Straight & level: 29 August 2006

Steamin’, smokin’ B-52s
Learned and ever-vigilant nephew Alan Dron tells me the UK’s Daily Beast carried a recent story about forthcoming flight tests of a Boeing B-52 using a synthetic, coal-based fuel after the successful completion of ground runs.
Monty Orangeball notes, quite reasonably: “Given the amount of smoke a B-52 makes, I’d always assumed the damn things ran on coal anyway. By the way, just how many stokers will be required for an average 10h mission?”

All change at Heathrow?
Nephew Colin Petty says his friend is soon flying from San Francisco to London Heathrow on a United Airlines flight. “Wanting to double check which terminal I need to meet him at, I logged on to heathrow-airport-guide.co.uk, which bills itself as providing: ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about the world’s busiest international airport.’
“Here’s what I learned from the website:
1: United Airlines doesn’t fly to or from Heathrow.
2: There are no flights to or from San Francisco from Heathrow.
3: Concorde flies from Terminal 4.”
Not quite “everything” then, says Colin.

Quote of the week
“The FAA continues to work with the National Transportation Safety Board, GE, and American Airlines to determine the root cause of the CF6-80 disk problem.”
(From US Federal Aviation Administration’s statement on engine disk problems that appear to be lurking where the...er...roots of the blades are found.)

Yuck speak (series of 1,000,000)
Mideastgulfjet Airways’ “guest recognition system” = air miles

Glass houses and stones
What’s this your uncle hears? Apparently at the recent Hampshire bring n’ buy spectacular a certain well-known salesman from Airbrush claimed the new windows on the A350 would be the widest ever offered on an airliner.
Surely nothing will ever surpass the well-known, greenhouse-like oval beauties used on the old aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh Vickers Viscount and, come to think of it, Vanguard?!

Brian Strain
Nephew Ken Keep writes about the “Brain strain” item in Budgie News 27 June–3 July. “I have observed what might be thought of as a rule of thumb (or perhaps even a law of nature) in construction work and software development projects. The first 50% of a project takes 90% of the time allocated for its completion. The second half of the project takes the other 90%. I am happy to read that aircraft manufacturers are so much more efficient.”
I hope you understood that. Now, get back to work Brian!

Read Flight from 1956 or read Uncle Roger's web log.