A major hurdle to expansion at LHR is Ba/IAG. They own over half the slots, so will have to pay for most of the expansion, and will just get more competition and reduced yield in return. I believe they are happy as they are.
Jump to postWhen I worked for an European Major we had about 8 flights a day. There was a suggestion to go self handling above the wing, and someone did all the sums. The cost ended up about the same, but we would have all the problems of HR, holidays, sickness etc, plus if the number of flights decreased you s...
Jump to postAs a licenced engineer, when I went for Aircraft type course training at the British Airways Engineering school at LHR, we had our own simulators in the school. The flight decks were complete, but no visuals or motion. You could fly them (on instruments) but definitely only autoland!!. But you could...
Jump to postI had no idea the L1011 had such a large tail plane! From vague memory, the tail plane was equipped with four hydraulic actuators in parallel, one for each hydraulic system. How did this work if you lost one or more hydraulic systems? How were the four actuators synchronised to prevent them "f...
Jump to postI flew a lot on Tristars as a passenger. Gulf Air, British Airways and Nordic East. When the crew pulled the throttles back to idle at Top of Descent, the whooshing noise in the cabin as the HP air took over used to wake me up, time to go to the loo before we land!
Jump to postSpent many hours on the jump seat behind the Captain. You can look down onto the ground from there. It is a real seat. Comfortable, bears no relation to jump seats on B737 or A320.
Jump to postI worked on the Tristar for many years. The British Airways and Gulf Air aircraft had Litton INS fitted. Mostly two INS, but some had a third INS in place of the Vertical Gyro. This Litton INS had a CDU for each pilot which looks like the one in the picture. There was also an Align Display Unit for ...
Jump to postA little off topic but the 757 was crucial in RR establishing itself as a credible OEM. Of 1,049 757s produced, 59% had RR. Still more impressive, of 56 original customers, 77% chose RR and 23% chose PW. (There was no GE option.) Four customers ordered both RR and PW. Totally agree. Although I'd al...
Jump to postSeriously. I'll never forget the time I literally walked down the stairs from a jetway onto a tarmac to board a Ryanair 737 by stairs. Happens at many "real" airport that do not have enough remote parking stands. I try to avoid FR and still I've done this often... I guess, on top of the s...
Jump to postThere have been reports of Wideroe and other airlines losing a GPS navigation signal in the Finnmark region of Norway - most likely due to signal jamming by Russia. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/12/wideroe-pilots-lost-gps-signal-27-times-so-far-december How serious is this ? An in...
Jump to postThe Tristar came in two standard body door versions.
6 large and 2 small doors with a limit of 365 pax. Nordic East in Sweden had 365 seats.
or 8 large doors with a limit of 399 pax. Caledonian Airways had 399 pax seats and crossed the Atlantic from LGW with full loads.
The B747-400 had optional Autostart for the main engines. This was fitted to the simulator at Boeing, and was pretty standard. One crew for an airline did their training at Boeing, and were taught Autostart.. A few weeks later they were sent to LHR to fly the second leg of the delivery flight of the...
Jump to postThe DH Comet also had the main passenger entrance at the R1 door. In the days before jetways were invented it didn't really matter.
Jump to postIt was the El Al B767 that had an EICAS screen, and some more buttons. Something for the 3rd pilot to do!!
Jump to postYour first two pictures show a pretty standard B767/B757 panel. Nearly all the things you can see are test switches usually used by the ground engineers. At least most of the B767 I worked on looked like that. Some also had an EICAS screen there for the ground engineer. Typical Boeing from 1980s wit...
Jump to postFor some airlines, it's a security requrement if either the access to the jetbridge from the gate, or the access to the jetbridge from external stairs don't have some type of lock on the doors. If this is the case, the jetbridge must be pulled from the aircraft to prevent unauthorized access. This ...
Jump to postI looked after RON aircraft here at ARN for over 25 years. For about a year there was a security problem and we removed the jetway. But the other 24 years we left it in position. The aircraft was left in Ground Service with the door closed and sealed (just a tamper indicator) and the jetway attached...
