April 2006 Archives

It was only a matter of time I suppose before the folks at Southwest Airlines got blogging.  They're off to a slightly uncertain start - same as all of us - but they've picked up on the idea of using multiple authors which will make it a lot easier for busy execs to make the time needed.

I know for a fact that Southwest's, umm, friends at American employ a guy who's job it is to monitor what bloggers are saying about American - and at least sometimes respond. I guess this will give him something to chew over at the next management meeting. 

I've commented before that despite their very similar business models, Southwest and Ryanair have spectacularly different service models. Imagine what Ryanair could do with a blog - hey, people might even start to fly with them because they liked to instead of just because it was cheap.

It'll never happen....

Reading about the poor Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor pilot trapped in his cockpit for 5h when his canopy jammed, I couldn't help wondering how aviation designers don't learn from history. Sixty-five years ago, the Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires had simple canopy designs enabling Battle of Britain pilots to roll them back just before engaging the enemy to ensure that they could get out in a hurry if necessary once the fighting started - something the Messerschmitt 109 guys probably couldn't do because of the German fighter's different canopy design.  Perhaps the design boffins at Lock-Mart need a history lesson on simplifying canopy opening mechanisms?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. At twenty-five frames per second, Mark Ecko's recent two-minute clip of him spray painting a graffiti tag onto the side of a US Air Force presidential transport Boeing 747-200B is worth over 3,000 words every time it's viewed. And the maxim stands true if you count the amount of column centimetres dedicated to his stunt on internet sites and newspapers around the world.

Flightglobal.com ran the video of the prank last week. We were sceptical; there's no way anyone can get within 100 metres of the aircraft. Also the video's jump cuts smacked of footage cobbled together rather than a real video.

This didn't stop the USAF from checking both aircraft in the fleet, however, with the Air Mobility Command's 89th Airlift Wing confirming it had looked into the matter (before concluding that no tag was on either aircraft).

Our poll also showed readers' initial willingness to believe their eyes, with 65% believing the video showing a real threat to presidential security within the first three hours of the story appearing.

Real credit, however, is due to our readers' close attention to detail. Dozens emailed in detailed reasons why it had to be a fake. These included the wrong engines, the wrong font used on the fuselage, wrong paint colour and even the velocity of paint coming out of the spray can.

Ecko claimed to have tagged the engine cowling of the 747 as a protest over the erosion of free speech in the USA. A noble sentiment; it may be over 20 years since the case of Michael Stewart (a young, black graffiti artist who was strangled to death while in the custody of eleven white transit police who had arrested him for writing graffiti on a subway wall in New York City), but real curbs on urban art are coming back.

In Joe Austin's book Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City, he chronicles the draconian measures Mayor Ed Koch brought in to curb the spread of graffiti in the 1980s. After the Stewart incident, during which the coroner 'lost' the inquest evidence, most states repealed laws. Ecko, however, pointed out that regulations are coming back.  In New York now it is illegal to buy a marker pen until you're 21 years of age and carrying a can of aerosol can be reason to be stopped and searched in many US cities, Ecko says in his video explanation of his acts.

But Ecko is no revolutionary. His script-reading attempts sound unconvincing. Despite calling graffiti a recognised American art form, he fails to differentiate between tagging (surely a simple act of vandalism) and the art found on the walls of Harlem, Bed-Stuy or Englewood, described in Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City by Ivor L. Miller.

Far from it, in fact. Ecko is the multimillionaire owner of Ecko Ultd clothing range and Complex urban lifestyle magazine. Crucially, however, he has just launched his d饕ut video game, Getting-Up: Contents Under Pressure, in which the characters score points by spraying name tags on well-guarded public buildings. No surprise, then, that a day after the video appeared, Ecko put a disclaimer on his site admitting it was a fake.

He has now released further details on how the elaborate hoax was achieved. His company rented a 747 freighter at San Bernardino airport (formerly Norton AFB) in Southern California.  Mechanics there leaked details to us of having painted one side of the aircraft to resemble the VC-25As. Computer graphics then added the fence and enhanced the tag.

