FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1978
1978 - 0227.PDF
FLIGHT International, II February 1978 Letters British Airways: angels . . . SIR—1977 will certainly go down in British civil aviation history as Laker's year. Unfortunately, when a society produces a new deity, it feels bound to discover a devil as well, and British Airways seems to have been selected to fill this spot. The recent letters from Messrs Rodwell and Dow are the latest expressions of this ten dency. Most of the complaints made in the letters can only be dealt with by a management given precise details, but does Mr Dow realise that he has made a very serious accusation? For a cabin crew to disembark, leaving the pas sengers aboard, is a crime. If Mr Dow had given the date of this flight, 15 easily identified people would have been publicly accused of breaking the law. There can be no doubt that Mr Dow was mistaken. When a 747 arrives at Heathrow the senior cabin staff member must be at the first door opened. The senior member from ministering First and Economy classes will be there to arrange for special passenger needs: medical, aged, unaccompanied minors. As each 747 door has three access routes, three crew members are needed to hold back the ever- eager passengers. It can thus be seen that a last- minute change of exit door would be bound to lead to a scramble by at least six crew members. Other crew members leave with the passengers— carrying babies and bags, helping the disabled and aged, and so on—and have to return for their own bags. By law the cabin crew cannot leave the aircraft until Customs have sealed the duty-free bars. British Airways do not need me to defend their worldwide reputation for friendliness and service, but I think that it should be made clear in Flight that Mr Dow must be in error. Tylers, CAPT FHED INSOLE Kippington Road, Sevenoaks, Kent or contemptuous devils? SIR—I recognised that both the British Midland and British Airways replies to my Troubleshooter letter on January 7 were masterly examples of their genre: evasive blah-blah which blatantly ignored the specific points I raised. It was nonetheless gratifying to see in Letters for January 28 that the airlines' insouciant dismissal of detailed complaints gets up other readers' nostrils, too. In particular, it was interesting to hear from Andrew Dow that he too has experienced what I described as British Airways' endemic contempt and rudeness to passengers. All the blah-blah in the world can't disguise the fact that it exists. When is some thing going to be done about the pre vailing ethos inside BA? When are their cabin staff and ground passenger handlers going to be taken by their collective neck, shaken hard and told that we the passengers make their em ployment possible? If they can't stand passengers, then they should get out of the travel trade. 63 Sandown Road, BOB RODWELL Belfast BR5 6GU Correspondence for these pages should be addressed to the Editor, Flight International, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LU, and marked "For Publication." Letters should preferably be no more than 300 words long. We reserve the right to edit all correspondence. SIR—Troubleshooter can only do the public a favour by continuing to high light British Airways' attitude towards its passengers. It appears that there is a policy of levelling the service down to the standard of the European Division, though not to the level of internal flights. The "Shovel services" are unbelievably bad, especially when compared with any United States' shuttle. Further, on flight BZ728 to Aber deen on January 24 I heard two British Airways captains making it very clear to any farepaying pas sengers within earshot that British Airways crews object strenuously to Freddie Laker being permitted to operate Skytrain. They felt that this had forced British Airways to offer cheap standby fares, reducing the number of seats available for staff concessions. For whose benefit is British Airways operated? Could attitudes like this have some thing to do with the fact that in Sep tember 1977 nine North Atlantic air lines increased their revenue passen ger totals, twelve carriers showed a reduction, and of these only TAP, Olympic and Finnair lost more busi ness than British Airways? 39 Cheyne Walk, w. B. PETERS Chelsea, London [In fairness to British Airways, the air line's management is aware of its staff problems and has started a Quality and Reliability Plan (Quarp) in an effort to put things right—Ed.] 379 Helicopter noise: let battle commence SIR—It is very pleasing to note that the helicopter industry is getting as sensitive to noise criticism as the fixed-wing sector. Mr Moxam's letter in Flight for January 28 demonstrates this. In criticising the "vociferous minority," however, he rather missed the point. Just because there are times when something else generates more noise than helicopters, this does not mean that helicopter noise levels are acceptable. They are not. There are times when even the noise from the loudest type of fixed-wing aircraft is drowned by a passing motor bike, but this is no reason to argue that jet aircraft noise is acceptable and even less for criticising those who insist that something be done about it. It is unfortunate that Westland Helicopters and the Noise Advisory Council were not taking readings along the proposed British Airports Authority Heathrow - Gatwick heli copter link, which will overfly parts of the lovely Surrey countryside at about 2,000ft. I do not think they would have had much difficulty in tak ing readings. The real problems will arise when the service starts. Its pro tagonists will then have to convince the people over whom this half-hourly service flies for sixteen hours per day, seven days a week, that it is provid ing maximum benefit to the com munity and that they are wrong to place too much emphasis on noise. DOUGLAS MORRIS Gatwick Area (Chairman) Conservation Campaign, 78 Balcombe Road, Horley, Surrey Searching high and low for safety SIR—Your January 14 editorial deals with the extreme edges of the prob ability envelope when talking about two of the worst airline disasters, which occurred respectively on the ground and on an airway at about 35,000ft. While these locations may be respectively the lower and the upper physical extremes of the probability envelope, they should also be re garded as two areas of the highest accident risk. All fixed-wing flights start and end on the runway. A blunder or mis understanding often permits no escape to an aircraft that is committed to a landing or take-off, and there is much evidence that such errors are far from rare. Largely by good for tune, they have resulted in few serious accidents, but when they do occur the consequences may be catas trophic. We should therefore be con sidering more positive means of pre venting them than the radio-telephony techniques that are currently applied. Such improvements might well in clude standard visual signals to con firm transmissions, and simple detec-
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
