Almost like the yellow taxis but in the air. The ultimate challenge is keeping the operating costs of airplanes down so it can benefit both the customer and operator. Seems to me that the first thing that needs to happen is get more people trained in aviation. We need more
pilots, mechanics, analysts, etc. but that’s a whole other issue. Uhhh…so many dynamics.

All and all its pretty hard to predict what direction the industry will go. We all know what we’d like to see happen but there are so many factors involved aka government regulations, costs, fees, who knows when the change will oocur. One thing is for sure its going to be a slow process. We have to start somewhere. Lets give thanks the small operations above that recognize we need change because the number one thing they need is support from the public. The more recognition they get the faster things will happen.

Hey there everybody hope all is well - I’ve was pretty busy last week so posting has been kinda low. Anywho…a few things. I thought you would enjoy this extensive restoration of a 1937 Fairchild. The guys did a very good job in my opinion and makes me envious of people that have the talent to do this kinda stuff.

On a related note, I attended my fist meeting for the Athens EAA 780 chapter on SAT morning and we discussed about a couple of goals we’d like to get accomplished for this year.

First, we’d like to create a common area for people to hang around the airport with picnic tables and such so they can watch airplanes take off and land, etc. Right now the airport doesn’t have one and we thought it would be cool to create in order to promote aviation within the community.

Second, we want to organize a local fly-in sometime in October/November. Ben Epps is a great airport to have such an event and the idea seemed to exite the airport manager. We don’t necesarily want to have a huge event with aerobatics, etc quite yet but the goal is to have it every year so we’ll start out small and work our way up. I think having a fish fry fly-in would be awesome. We talked about people camping out around the airport during the fly-in as well. Very cool. I’ll obviously keep you updated on our progress. Till then happy flying!