Ecko refuses to say how much the stunt cost, other than to admit it was a costly venture. But by all accounts it was a good investment. Since Flightglobal first ran the story last week, it has spread around the web like wildfire. It has also become Flightglobal's best-read story ever. For Ecko, the publicity received is worth far more than any amount of above-the-line advertising and again shows the power of the internet.

For traditional advertisers, the writing's on the wall.

Last weekend I went to a good party at RAF Lyneham and came back even more convinced - if that's possible - that RAF transport aircraft should have fuel tank inerting systems. More of that later.

The party was the 90^th Anniversary of No 70 Squadron RAF - traditionally designated LXX Squadron, as members and cognoscenti will tell you whether you want to know or not. This inevitably gets translated as "love and kisses" - not so funny the millionth time you've heard the joke from someone who thinks he's just invented it - but a useful chat-up line for young LXX crewmembers to use.

LXX is one of the four Lyneham squadrons that operates Lockheed Martin C-130s.

Meanwhile, back to the celebrations. That mild Saturday evening as the sun sank and we watched the RAF Ensign lowered to the clear notes of the Last Post, a Douglas DC-3 rumbled low across our piece of sky between the party marquee and the hangars, and was gone. Then when - a few minutes later - the Squadron Standard was trooped and presented, on cue a Herc flown by a LXX crew who would be joining the party later, flashed over in a low pass and disappeared.

This was unsensational stuff, but it meant a lot to those who were there. Including me. LXX was my first operational squadron, but when I was on the team the RAF's earliest C-130s were almost new, the LXX callsign was Rafair (unique at the time  to Cyprus-based operations), and the "milk run" out of our Akrotiri base was to Masirah and Salalah in Oman. All of which indicates how long ago it was.

But not everything has changed. Today LXX crews are serving in parts of the Middle East and Asia where the squadron's earliest presence pre-dates even my service! Iraq and Afghanistan first saw LXX aeroplanes and crews operating in those theatres in 1918 and 1928 respectively for many years. Today detachments from LXX - and from the other Lyneham-based Squadrons XXIV, 30 and 47 - are supporting ground and air operations in both countries.

LXX has always flown "heavies" since it was given Vickers Vimys in 1920, and it has operated most of its 90y life in the transport role. Transport's a good job. You feel useful - essential even - and there's plenty of mission variety with an aircraft as versatile as the Herc.

After the ceremony and the flypasts, the LXX team - minus those down the route or on detachment - got down to partying. Quite a few other LXX veterans were there too.

We - the former LXX aviators - pondered the risks today's crews face in Afghanistan and Iraq. A 47 Squadron Herc was brought down in Iraq last year by ground fire and all ten people on board died. Last December our Defence Editor Craig Hoyle - incidentally he has only just returned from flying Hercs with the RAF in Afghanistan - had reported of the Iraq shootdown that "several projectiles hit the aircraft…causing a brief fire in the outer starboard wing before an explosion in its number 4 fuel tank detached a 23ft (7m)-long outer wing section".

Now the Government and the Ministry of Defence are considering fitting fuel tank inerting systems to some of the Hercs.

These remote decisionmakers should have been at LXX last weekend to see the team off duty and to learn their names. They have names, lives, families. And without the job they do the troops on the ground would be immobilised, not to mention demoralised.

The C-130Ks are old now and you could lose an airframe without too much grief, but the lives of any of these young professionals and the people they carry is too high a price to pay to save a few bucks that should be spent on giving the aircraft a better chance of staying controllable - even recoverable - after a hit. The chance of getting a hit in Afghanistan and Iraq is high.

The fact that the US Federal Aviation Administration is considering mandating fuel tank inerting on civil airliners puts into sharp relief the attitude of those who would hesitate to put it in front-line military aircraft.

Today's LXX aircrew will all spend time in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, and will go wherever the next inevitable conflict develops. That's natural for LXX. The Squadron's motto, "usquam", means "everywhere" or "anywhere" depending on the grammatical context, but I guess in today's parlance it could equally be "wherever". Wherever they go, may they get the support they deserve from the country they serve.

