Aviation Discussion

[flymo]

Interesting happenings out here in Hong Kong with Typhoon Vicente blowing through overnight virtually closing the airport. Cancellations, delays and diversions all over the place. Not a good couple of days to be flying out here as the backlog will be horrendous.

On the HKG-LHR corridor, both of the Cathay flights last night were cancelled, as was the Virgin flight. The BA flights are delayed until today. Air New Zealand are delayed by round 3 hours at the moment. Things will get moving soon though as the winds ease.

http://www.hongkongairport.com/flightinfo/eng/chkfltdep.html if you want to see the situation as it is.

For those of you with a penchant for these sort of things, below is the TAF for HKG at the moment.

TAF VHHH 232300Z 2400/2506 14025KT 7000 FEW008 SCT020 TX28/2406Z TX29/2506Z TN26/2423Z TEMPO 2400/2404 13035G50KT 1500 +SHRA FEW006CB SCT016 TEMPO 2404/2412 2000 TSRA +SHRA FEW008CB SCT018 BECMG 2408/2410 14020KT TEMPO 2412/2418 2500 SHRA FEW010CB SCT018 TEMPO 2418/2506 3500 SHRA FEW010CB SCT020=

Got the morning off work though as the typhoon warning is still up.

 

[starrymarkb]

That is a pretty nasty TAF!

I remember seeing this on St Louis Airport's METAR

METAR KSTL 230111Z 29022G34KT 240V310 3SM +FC -TSRA FEW020 BKN050CB
OVC090 22/19 RMK TORNADO B10 W MOV E AO2 PK WND 29034/0111 CONS
LTGICCGCC ALQDS TS ALQDS MOV E P0001

If you don't know what the +FC means the RMK TORNADO explains all. It did hit the airport by the way doing a fair bit of damage to the Terminal Roof!

 

[flymo]

Ouch, Tornados are never good.

Some people over here were wondering why aircraft were delayed, diverted or cancelled until data such as this

View attachment 12065

was shown to them. This was from around 1.5km south of the airport close to both the outward and inward flightpaths. 200km/h winds at about 900m. Bumpy.!! So much wind it broke the anemometer..

 

[trentside]

An eleven year old boy has managed to board a Jet2 plane at Manchester with no passport or boarding pass. He managed to go through security screening and get onto the plane by mingling with a family.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-18979032

 

[WelshZ]

Looks like the system has failed here. My thought is why did the families he was "mingling" with not notice anything amiss

 

[ivanhoe]

Four areas of breakdown here:
Entering Security without being asked for his boarding card
At the boarding gate when your boarding card is checked and a tear off portion is given back or your e ticket is scanned
Boarding the plane and still not challenged
Checking bums on seats against passenger manifesto.

Breakdown by security staff, departure staff and two counts by Jet2com.

What's the odds on that happening?

 

[LE Greys]

Four areas of breakdown here:
Entering Security without being asked for his boarding card
At the boarding gate when your boarding card is checked and a tear off portion is given back or your e ticket is scanned
Boarding the plane and still not challenged
Checking bums on seats against passenger manifesto.

Breakdown by security staff, departure staff and two counts by Jet2com.

What's the odds on that happening?

Probably about the same as a kid surviving for a year on the railways in the 1920s, although that might be a myth. I've heard of other stories about 'my mum's got the tickets' and similar incidents.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The holes in the cheese certainly lined up here...

 

[WestCoast]

Four areas of breakdown here:
Entering Security without being asked for his boarding card
At the boarding gate when your boarding card is checked and a tear off portion is given back or your e ticket is scanned
Boarding the plane and still not challenged
Checking bums on seats against passenger manifesto.

Breakdown by security staff, departure staff and two counts by Jet2com.

What's the odds on that happening?

Here's what I think happened based on the reports at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18980403.

He's an eleven year old and it's the start of the school holidays so Terminal 1 is packed out with families and groups. Kids often aren't trusted to keep hold of their own boarding passes and passport, which is entirely sensible. The lad mingles with different families from airside to the plane and they think he's just ahead of/behind his own family, or something like that.

