Recently in Airports Category

Of course if you're familiar with this story (and who isn't) then the answer will be easy. What's wrong is the skidmarks on the taxiway. But it's still not at all clear what happened.

Interesting take on this incident and the Northwest distracted crew here, It's a sensible argument but I'm not sure I really agree - I think it's too narrow. Clearly the actual potential consequences of the NW incident on the day were not as serious as the DL landing at Atlanta, but I wonder if that's really the point. The question is how come that NW situation could have arisen, and when you've worked out how come, what other consequences could have arisen from those factors in different circumstances. Ditto the DL incident of course.

So DL may perhaps be more important than NW, but until you've worked back to the root causes you can't tell.

Let me tell you, if you think it's the presidency then you're not a Heathrow regular.

But weirdly enough it seems this actual question is going to be addressed. BAA, the little-loved operator of London's big three airports, is a finalist in the Project Management Institute's annual awards, due to be presented in Orlando tomorrow. So, it turns out, is Barack Obama's campaign team.

May the best man win. BAA press release below.

It's the annual conference of the Conservative Party in the UK - those are the people who are almost certainly going to get to run the country from next summer - and one very clear piece of news out of it seems to be that Heathrow will not get its third runway.

Various senior Conservatives have more or less said this before, but the London Standard newspaper is reporting today that it will go into the manifesto as a promise. It's not impossible to walk away from such commitments when in power but it's not easy.

Having taken the train to Kazan I fly back courtesy of Tatarstan Airlines. To my slight distress the flight is scheduled to be on a boring old Boeing 737 and not the Tupolev Tu-134 or -154 that I'd love to try. Still it turns out to be a 737-500 and I can't remember the last time I took one of those, if I actually have done. Must have, surely???

Now that's what I call FOD! In case you doubted it, a General Electric CF6 can't swallow a standard baggage container. Actually what's interesting is that the container is still at least sort-of in one piece, I wonder if the crew had time to throttle back before the impact??? Will keep the AOG desks busy for a while anyway. LA Times story here.

...I suppose in the end this is what it's all about??? Full size version here courtesy of vector1771 who's from Portland, Oregon where I rather suspect this was taken???

In the case of this incident at Stockholm Arlanda Airport the answer of all concerned is probably a resounding 'yes'. Here is one of the many interesting sentences in the report. Pix below.

When the driver of the pushback tow vehicle sat down in the forward position to start the vehicle engine and drive it away, he heard the sound of the aircraft engines get louder, and could see from the corner of his eye that the aircraft was starting to move towards him.

I've been on holiday, so this is just an aviation travelogue (avialogue?), but it's a bit offbeat, so here goes. We were in Croatia, one of the places in Europe where I still get a passport stamp, though when the Croatians negotiate their way into the EU I won't anymore. We flew into Pula Airport with you know who and mixed it with the Carelesses, Cambers, and Fishbeds.

Here at Flight I've been managing the launch of a website in Chinese aimed at China's air transport business. We publish about 10 stories a day and it's been impossible to ignore the fact that all of a sudden some of them have contained some startling statistics for the month of May.

First there were the traffic figures for Beijing International airport - passenger numbers down 2.9%. Then Air China - passengers down 10.7%, RPKs down 6.7%. China Southern turned up with flat passenger numbers and RPKs up a miserable (by Chinese standards) 1%. China Eastern followed with passenger numbers down 8.1%

Here's the first of what may become an occasional series on Unusual Attitude (you never know with us bloggers...). Feel free to contribute more.

The reason I had my dalliance with the regional business recently and flew Exeter-Brussels was because I couldn't fly from Newquay, a couple of miles from where I was staying, to Brussels. In fact you can't fly to many places from Newquay, although they're working on it with increasing success. But, as of yesterday, you can fly to Dusseldorf, for which you can thank Rosamunde Pilcher. Obviously.