“Please make sure that your seat back is in the upright position, your tray table is stowed away, and that you are wearing your combat body armour and helmet.” Maybe this rather eerie advice could be something for the low-cost airlines to trial during the World Cup in Germany this June, but for now, it is the final announcement given to British troops and visitors before landing in the Afghan capital Kabul.

I recently had my first experience as a deployed “war correspondent”, spending three days in Afghanistan as part of a Ministry of Defence and Royal Air Force-managed visit to Kabul and Kandahar airfield.

I spent most of my time within the relatively safe confines of Kandahar airfield, which at the peak of its activity has housed up to 9,000 coalition personnel. However, arriving troops are warned about the threat of rocket attacks, the dangers of straying from paths near its perimeter due to the presence of landmines and, bizarrely, on the presence of rats “the size of dogs”. So that’s no pets or mascots then…

Visitors to Kandahar are confronted with many signs of past bloodshed. Also referred to as the Taliban Last Stand building, the base’s passenger terminal is a bullet and bomb-scarred single-storey affair. The hangar next door has much of its roof missing, and that which remains is peppered from cannon fire and the past impact of precision-guided bombs. The airfield also houses the remnants of previous Afghan transport aircraft which probably met with a similar fate.

It doesn’t do to stare in Kandahar – the hangar in question now houses a mysterious fleet of UH-1 helicopter gunships painted in an exotic camouflage scheme and without national markings. As one RAF source notes, there is an awful lot of ‘black’ activity going on out here. Those US Air Force Predator unmanned air vehicles aren’t really there either, if you see what I mean.

While we were there to visit the RAF’s Chinook and Harrier detachments at Kandahar, the base’s flight line is dominated by dozens of US attack, transport and combat search and rescue helicopters, with a few more Australian and Dutch Chinooks also making up the numbers. Perhaps underlining their national reputation for being just a little bit “crazshy”, the Dutch have a sign which subtly highlights its air force’s delight at being away from home: “Different tour, same ***”.

Rockets and rodents aside, and also considering its powder-fine dust and more than occasional whiff of raw sewage, life in Kandahar doesn’t seem all that bad. The base has three US-run dining facilities which offer something for every taste: from burgers to breaded shrimp to the nutritional and gung-ho-inspiration of the Hooah! bar: “the energy bar created by the US Military”. Its Board Walk also has a Burger King, Pizza Hut and Subway, and the Green Beans Coffee shop serves a mean vanilla chai. The base PX meanwhile sells everything from TVs and electric fans to understated “Taliban Hunter” and “Sniper squad” T-Shirts. Its $1 jigsaws are also proving unhealthily popular with the Romanian soldiers, if you ask me.

The base has something of a Mad Max feel about it, with a peculiar mix of armoured vehicles, Toyota Land Cruisers, German tourist coaches and thousands of ISO containers which line the “streets”. These provide security and also act as noise barriers between the accommodation areas and the airfield, but they aren’t much use when – as on our first night on base – the US Army seems to be rehearsing the massed helicopter formation from Apocalypse Now. But at least they spared us the Wagner…

The national characteristics of other coalition troops were beautifully underlined during a day spent flying in an RAF C-130J Hercules supporting International Security Assistance Force activities. The Swedish medics were forthcoming and friendly, the Norwegian soldiers young, macho and electronically sophisticated with their I-Pods and even a PSP, while ISAF’s Italian army commander strutted his way onto the aircraft’s flight deck for a transfer to Herat.

Coalition aircraft rarely come under ground fire in Afghanistan, but there is no doubt that it feels like a dangerous place to fly – regardless of countermeasures and cockpit armour. The land-based dangers of the region were also graphically illustrated during our visit, with suicide bombings staged in Helmand’s capital Lashkar Gar and Herat. And on returning to Kabul for a night in the UK’s Camp Souter base around 1km from the airport perimeter the risks were again underlined when we were transferred in vintage Saxon armoured vehicles with roof-mounted machine guns.

Souter felt a bit more like home, with the Grand National on TV, the base bar providing up to two cans of beer per person per night, a tent with no air conditioning and persistent rain. And judging by the muddy paw prints left on my wash bag in the morning we also had a visitor in the night. He probably wasn’t the size of a dog, but Osama the rat remains an elusive enemy.