Jump to postA mechanical interlock was retrofitted to the control stand after the Papa India crash. You could then only move the slat lever if the flap lever was at Zero.
Jump to postElectric is nothing new on the ramp. Baggage tugs have been electric here in Stockholm as long as I remember. No diesel vehicles are allowed in the baggage halls.
Nordic Aero used an electric push back tug., and an electric pallet loader on our A330 back in 2014
To go back to the first question, ingesting a flock of birds will damage the fan blades, and maybe the fan OGVs, but usually the core of the engine survives. Twice in my career have I changed fan blades and repaired OCVs and sent the aircraft away. It still amazes me how resilient engines are. I wor...
Jump to postIn fact, quite a lot of work doesn’t require the A&P, just work under the guidance of one . So why exactly do I need an A&P then????? Because without an A and P your work will be limited. You will be in the hangar doing repetitive work. If you want to get out on the line and work on your ow...
Jump to postEveryone is commenting on how normal the Concorde noise was inside, lets not forget it was very noisy outside. On the occasion of Gatwick airports 50 anniversary, BA substituted a Concorde on some B737 flights out of the airport. One came to me at ARN, and I was the local engineer organising it all....
Jump to postI would like to second GDB post on the internal noise. Only flew once on Concorde, and AF one from ARN. Thge noise inside was quite acceptable and no higher than other narrow bodies of the time. Noise outside was something else! Our staff car park at LHR was at the end of 28L. When Concorde left in ...
Jump to postModern jet airliners do not have an anti ice system on the tailplane.
Hot air deicing of the stabilisers was present on some 1960 jet aircraft, but not fitted to large jet transports today.
When I worked for TWA at ARN in 1988, you could book your seat when you booked the flight. All bookings with seat numbers made a short time (cant remember how long but about a week) in advance were sent their boarding pass through the post. With hand luggage only no need to talk to anyone at the air...
Jump to postWhen I went to work in Bahrain in 1976, Bahrain was by far the most important airport in the area. DOH AUH DXB and MCT were all much smaller. The BAH FIR then went all the way from Iraq to the border with BOM. I had some friends who worked for the FIR ATC, and often went to visit them on nightshift....
Jump to postJay, there’s no metric on airliners. You may have missed the jokes. No mechanic anywhere working on airliners has metric tools anywhere. When we changed our first Electric Hydraulic pump on an A320, we had trouble with the bolts mounting the bracket to the pump. We had to go and get a spanner out o...
Jump to postOf course BA has more flights but for not a single other carrier to need to cancel a flight while BA cancels 66 there surely must be more than weather at play. A BA shorthaul aircraft will usually land at LHR 3 times a day. They don't go anywhere else so they have to wait for slots there. A KLM sho...
Jump to postContinental and United are based in the USA and follow FAA rules. They have an 8 hour rule.
SAS is based in Europe and follows EASA rules. They are different. There is no hard 8 hour rule.
What United does has no bearing on this thread!
My original ME instructor said to start the one closest to the battery. :smile: Starting up a Tristar in the Middle East could be the same. The Tristar APU had very poor air delivery when it was hot outside. We normally started Nbr 3 first, then closed the isolation valve to get Nbr 3 pack on line....
Jump to postSo when they tow a plane, no one is on board? There is supposed to be someone "riding the brakes" who usually boards from the bridge and closes the door. When a TBL is used for towing, the aircraft should be empty. It is dangerous to have a brake man as putting the brakes on will damage t...
Jump to postThere is a “flight idle” setting, that is higher than the “ground isle” setting in order to provide faster response in the air. Modern big jet engines now have an approach idle. The engine stays at ground idle until it is close to landing, then accelerates to approach idle. Approach idle is designe...
Jump to postagain off topic, but does anyone know why the first forward half of tristar wing engines were painted and rear not? (as seen on the landor BA and Caledonian) I had wondered if something to do with thrust reverser. Look at the photo in post 205. The blue paint is the nose cowl, and the grey paint is...
