The lighter side of Flight International.
Bicester Blenheim
The only surviving Mk 1 Bristol Blenheim is making an appearance this June as part of the Bicester Heritage Flywheel event, which is returning for the first time since 2018.
The show takes place on the site of a former station for the Second World War bomber. Its first day, 17 June, marks exactly 79 years since the last Blenheim flew out of the then RAF Bicester on active service.
Aircraft Restoration Company at Duxford airfield near Cambridge brought the aircraft, L6739, back to life over 11 years, and now owns and operates it.
Crossing the pond
On 24 February, the last BAe ATP in service with a major airline made its final revenue flight from Jonkoping to Oslo. Cargo specialist West Atlantic was the only remaining European operator of the largely unloved UK-built turboprop, but had been phasing out its fleet since 2016.
Doug Brown, however, asks if any readers “can explain how a Swedish carrier, based on the Baltic coast and within shouting distance of the North Sea” came to have a name that suggests origins on the opposite side of the pond.
“Shades of ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan, surely?”, Mr Brown suggests.
For the uninitiated, Douglas Corrigan (1907-1995) was a US aviator who acquired his moniker in 1938 when he flew to Ireland from New York despite filing a flightplan to return to Long Beach, California. He claimed heavy cloud cover had caused his navigational error.
Others claimed the experienced and skilled airman, who had worked with Charles Lindbergh on the design of the Spirit of St Louis, was determined to make a nonstop transatlantic flight after being denied permission by the authorities.
Fruit of all evil
There was very little delight on a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 that turned around some 45min into its journey to Barcelona on 5 March.
The aircraft had taken off from Istanbul but after crossing Bulgaria the twinjet’s crew opted to divert back to the departure point after an odour of unknown origin was detected in the aircraft’s cabin.
Flight TK1855 landed safely after its hour-and-a-half flight to nowhere, and underwent an inspection.
“It was determined that the aroma emitted in the cabin was caused by durian fruit in the cargo compartment,” states Turkish news agency IHA.
Durians are a tropical fruit notorious for a smell so pungent and unpleasant that they are banned on public transport in a number of Asian countries.
According to the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology – not far from Munich airport – the odour is “reminiscent of rotten onions”.
The institute published a paper three years ago revealing that a specific enzyme in the durian plant interacts with the amino acid ethionine – and this releases the chemical ethanethiol, which is responsible for the stench.
It also queried whether, since ethionine is potentially toxic, durians might pose a health risk. They could, of course, not least if you’re suddenly faced with Spain-bound passengers who weren’t expecting a premature return to Istanbul on a stinking jet.
EasyDystopia
If EasyJet’s vision, revealed in its recently published 2070 Future Travel Report – with its talk of 3D-printed food, using your heartbeat as a passport, and having in-flight entertainment beamed directly into your face – sounds like a dystopian nightmare, you can take refuge in the possibility that psychological technology might beat the budget airline to the punch.
Canadian and US researchers, in a 2019 paper, discussed the ability to “reverse engineer” memories in mice – specifically, remembering a scent they had not previously experienced.
That doesn’t sound too far from recreating all sorts of pleasant sensory memories, which will spare you from actually taking a holiday – and your friends from the terminal boredom of your beach photos.