It's dark at 4.45am as I drive  through the side gate of the former Douglas Aircraft final assembly complex at Long Beach, California.

This would be the graveyard shift had I been working here, but now - in late April 2006 - that phrase carries with it all the hackneyed double meaning of a cheap horror movie.

I am here to witness a bit of history, and a sad moment at that. This morning, like a state execution before dawn, we are gathering to witness the roll out of the very last Boeing 717. The little T-tail jet is already sitting on the cold ramp outside Building 80 when I arrive.



Its shiny domed fuselage reflecting the lurid blue and red neon of the iconic "Fly DC Jets" sign on the roof top overhead, this aircraft is truly the last of the line. Out of this building, and the adjacent Building 84, have rolled out since 1958 a staggering 556 DC-8s, 976 DC-9s and C-9s, 446 DC-10/KC-10s, 1,191 MD-80s, 115 MD-90s, 200 MD-11s and another 155 717s.

Workers young and not so young, on shift and off, emerge like ghosts from the pre-dawn blackness into the lurid pool of light thrown by portable spotlights over the jet. Gradually they cluster around the nose, group photographs being snapped amid a low murmur of conversation. Then it is time. A tow truck rumbles into life, and its lights come on as the driver moves it gingerly through the crowd. "Whoa...isn't that the cleanest looking tow truck you've ever seen?" exclaims someone. The tow bar is hooked on and a voice barks uncomfortably through a bullhorn "everyone back behind the plane!"

In an almost trance-like state everyone obeys and the last of the line slowly begins its journey. The crowd of around 200 shuffles behind as the 717 is manoeuvred to the edge of the public road - Lakewood Blvd - which bisects this historic site. The road must be closed for a few minutes while the operation takes place, as it has done almost ceremoniously pre-dawn virtually without a break week in, week out for the past 48 years.

California Highway Patrol officers on motorbikes briefly set up a whirl of "whoop-whoop" sirens and brilliant lights to stop the traffic. The first hint of daylight is meanwhile creeping into the eastern sky as the 717 is trundled across the street. Someone says "where's the noise?" But no-one is in the mood for cheering. Following that distinctive T-tail, everyone feels they are in a funeral cortege rather than a celebratory parade.

Not surprising, really  given the inevitable end of an era, and with it the  disappearance of so many jobs. Suddenly it is over. We watch the 717s tail vanish behind a blast fence as it is towed to the delivery ramp in readiness for testing and handover. No doubt the planned double delivery ceremony of the final two aircraft in May will be more about the celebration of the Douglas legacy, but right now the mood is one of grim resignation.



But it is inside the cavernous, echoing, almost desolate interior of the once bustling Building 80 that the reality truly hits home. Here, where I once inspected rows of MD-80s, 90s and even 717s amidst the deafening tattoo of rivet guns, there is now empty silence. The long trench in the concrete along one wall of the building, dug to house the moving production line equipment, lies in mute testimony to the many brave innovations that were tried as the Long Beach line fought for its life.

Now, sadly for so many in Southern California, the fight is essentially over. Across the runway, for the time being at least, Boeing continues to build the mighty C-17. But for how long? As it stands, we shall be repeating the C-17 equivalent of the 717's dawn salute in just two short years. That will truly be the end of not just major aircraft assembly at Long Beach, but throughout the whole of California - a thought once unthinkable in the cradle of the aerospace business.  Maybe its time for one of California's last significantly viable industries to do something about it - a Hollywood blockbuster about "The Long Beach Blues and the death of Douglas."

I'm climbing up through 33,000ft (10,000m) over the bleached dry Mojave Desert as I write this. From my window on the port side of my United 757 I can see several kilometres to the north, the white expanse of Edwards AFB and its dry lakebed. It doesn't take too much imagination to think that, 50 years ago, the rarefied air up here was once home to a very special man, the test pilot Scott Crossfield, who died in an aircraft accident on 20 April.

I couldn't pretend to have known Crossfield in any way, but I met him several times and I think I can tell you something about this exceptional pilot and why he will be so deeply missed.