Jump to postArriving at LHR from Stockholm, which I have done many hundreds of times, the hold is normal. Once about 4 years ago the pilot announced over the PA that we were missing the hold and going straight in. He was as surprised as we were. But in the past few years , one lap around is the normal, not more...
Jump to postTUGMASTER wrote:So I guess you were at LHR and your office at H7..?
Remember the TWA crews talking about swapping GF/TW frames on runs to the US & Middle East.
Question for Tristarsteve, who may know the specifics behind it. Late70’s BA lsd a L1011 from Eastern, N323EA. However, they seemed to keep it quite a while, and was never re-registered in the UK. Did they eventually buy this aircraft..? Or was it a huge lease.. like 10 yrs ish.? Infact, pretty sur...
Jump to postI regularly flew to KUL on the Tristar 200s in the 1980s... The Tristars were lovely planes to fly on… The rear section (after of Door3) had 4-5 rows of Economy and in those days this was the Smoking section…This was also a semicircular corridor with 5 main toilets for Economy and the engine 3 inta...
Jump to postBA converted many of their Tristar 200 to remove the lower galley and extend the fwd freight hold in its place. The main deck galleys were made larger by removing the lifts. They must have made more money from freight than Y pax. Was this the Tristar 200F??
Jump to postApologies on the five aircraft to Zaire - I'd obviously never recalled the fifth! The boost engine was used primarily when flying in southern Europe in relatively hot temperatures to improve runway performance out of the likes of Malta or Palma. Quite a lot of the Trident pilots became fairly senio...
Jump to postWhat are the differences between the 100 & 200 in the family? I believe the A320-100 didn't have wing fences, whereas the A320-200 did. Not sure about the A321s. Though I believe the wingtip fences were added to the -100s afterwards. There were only 20 A320-100, and BA operated 10 of them. (Air...
Jump to postAnd the L1011 Tristar had four hydraulic jacks. Really big and long jacks. One on each hydraulic system.
Jump to postYou don't want the fan to stop turning. Spinning in the breeze is much better.
Many years ago I was doing some engineering things with a Tristar simulator, and afterwards we went flying in it, and the simulator engineer simulated a seized fan. Loads of vibration and very noisy. Not recommended!
But it isn't a full pax aircraft. It has VIP fittings including a presidential bedroom.
Jump to postI worked the Tristar/Rb211 for a long time, from 1974 to around 2000. The very early engines were really hard to work on , it seemed as if Rolls Royce had not thought that they could fail!!, and lock out was very hard. But after a couple of years it was redisigned and much easier, if the translating...
Jump to postAs every one is guessing here BA had a number of B744 fitted with RB211-524GT engines. The HP 04 module was replaced with the 04 module for the Trent engine. I believe BA had about 12 B744 fitted with these engines, which moved around and were fitted to some B767 as well. These engines were much bet...
Jump to postThe primary purpose of the tail tank on most aircraft is for CG control. Except the B747-400, where the fuel only flows out, usually to the centre tank. It is emptied very early in the flight, and if it fails to empty the aircraft must land soon before the C of G goes too far aft. Refuelling can be...
Jump to postThe Airbus has the option of "ACT"s, Additional Center Tanks, to enhance its range, available on the 319, 320, and 321, but I've only heard of it being installed on the A321 Qatar Airways has two A319 aircraft fitted with an ACT. They have provisions for six ACT which would fill up both h...
Jump to postA flight that long will require 3 crew up front and blocking a first class seat for the pilot on rest. A third crew member for a flight shy above 3000nm? Is that even 7 hours? Or do I miss something important? FAA rules for long haul flights are much stricter than EU rules, and I expect that UA uni...
Jump to postWhen I worked at ARN for BA I had a hand held VHF radio. Used it every day in the winter to pass deicing codes to the aircraft, and occasionally during delays to talk to the pilots when we didn't have their mobile numbers.
Jump to postSAS flights ARN ORD Looking in SAS online it seems that the non stop flight starts again in Feb next year with an A330. Does anyone know if this is going to happen, or is it just an idea. We are expecting to import a dog from USA, and Chicago is the best departure point, and I have used it before. A...
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