August 2011 Archives

Everybody has their memories of 9/11. I was at a conference in London and watched the events unfold on a laptop tuned to the BBC web site, struggling to keep up with the weight of traffic and the enormity of the situation. The rest of the conference seemed rather flat and pointless after that. The world had turned on its axis.

My four-year-old daughter had started school that day and I worried what future lay in store for her. Were we in the West at war with Terror, with a large proportion of the Islamic world? Would we be living with the daily threat of terrorism for a generation. Would the economy nosedive as terrified consumers stopped spending?

As it was, the world pretty much went on. Although aviation went through a torrid 12 months or so, there was no global economic crisis as there would be almost exactly seven years later after Lehmans collapsed. We went to war, far away, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Terrorism did not go away, but - in the West anyway - successful attacks have been mercifully rare.

Aviation did change, but in a way that we are now so used to that the other day I had to think quite hard to remember exactly what it was like before: before tediously long queues at security where we variously now have to remove shoes, belts and laptops and restrict carry-on liquids to 100ml containers. Before the nervous young guy behaving suspiciously across the aisle could, just, conceivably be preparing to blow himself and the 200 people sitting around you to Kingdom Come.

Back to the days when terrorists were rebels with a cause, who more often than not simply wanted safe passage somewhere and a million dollars. When you could ask whether your kids could visit the pilot in the cockpit. When you could turn up at a big airport an hour before your flight and have a hope in hell of making it.

Flight International's 6 September issue looks at the legacy of 9/11 on aviation - from how passengers and crew behave on-board, to airport security regulations.

Looking forward to chairing the Flight International/Flightglobal Flight Safety Conference in two weeks' time, at which my colleague David Learmount will also be speaking.

We will have over 120 attendees with representatives of airlines and other aviation organisations from all over the world including: BA, Egyptair, Turkish Airlines, Icelandair, Norwegian, His Majesty The Sultan's Flight, Darwin Airline, Iberia, Spanair, Miami Air International, Air Asia, Air Berlin, RAF, Virgin, Aegean, LOT Polish, SAA, Finnair and Aer Lingus.

Places are still available. If you are at all involved in or interested in the area of human factors in aviation operations and safety, it is the one event you must attend.

How did the global economic crisis reshape the finances of the industry's biggest 100 players?. Flight International's Top 100, compiled with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and published in our 30 August issue, will have the answers.

The survery ranks the Top 100 by 2010 dollar revenues and records their profitability. With PricewaterhouseCoopers experts we assess how the various regions and sectors fared against eachother.

If you want the definitive guide to the state of the global aerospace sector, make sure you don't miss it.

The Sukhoi PAK-FA or T-50 fifth-generation Russian fighter, star of last week's MAKS air show in Moscow (which I blogged on yesterday), features on the cover of the latest Flight International, out today (23 August).

In the issue, you can read our report from the show, together with the magazine's leader on the future of Russia's proud aerospace industry. We have the latest on Qantas's A380 deferrals and the views of Ascend analyst Chris Seymour on why size matters more than ever in the narrowbody segment.

In our special feature on defence helicopters, Craig Hoyle looks at the record and prospects of the UK's Boeing Chinooks, and its helicopter assets as a whole. Stephen Trimble assesses the USA's rotorcraft materplan, and asks why it is easier to protect military helicopters from advanced smart weapons than bullets and RPGs.

Not had a chance to update my blog for some weeks, having been on holiday for two weeks and covering two of the world's greatest air shows: AirVenture in Oshkosh and MAKS in Moscow.

This was my first trip to MAKS and only my second to Moscow, but the previous one was about seven years ago and on an organised media visit so doesn't really count. This time, I and my colleagues, David Kaminski-Morrow, Siva Govindasamy and photographer/vidcam-man Tom Gordon were on our own.

Getting to and from the show was the greatest challenge, involving two stops on the Moscow Metro (a sight worth beholding), a 55min train journey and 15min on a rather crowded and less than fragrant shuttle bus, followed by a pretty thorough security check (understandable given the terror threat). The show itself is hard work too if you don't speak Russian, as, unlike other international air shows, aside from the odd sign and announcement, there are few concessions to English-speakers.

That aside the show is a visual spectacle of Russian aviation at its best. You can see how we covered it on our flightglobal.com/maks landing page, which also includes a link to three issues of our interactive show daily. We had lots of fun with that.

This being Russia there are other differences from your average air show too. For a start, there is alcohol on sale everywhere, with about two beer tents to every one offering water or snacks. The coffee stall in the press centre had a pretty sorry selection of sandwiches but had I fancied a bottle of Johnnie Walker or Martell cognac, there were plenty on display in the fridge. Remarkably, very few visitors showed any effect of having overimbibed, except one poor chap who was manfully making his way for the exit, helped by his slightly more sober friend, in the manner of an exhausted Scott and Oates battling through a polar blizzard. 

Perhaps, two wanderers struggling through the desert in search of an oasis might be a more apt similie as the temperatures were in the 30s. Anyone whose impression of Moscow is of people in fur coats in wintery landscapes ought to visit in August.