Crossfield was almost an institution at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots annual meetings in Los Angeles. Virtually every year it seemed this wiry, energetic, silver haired pilot would be surrounded by a knot of admirers - young and old, all keen to hear "war stories" and pick up any nugget they could from the master. Crossfield was, after all, the first man to fly faster than both twice the speed of sound (20 Nov 1953) and three times the speed of sound (15 Nov 1960).

But he was much more than the pioneering pilot who had punched through the sound barrier in the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket and the North American X-15. He was also an expert aeronautical engineer, aerodynamicist and designer who had helped perfect the X-15 as well as the subsequent Apollo command and service modules and Saturn V second stage. In short, he was a true all rounder and "the test pilot's test pilot."

For all his sky high achievements, however, Crossfield was also a humble man who egotistically kept his feet firmly on the ground. To the test pilots gathered at the SETP his talks were direct, full of solid information and, it has to be said, peppered with enough wit to make him the proverbial George Burns of aerospace.

Here are a couple of examples of classic Crossfield quotes, taken from various notes I took at SETP talks over the past few years when he was connected with a 'Century of Flight' project involving the building and testing of a replica Wright Brothers 1902 glider.
He liked to disarm his audience from the get go. One year it was "while I have been around for a long time, I want to suppress the rumour that I flew chase on the Wrights.....I flew low cover." The year before it was "I did not fly low cover over Custer!"

He showed video of the Wright Flyer project, in which he flew the highly unstable glider which was towed through a pasture behind a pick-up truck at over 50mph (80km/h). At one point Crossfield, piloting it in the prone position, hit the ground with such violence the (then) 80-year old was tossed out like a rag doll. Seasoned test pilots of all ages groaned in shared distress as the video was played, and Crossfield commented: "...and this shows the Wrights were also the first to have an operational ejection seat".  
 
And his verdict on the Wright's design? "We discovered they had an indifference, rather than an ignorance of stability. One of the crew said it flies like a Kleenex - that's not in the pilot's lexicon but boy, it describes it very well!"

His partner on the project was the champion aerobatic pilot Patti Wagstaff....itself a situation of such rich humour that Crossfield found impossible to ignore. "Patti said she liked new aircraft and old pilots, so I suggested we run away together. She declined saying she was thinking more 'classic' than 'antique.'

Thank you, and God's speed Mr Crossfield.

I bet the move by the Abu Dhabi-owned Mubadala Development to buy a 35% stake in Piaggio won't be the last such move by the oil-rich Gulf states into the investment-hungry aerospace sector.

Business and general aviation aircraft manufacturers provide the perfect vehicle for Arab investors, looking to channel the profits from soaring oil and gas revenues into potentially long-term and prestigious projects. While Arab-owned companies such as Dubai Ports World have been shut out of the US sea transportation market because of worries (prejudice? panic?) over security, and the defence business is a no-go area, business and general aviation provides a route "under the wire".

Away from the "big six" of Bombardier, Cessna, Dassault, Embraer, Gulfstream and Raytheon, business and private aviation in the US and Europe is - with few exceptions - a cottage industry, populated by entrepreneurs and/or small companies who often have the designs and the ambition but lack the millions and the cash flow needed to develop new programmes. Yet the sector is expanding, and the Middle East itself is one of the biggest growth areas. Once developed, programmes have a long shelf life - the same design, with updates, can sell for 40 years.

Piaggio Aero is typical. Privately-owned (albeit with a rich, state-owned heritage and backing from none other than the Ferrari family), its P180 Avanti is arguably the sexiest business turboprop on the planet. But, after developing the Avanti II, to move up to the next level - a business jet - the Italian company needs outside help. We wrote in Flight International recently about where Piaggio is going with its business aircraft strategy.

Two years ago, a Kuwaiti investment house bought 75% of Liberty Aerospace, maker of the XL2 general aviation aircraft. Across North America, and Europe too, there are dozens of start-up or struggling manufacturers who would love to bring a new programme to market.

Of course, the Gulf countries have big ambitions to develop their own home-grown aerospace industries. Look at what Dubai is planning with DAE and what Qatar is doing in Doha. But, in the meantime, business aviation is where a lot of Middle Eastern money will end up. Look out for more announcements at EBACE and NBAA

Like most people, for a long time I was fairly sceptical about the Russian Regional Jet (RRJ) programme that Sukhoi has been working on - but I think a lot of us are going to be changing our minds.