Manchester Airport no longer has dedicated staff checking boarding passes at the entrance to security, it's done by busy screeners when passengers are putting their belongings on the belt. These screeners aren't necessarily in a position to thoroughly check each child in a large group (they might not be able to see them even).

Boarding the plane, mum/dad hands over boarding passes and passports to the handling agents and later boarding pass stubs to the cabin crew, this lad meanwhile mingling in with these families who perhaps aren't paying as much attention to him as they should.

Jet2's policy was that no headcount was needed, if the aircraft had been boarded via an airbridge directly from the terminal. All UK and Ireland based airlines the cabin crew have to check boarding passes, but headcounts are not compulsory. However, many countries don't have that requirement either.

Jet2's policy was not slack at all, since British Airways currently does not routinely perform headcounts either in these circumstances. Not that the media would tell you that. easyJet and Ryanair have compulsory headcounts on all flights (then again, the latter avoids airbridges wherever possible) and this incident may result in this procedure becoming mandatory on all airlines.

He was fully screened by security staff, so judging by the current standards he posed no risk to the aircraft. If he'd evaded being scanned, then the Airport would have been in massive trouble.

It's not terrible uncommon for passengers to end up boarding the wrong flight and only noticing when the destination/flight number is mentioned!

 

[The Barlow Boy]

An eleven year old boy has managed to board a Jet2 plane at Manchester with no passport or boarding pass. He managed to go through security screening and get onto the plane by mingling with a family.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-18979032

Same thing happened at Waterloo International a few years ago. A lad of about eleven tailgated a family through the barriers and boarded the Disney service. He sat on his own and was eventually rumbled before departure by an alert catering staff member who couldn't get a proper reply out of him as to where the rest of his family were.

 

[WestCoast]

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=45363621&opt=0

An interesting (and slightly worrying) incident, which happened last year, has now come to light. It appears that the Ryanair captain on this flight not only ignored the concerns from passengers (including an engineer) and cabin crew about the collision, but also failed to notify the American Airlines flight that was hit. She was demoted to First Officer after the incident and subsequently left the company.

It was the equivalent of having a road accident and not telling the other party or checking your car over!

 

[trentside]

A worrying incident and it's pleasing to hear that Ryanair did take proactive action against the Captain as her decision to ignore reports of a collision, not inform ATC or the AA aircraft could have had far worse consequences had the damage to either plane been more severe. Although we're unlikely to know her thought process, I hope that "pride" was not a factor in not reporting or investigating the incident.

 

[starrymarkb]

British International are ceasing their Cornwall to Isles of Scilly services after a row over the sale of Penzance Heliport.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-19090660

 

[trentside]

MAG has sold it's 82.7% stake in Humberside Airport onto Eastern Group, the parent company of Eastern Airways. The latter has its headquarters at Humberside. The value of the deal has been reported at £2.3m, far less than MAG originally paid and has invested.

Full story here

 

[WestCoast]

Good luck to them. Hopefully they can work on expanding the leisure services at Humberside, which seem to have decreased significantly from the last decade. No doubt the economy and the opening of Doncaster-Sheffield Airport (which is a base for Thomson) have had an impact here.

 

[WestCoast]

This story made me laugh...

X-ray reveals drunk tourist sleeping on baggage belt at Rome airport

A Norwegian tourist has been caught on X-ray sleeping on a moving baggage belt at Rome's Fiumicino airport.

The unnamed 36 year-old man reportedly climbed over one of the check-in desks and fell asleep on the belt that takes luggage to be loaded on to planes.
When the belt started moving, he travelled for around 50m curled up in the foetal position.
He apparently remained asleep after staff spotted him in the X-ray machine, stopped the belt and alerted police.

The tourist, who appeared to have been drinking heavily, will now face charges in relation to the incident according to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.The incident has raised questions about security at the airport, but a police spokesperson told the paper that the man could not have got through to secure areas of the airport.

"There is a security system - a sort of roll-up blind - which can only be opened by the member of staff who loads the baggage," the officer said.
"[The Norwegian] could have carried on going round the main belt but he could never have ended up in sensitive areas of the airport."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19206924?print=true

 

[telstarbox]

Virgin Atlantic are launching a London-Manchester service to compete with BA.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/9488401/Virgin-Atlantic-takes-on-BA-on-UK-routes.html

 

[BananaRepublic]

Virgin Atlantic are launching a London-Manchester service to compete with BA.

