In the course of touring TV stations today I got talking to a well-known presenter about the forthcoming launch of British Airways transatlantic service from downtown London City Airport to New York JFK later this year. (Using Airbus A318s.)
Would he be seeing me on the inaugural flight that he'd been invited
on? Sadly no, I told him. BA has never been very enthusiastic about
taking technical press on their jollies. (Although, to be fair, they
took me on Concorde to JFK in their last desperate attempts to save
that service. I thought it was better it was stopped actually - but
that's another story.)
My TV friend mentioned that he'd spoken to a couple of BA pilots who'd expressed reservations about performing the demanding, steep approach to London City at the end of a tiring night-crossing of the Atlantic. We talked about the dangers of LCY and I pointed out that although the initial fear had been that aircraft might overrun and fall into London's docks, in fact the issue over the years has been that, in their determination not to do that, pilots have more commonly landed heavily and broken their aircraft that way instead.
Two hours later this happened.
My TV friend mentioned that he'd spoken to a couple of BA pilots who'd expressed reservations about performing the demanding, steep approach to London City at the end of a tiring night-crossing of the Atlantic. We talked about the dangers of LCY and I pointed out that although the initial fear had been that aircraft might overrun and fall into London's docks, in fact the issue over the years has been that, in their determination not to do that, pilots have more commonly landed heavily and broken their aircraft that way instead.
Two hours later this happened.
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