Today a series of inter-governmental meetings between Italy and Russia ended with a signed deal for Alenia to take a 25%+one share stake in Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, which is more or less synonymous with the programme. The deal was held up by the Italian election and it's a sign of Italy's seriousness about the project that it has survived the transition from the Berlusconi to Prodi administrations.

Already the aircraft's suppliers read like a role-call of French industry, and of course the brand new engines are being co-developed by NPO Saturn of Russia and Snecma of France.

Readers of a certain age will recall that Alenia and Aerospatiale-folded-into-EADS are the joint owners of turboprop aircraft venture ATR which failed in its attempts some years ago to come up with a viable regional jet of its own. A lot has happened in the RJ world since then - particularly BAE Systems' failure to build on the 146-RJ100 line, and Bombardier's difficulties in carving out its optimum role in the transformed market.

Embraer has moved with difficulty into China, but Russia, where the need is almost as great, has been left behind - until now.

I've recently spoken only briefly to Sukhoi folks about the programme, but I learned that the 60-seat version is now on-hold and all the effort is going into the 100-seater (95-108 in fact).

They made some extravagant claims about the type's predicted operating advantages over Embraer and Bombardier which I'll believe when I see, but it is clear that they are having serious conversations with airlines outside Russia - Vietnam Airlines being a serious prospect.

That's important because Sukhoi has realised that after Aeroflot and perhaps Sibir/S7 Airlines, there are precious few realistic Russian customers in the short term. In the long term it's a very different picture, but of course they've got to get the thing up and running.

One to watch I think.

EADS Socata couldn't have asked for a better PR representative than John Hinshaw, the American customer who placed the first order for its new TBM850 six-seater turboprop aircraft. Hinshaw strode into a room full of (mainly French) journalists who'd spent the last couple of hours being bombarded with maximum cruise speeds and market forecasts, TBM850 baseball cap firmly clamped to his head, and spoke about his new toy with the zeal of a true believer. He chose the aircraft because of its ease and comfort to fly, and crucially because of its speed (467 km per hour cruising at 31,000 feet, incidentally), he said. This was the message Socata's chief executive Stéphane Mayer had been trying to get across to us in the briefing and he looked delighted that he was being backed up so forcefully by this loyal customer. (Hinshaw already owns a TBM700 aircraft, of which the TBM850 is an upgraded version.)

Socata's vice president of marketing Andrew Knott insisted that Hinshaw's appearance at the press conference was merely a happy coincidence, not a "fix" - Hinshaw was in Tarbes, south west France, where Socata is based anyway, to see his "baby" progress along the final assembly line and had agreed to speak to us in return for dinner. (A lot of customers do this, apparently, and one even set up a chair in front of his new aircraft and watched the last two weeks of work taking place. Pretty nerve-wracking for the assembly-workers, I imagine…)

Hinshaw fits the usual profile of a TBM850 customer perfectly - 80% of sales are in the US, and the aircraft often appeals to customers over 50, with an entrepreneurial streak. Hinshaw runs his own company but flies the aircraft more for pleasure than for business, using it to visit his children who live in different states.

Later that day we got the chance to experience the aircraft ourselves, with a series of demonstration flights. I can confirm that yes, it is comfortable for passengers and that yes, it does go fast. As for whether it's easy to fly, I've no idea, but our pilot didn't seem to have too many problems, and for the passengers the views over the Pyrénées were spectacular.

In the halls of space vehicle fame Russia's Rocket and Space Corporation Energia has a special place for its role in that country's manned spaceflight programmes but perhaps now its time for the company to keep quiet. A reputation for technical excellence is being undermined by ridiculous statements.

The week after next, a team of us will be descending on Geneva for my favourite industry show, EBACE www.ebace.aero. Launched in 2001, the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition has really grown in stature, more than doubling in size since then and becoming the main stage for manufacturers and service suppliers to talk to the business aviation community outside North America. The audience it attracts is top-notch - everyone from the flight departments of big European corporates to the "high net worth individuals". It is fascinating to watch these blinged-up, perma-tanned, Versace-clad tax exiles flit around the exhibition, mulling whether to choose a Learjet or a Citation in the same way most of us would pick a select a suit in Marks & Spencer.

