Every time the damned Vulcan XH558 people contact me for support I promise myself this is the last time I do it. At least I had the honesty early on to voice my doubts. And every time I end up caving in.

This time I was absolutely braced to say 'no'. Fingers poised over the 'n' key. And then I watched their irritatingly good movie, and even then I was ready to stand up to them. And then I read the comments on the movie and something about the nasty little anonymous sods lurking there got to me, so here I am again urging you to at least take a look at it. Worth it just for the movie, up to you if you want to contribute.

Oh yes, and it gives me an opportunity to post an entirely gratuitous link to what is by some measure my favourite ever Unusual Attitude post. It being that time of year and all.

Finally got my first visit to Airbus's Getafe facility a few miles south of Madrid today and, even though obviously I'm currently biased towards my primary employer, it's hard not to be impressed by the ultra-leading-edge composites and other manufacturing technology there.

Obviously the pride of Getafe right now is the magnificent beast shown below refuelling an itsy-bitsy Boeing E-3F AWACS. In the refuelling community, as I've been learning, the very occasional hairy things that happen usually involve tanking to large aircraft rather than to fighters. So topping up the AWACS, with its dorsal radome, has given everyone a lot of satisfaction. Particularly as it so happened that when the loaned AWACS turned up at the rendezvous it did in fact need refuelling for real so the first 'trial' was actually done in anger.

Courtesy of my former colleague David Kaminski-Morrow, here are pictures showing that Qatari C-17 that bounced through Sevilla and duly turned up in the nightmare that is Haiti. Countries like Qatar are very keen to be seen playing their role in third-world relief in the years ahead - a key market for military airlifters. Pix from Sky TV News I think.

So driving into work on this sunny Seville / Sevilla morning with not many cares in the world, I have one of those "what the heck is that doing there" moments.

In fact I first have a "what the heck is that" moment. But there´s no doubt about it - tucked in with the usual couple of 737s, TNT 146, bizjets and light-singles there is unquestionably a Boeing C-17. Which in the actual home of the mighty A400M is not wholly expected.

And not just any old C-17 either.

Apologies for the lousy pic, but I only had my Blackberry and was getting very funny looks from the airport police on whome I did not fancy trying out my Spanish. But here it is.

 In fact the aircraft in question is this one. And I haven´t been able to find out what it´s doing here. Does anyone out there know?

So, unexpectedly early in the market wars to come, the two contenders meet. Not for the last time you can be sure.

Here´s our own Sevillan candidate this week at the EADS media briefing. It´s MSN2 which will fly in March. MSN1 is airborne on its sixth flight right at this moment.

Addison Schonland over at IAG has created a nice podcast of Airbus Chief Test Pilot Military Ed Strongman discussing what it's like to fly the A400M.

Boeing's coverage of its own 787 Dreamliner first and second flight has been so weirdly non-intuitive that I haven't really worked out how you're supposed to follow it, even though I'd love to. Anyway the pictures below are from the Boeing-owned Future of Flight enterprise via Seattle PI - or something.

Courtesy of my former colleague Mary Kirby, comes this overview of what the TSA gets up to in order to solve the mystery of how come the document that they sent to a few hundred people got leaked. You really wonder if they inhabit the same planet as the rest of us. And if they really have any idea of what they are actually employed to do. I don't know Chris Elliot but I like him already for his nicely crafted account of his visit from the TSA goons. 

That's the record of Al Qaeda so far and we should all be taking a rare piece of comfort from the attempted attack on Northwest 253 at Detroit yesterday.

The fact is that in eight years we have moved from Al Qaeda successfully launching an attack of considerable complexity conducted in the heart of the USA with massive effect, to their being reduced to a flaky one-man attack originating in the Third World and ending in fiasco.

This is a symptom of success on our part. Only partial success - because the question remains as to how what seems to have been a known person of interest was travelling without obstruction - but success nevertheless.

And US Congressman Peter King, who is quoted all over the place as calling this attack "the real deal" is way wrong. Actually this does now appear to be the 'real deal' and it's not very frightening - but it's not the real deal in the sense he means.

You can expect quite a lot of nonsense to be 'revealed' by the US authorities about the perpetrator Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the US judicial system clearly relies quite heavily on talking up the supposed threat posed by those facing trial. But step back and make your own judgement. We're winning.

Landing at London Stansted in the small hours of this morning on a Ryanair Boeing 737, I was almost tempted to join in the smattering of applause from the rear of the cabin. (Almost but not quite - I do have some dignity). I could barely see the runway edges  in the fog, and what I could see was large amounts of snow. Impressive stuff, and our flight was only one of umpteen still turning up. I trust Michael O'Leary's contemptuous attitude towards his staff is just for show and in reality he appreciates what they're achieving out there.

But then I saw this video below of an incident at Glasgow Prestwick this morning, and read this post here and started to wonder. (I'm still impressed though - my subsequent drive home through the ice and fog was horrible.) This is worth a read too if you're interested in the whole subject.

When I was hired for this Airbus A400M communications contract, I was told early on "it'll be good if you can liaise closely with the test pilot - Ed Strongman (seen left discussing the flight with his British customers)  - very nice chap, you'll like him". What I quietly thought was "Oh Lord...". Here's the story.