February 2007 Archives

You'll remember that JetBlue managed to turn lead into gold when one of their A320s suffered a nosegear failure and ended up starring on live TV in one of the world's most publicised landings. Everything went well, the pilot was lauded, and the airline effectively got advertising that I suppose would be valued in seven figures at regular TV rates.

Last week things were different. JetBlue is being flayed for its near network-collapse and all the advertising in the world couldn't fix its reputation right now. The saga may well lead to passenger-rights legislation in the USA, and JetBlue has come up with its own bill of rights in the meantime.

But Neeleman's smart touch is, I think, shown in this YouTube video in which he talks directly about what happened and what JetBlue is doing about it. It's about as good a job as could be done in the circumstances - he comes across as a CEO who's genuinely horrified by what happened and regretful of what his company has done to its individual customers. The YouTube comments are predictably cynical, but as the thread develops, an increasing number of plausibly genuine supporters get on board.

Right now this has tremendous impact. But I don't think it sets a precedent that will be widely followed. The next airline CEO that does it will get about one-tenth of the impact, and anyone else will barely be noticed. Fact is that the airline industry lets its customers down so often that YouTube would need a special "contrite airline CEOs" category. I don't suppose United's Glen Tilton considered YouTube for a moment after this horror.

Not a lot of people know this but NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and its Space Shuttle launch pads are situated in a wildlife reserve and now it could see even more launch and landing activity.
Driving into KSC on the NASA buses the alligators can be seen sunning themselves and at some distance from those Jurassic predators the local bird life flap and hop around. Bald eagle nesting sites can also be seen on the route into KSC.
But according to the Daytona Beach News Journal it looks like Merritt Island's National Wildlife Refuge is going to have a lot of concrete poured over it.

Unfortunately not by me, but this is a nice blog post by a Russian passenger on a Skyexpress Boeing 737-300 undertaking one of the first of the airline's flights from Moscow Vnukovo airport to Sochi. It's in Russian, but Google language tools does quite a nice job of getting the gist of the report. And for me the striking thing is how startlingly similar the whole experience is to, say, an Easyjet trip. Skyexpress is linked to Airunion, reportedly with some Western investment involved too. I'm not sure where they got their concept from, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were Luton, England.

In the history of exploration mysterious places have been a part of the human experience with stories of ancient submerged islands, strange creatures, ghost ships, derelict abandoned ships and seas that make ships and their crew disappear.

Space seems to be offering the same experience with a number of probes vanishing and the UK designed and built lander, Beagle 2, which was part of the European Space Agency Mars Express mission to the red planet in 2003, also succumbing to the most mysterious of planets, Mars.

There had been hopes that Beagle would be spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to image the region of Mars, and in particular the crater, inwhich the UK probe was likely to have landed.

Whether it is President Obama, Edwards or Clinton the next US president is going to have to wrestle with the questions, why do we have manned spaceflight, what is it for and what do we want to pay for?

From January 2009 the good money is on Hillary Rodham Clinton to win with her name recognition, substantial electoral funding war chest and political experience.

Whether New York Senator Rodham Clinton wins or not the new president will face a NASA that is part way through a difficult transition, not enough money to do what it has been asked to do and a return to the Moon programme that was the initiative of president George W. Bush

This is my first attempt at posting using our new Movable Type blogging platform. Hope you agree it looks a whole lot better than what we had before.

I thought I'd start off by linking to the best of the aviation sites that I personally follow. I'm pretty discerning and frankly there are only a few that I've found to be really useful. I'd be delighted to hear about any others though.

First, the two heavyweight US air transport sites: Addison Schonland at IAG, and Scott Hamilton at Leeham. Addison posts more frequently - one of the rare guys who more or less always posts daily, and Scott is a long-time AT observer who posts less frequently, but trades quantity for quality.

There's Boeing marketing chief Randy Baseler of course, who I think has been easing up on posts too (might be wrong, but feels that way), but is obviously important to pay attention to. Still nothing from Airbus sadly.

I also quite like Flight Level 390 when I've got time for something a bit more mellow, occasionally Cockpit Conversation, and sometimes Aviation Views (more views, less news please).

The Aviatrix Logbook is one of the more readable pilot blogs but, even though my work only touches on the fringe of business aviation just now, I'm a big fan of Sulako's Blog. Unlocking writing talent like that is one of the blogosphere's great achievements.

Land and Hold Short is great on the lighter end of aviation in what can be a challenging part of the world, and Eclipse Aviation Critic very intelligently does exactly what it says on the tin.

Blogging at FL250 is great stuff for wanabee pilots, although I could do without the travelogue stuff.

There are a couple of areas that I like to keep in touch with, but don't need to examine in detail for my job - so for defence I dip into the intriguing Naval Open Source Intelligence, which is mostly second-hand news and no views, but that's fine for me. And for India - where it's damn hard to keep up with events these days - I always check Touch Base with Indian A&D Industry.

Finally, because of my job I read media stuff of course - mostly my boss Jim Muttram's exemplary blog Inflection Point, and The Editors Weblog. There are a zillion others, but I've got a day job!