From a show dominated by European dealers and distributors in its early years, EBACE - still smaller and more manageable than its big US sibling NBAA - now attracts the big-hitters from the big global manufacturers, and it is unusual for the three-day event not to include some pretty big announcements.

Once again, we'll be publishing Flight Evening News...the industry's only same-day air show daily. Available at around 1700h at the show and in the convention hotels, as well as on-line on flightglobal.com, the newspaper brings you all the news from that day's press conferences, as well as plenty of pictures and gossip from around the exhibition hall and static display. For the small team of journalists on FEN, it's a slog. All stories have to be written, checked, laid out and sent to the printer by lunchtime. The printer then has the unenviable task of getting several thousand copies back to the Palexpo convention centre four hours later.

To read about the trials and tribulations and the tremendous kick you get out of producing a same day show daily, read my blog each day from EBACE.

Back in the early 1990s I was Washington Correspondent for Flight and lived with my wife and children there for three years. As many people have observed Washington's an odd sort of city and when we had visitors I was never quite sure what to show them.

I know I wasn't the only ex-pat who in the end settled on Arlington Cemetery (that's an unofficial link as the official website is down just now) as the one fixture on my mini-tour.

There is a lot to see there, most of it deeply moving. But the place that most raised the hairs on my neck is the one shown below. It's the Shuttle Memorial and I think it beautifully encapsulates the combination of zest for life, intellectual curiosity and sheer courage displayed by the crew. These were some of America's brightest - they knew the risks as nobody else and they went ahead and did it anyway.

More images.

Aged 10 I was sitting cross legged in our assembly hall at my school in England. Our teacher had hurriedly got us all to leave our classroom and sit in front of the colour television he had rolled into the hall on its wheeled stand. I remember our teacher’s excitement and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. On the tv screen was a machine the likes the world had never seen before.

“Would you like a baloney sandwich?” the elderly lady said as she held out a neatly cling film wrapped sandwich, in her other hand a plate of more of the same. Behind her along the pavement, or sidewalk as they say here in the US, the sandwich lady’s friends held up their signs that read, ‘beware the military industrial complex’.

BAE's statement that it plans to sell its stake in Airbus had - after all the speculation and hints of recent months - all the surprise value of a Britney Spears divorce announcement. BAE has been spiritually moving home across the Atlantic since the formation of Airbus proper in 2001 changed its status from owner of Airbus's British factories to a mere 20% shareholder in the unified European airframer.

I don't think it will have any effect on the UK's aerospace industry, either in the short or long term. If anything, it could bolster the UK's punching power within Airbus. EADS is desperate to be accepted as a prime contractor by the Ministry of Defence, but - despite its plush offices in the Strand, its significant industrial footprint in the UK and the impressive Robin Southwell banging the drum for it as UK chief executive - it has always struggled for credibility. Every UK-based media outlet - including Flight International - refers to EADS as the "Franco-German company". EADS's UK communications guys wince when they read that. People, even high up in Whitehall, think of it as a Continental European company with a sales office in London. Fact.

EADS talks about the 13,000 Airbus staff in the UK as part of its contribution to the UK aerospace industrial base. But, even though their pay slips have have had the Airbus name on them for five years, your average British opinion-former still thinks of them as "British Aerospace employees". Once Airbus becomes a 100% subsidiary of EADS, the "Franco-German" giant's status in the UK becomes greatly enhanced. If it buys out BAE's stake in MBDA (both own 37.5% - Finmeccanica has the remaining 25%), something else that has a good chance of happening, its UK footprint gets even bigger.

My colleague Max Kingsley-Jones disagrees. He thinks that, without BAE, Airbus will have no incentive to keep particularly lower-value jobs in the UK. If the bigwigs in Toulouse want to cut costs, which jobs are they going to axe: the ones in Broughton or the ones in Hamburg, Getafe or Blagnac which have powerful political lobbies fighting their corner? Does he have a point?