Virgin have lost their BMI feeder flights into Heathrow from Manchester, as BMI have been taken over by BA.
These new flights are probably intended to replace those, rather than lose all the business to BA short and long haul.

 

[LE Greys]

Virgin have lost their BMI feeder flights into Heathrow from Manchester, as BMI have been taken over by BA.
These new flights are probably intended to replace those, rather than lose all the business to BA short and long haul.

And the usual Branson spin-control made it look as though the loss of the WCML was behind it. It seems likely that it was planned anyway, if not, it was a very quick reaction. I don't know how he would have spun it if he had retained the WCML.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I thought it was a reaction to losing the WCML without even reading the report; remember - although it was only announced last week the bidders would have had a good idea at least a month earlier which way things were going, plus these flights start three months after the WCML changes hands, just in time for the usual Easter railway engineering disruption...

 

[radamfi]

Hasn't LHR-MAN demand been slashed since the upgraded WCML timetable came into effect? Just looked at the LHR-MAN timetable and even including BMI it is less frequent than it was a few years ago. Fares seem to have gone down too. I would have thought that that most people using that route now are just wanting connections.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Also, the article says that Virgin is taking its 'first tentative steps' into short-haul flying. What about Virgin Express? I used to use it quite regularly in the late 90s between London and Brussels and they even did official connections at Brussels and I once went to Copenhagen via Brussels.

 

[WatcherZero]

They arent targeting people going to London, their targeting people going to Heathrow to make a connection with a Virgin flight or that of another airline.

 

[Nym]

Or Virgin Sun that ended up being part of TUI?

 

[LE Greys]

Or Virgin Sun that ended up being part of TUI?

Did that have anything to do with 390007 Virgin Sun renamed Tate Liverpool?

 

[Nym]

Might do... He sold it off to Air2000 in 2001...

 

[WestCoast]

Air 2000 was the airline arm of First Choice Holidays (nothing to do with FirstGroup ) - TUI had no involvement until First Choice later merged with Thomson.

Personally, I am wondering which airline is leasing an A319 to Virgin Atlantic, complete with full sets of crew. Can't think of any UK or Irish ACMI specialists that offer the A319 - Titan, Eastern, Jet2, CityJet e.t.c certainly don't.

 

[Nym]

Or Virgin Sun that ended up being part of TUI?

Air 2000 was the airline arm of First Choice Holidays (nothing to do with FirstGroup ) - TUI had no involvement until First Choice later merged with Thomson.

So, it ended up being part of TUI

I am wondering if it will just be done using a wet lease company to start with...?

 

[WestCoast]

So, it ended up being part of TUI

Yes, true...
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I am wondering if it will just be done using a wet lease company to start with...?

Using a wet lease means that they don't have to commit to short-haul operations, so if it's successful they may well make more permanent arrangements in the longer term.

The only wet lease specialists operating A319s I can think of at the moment are Germania and Hamburg International.

 

[BananaRepublic]

....It seems likely that it was planned anyway, if not, it was a very quick reaction. ....

I thought it was a reaction to losing the WCML without even reading the report........

Virgin Atlantic's intention to start limited domestic services has been known about for a few months.
Rumours and stories about it were doing the rounds back in April and May.
It's thought to be a reaction to the loss of BMI as a feeder operator from regional airports into Virgin's Heathrow services.

They arent targeting people going to London, their targeting people going to Heathrow to make a connection with a Virgin flight or that of another airline.

Exactly. This has nothing to do with the Virgin branded train company losing the WCML franchise.

 

[starrymarkb]

Air 2000 was the airline arm of First Choice Holidays (nothing to do with FirstGroup ) - TUI had no involvement until First Choice later merged with Thomson.

Personally, I am wondering which airline is leasing an A319 to Virgin Atlantic, complete with full sets of crew. Can't think of any UK or Irish ACMI specialists that offer the A319 - Titan, Eastern, Jet2, CityJet e.t.c certainly don't.

Not sure about Crew sourcing but Virgin America have A319s and are expecting a big delivery of A320s next year - could a VX A319 make it's way over?