And finally, finally - if you are interested in what other media think about what we're doing here in our company then today we got some heavyweight coverage from The Guardian. Tomorrow our parent company Reed Elsevier releases its 2006 financials - so we'll get a little indication as to whether we're doing the right sort of thing. I suppose blogs contribute about one-zillionth of our revenues but, hey, we've got to start somewhere.

I get up at 04:30 and leave my house soon after where it is -6deg C. At Gatwick I find I have written down my booking code wrong and have to plead with Easyjet to be allowed to board. We take-off from Gatwick at 07:15 and Easyjet runs out of its special 'breakfast toastie' despite the aircraft being barely half full. At Airbus HQ in Toulouse I am ritually humiliated in front of just about every aviation journalist in Europe when I am called to the stage to be presented with my passport and boarding pass which I have dropped on the floor somewhere. It's still only 10:30 and it's been a long day.

But do I care? I do not - today I'm privileged to be flying on the A380 for the first time. A world exclusive - just me and about 200 other journalists!

So here we are at the Airbus delivery centre in Toulouse...

...and here are my colleagues and rivals...

Airbus is slowly recovering its confidence and is in no mood to be pushed around by the media. The company wants to talk about how wonderful the A380 is; the journalists would quite like to ask impertinent questions about other matters. Finally the Airbus execs lose patience, the press conference is politely but firmly halted, and we're invited to board. In fairness, practically the entire Airbus management is on the aircraft and happily agree to non-stop interviews for the duration of the two-hour flight. You'll see the results over the next 24 hours or so.

Iraqi Airways’ designator code is ‘IA’ – that’s Insha’allah Airlines, whispers a Kurdistan Regional Government official with a smirk, because it’s God’s will whether the flight will arrive on time, depart on time, or even turn up at all.

Jihad, the blight of modern-day airline scheduling. Iraqi Airways flight-something-or-other (the indicator board at Kurdistan’s Erbil Airport enigmatically declares no number) is 90 minutes late departing to Baghdad, but the punters appear content that their shabby green Boeing 727-200 – belching soot and bearing a Sierra Leone registration which would send the European Commission apoplectic – at least has a wing on each side. Its pilot, waving from the cockpit window, is remarkably cheerful for someone heading for an airport whose arrival pattern features a corkscrew dive to improve your chances of dodging a SAM-14. 

To this otherworldly place, far removed from Viennese order and comfort, Austrian Airlines has returned. It’s barely three weeks since Saddam Hussein was shown the gravity of his crimes (much of that gravity suddenly appearing beneath an open trapdoor) but so far there’s no evidence of resurgence in the violence that stalled Austrian’s earlier attempt to restart flights to Iraq.

Kurdistan’s capital is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world but don’t believe that 50 centuries has been nearly enough time to agree on a name. The airport says ‘Erbil’. Immigration stamps my passport ‘Arbil’ and the breakaway GoogleMap faction insists on ‘Irbil’. The Kurds call it ‘Hewler’, and you’d think they’d know, but their opinion doesn’t seem to count.

Whatever. The KRG insists the place is safe, shortly after our press corps disembarks from Austrian’s A320, but our token, low-key security detail nevertheless includes a police car, close-quarter escorts with shades and earpieces, and half-a-dozen peshmerga troops riding shotgun. We couldn’t be more conspicuous if we were travelling by tank.

Passers-by look initially bemused, but then break into spontaneous beaming and waving with an infectious friendliness which seems to permeate Kurdistan. Downtown Erbil is a chaotic sprawl of cheerful bartering, taxi horns, peace murals, low-hanging phone wires, and labyrinthine bazaars where everything brightly-coloured that isn’t edible is covered in sequins. Under a kerbside tree an elderly gentleman, cross-legged on a rug, is selling mobiles while from a narrow entryway an industrial clothing-iron vents steam into the street. One shop’s facade is tiled with a selection of framed presidential portraits. For those who aren’t feeling particularly deferential, the commercial district contains dozens of other stores with wall-to-wall paraphernalia which manage to blend Middle Eastern mystique with all the strategic consideration of an eBay fire-sale. If sir cares for a brand-new copy of last year’s diary, sir has come to the right place. Welcome.

I was watching a documentary on UK television the other week about the impact that bloggers had on the race to become the US Democrat party's candidate for the Connecticut Senate election last year. Out of nowhere anti-Iraq war businessman Ned Lamont defeated sitting senator Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination last August but Lieberman, running as an independent, won the actual Connecticut senate election.

The documentary made the case that anti-Iraq war, anti-Lieberman bloggers had generated support for Lamont and the programme's production team followed the bloggers around giving an insight into how they work, what technology they use, who the individuals were. During the documentary one blogger made the comment that now he had got involved in covering the senate candidate race he didn't think what the media did was so tough and anyone could do it.

I am the first to admit that listening to what people say, asking them questions and then writing it up in a clear and concise form is not rocket science but the bloggers big mistake was to think that writing anything and publishing it on the internet makes you a journalist. By writing anything I mean only writing about one issue and approaching the subject with preconcpetions about what reality should be presented. For example these Connecticut Democrat party candidate race bloggers always wrote supportive reports about Lamont and always attacked Lieberman.