No risk, no gain I have been a regular Flight International reader for nearly 50 years but have seldom read such a pathetic editorial as your piece about Scaled Composites and Virgin (Flight International, 5-11 October). Similarly, the report in the same issue, with phrases like "eerily evoked" and "the incidents may force major design changes" are more worthy of "Monty Orangeball". Could I suggest that in your next piece on the subject (I am writing the day after another successful SpaceShipOne flight) you try to employ such phrases as "elegant and brilliantly simple design" and "inherently safe concept" in your comments. The main issue in you editorial is about risk. Clearly in normal "civilian" terms the risk in these flights, even on a further developed and commercially viable craft, will always be "high": that is to say "high" in the same way as "adventure" sports are seen as high risk. There would be little point in doing it otherwise. Without the risk element there is no adventure. There is more than a passing resemblance between the Rutan brothers and the Wrights. Like the Wrights, they have pointed to the future with astoundingly simple innovations, wing "warping" and wing "feathering" and both have sourced their own engines when they needed them and have also shown great personal courage. The Wrights were badly treated by the press. I expect better from what used to be called "the world's first aeronautical weekly". David Munro Newbridge, Midlothian, UK
Rutan can teach NASA In Comment (Flight International, 5-11 October), you call on the US Congress to waste time setting rules to protect a few hundred very rich people from spending their money on a suborbital trip with Rutan/Virgin where the risks are obvious to a three-year-old. Instead you should be proposing they investigate how and why Rutan has succeeded where NASA and the aerospace industry has manifestly failed. He spent roughly three to five years and tens of millions of dollars while they have expended of tens of billions over 40 years and got nowhere. Rob Wallace Reading, Berkshire, UK
Stating the obvious I realise that fashions abound in journalism as well as most other walks of life, so I was not too surprised to find a "What's hot" and "What's not" sidebar in the Pilatus PC-12 flight test (Flight International, 21-27 September) although this is more suited for magazines pandering to a less-intelligent readership. What did take me aback, however, was the statement that the PC-12 has "no engine-out climb capability" positioned next to a three-view of the aircraft clearly showing a single engine. Maybe the author needed three "bad" points to match the three "good" points, but stating the obvious never worked when I was at school and I see no reason why it should today. There is only one direction in a single-engined aircraft when the engine fails. Down. Credit your readers with some intelligence. Kevin Walsh Marinette, Wisconsin, USA
Stopping points "From 30,000ft, the PC-12 could glide for 32min in the event of an engine failure" (Flight International, 21-27 September). How many minutes does it go for when the engine stops at 800ft? Andy Adams Pevensey, Sussex, UK
Axe security loopholes You reported an incident when the crew of a Norwegian-registered Dornier 228 were attacked with their own emergency escape axe on approach to Bodo airport (Flight International, 5-11 October). I feel that this incident may have warranted further attention, coming as it does in this period of supposedly heightened airport security procedures. It is common, certainly at all UK airports, that security checks will involve, at the very least, every piece of baggage (both hand and hold) being screened, as well as all passengers being subjected to increasingly intrusive personal searches, recently extending to the removal of shoes and metal belts. While I welcome these advances in security procedures, I would challenge the validity of some aspects of security, where passengers are expected (quite rightly) to surrender sharp objects, yet these same passengers are able to purchase food airside that will be served with metal cutlery. How do we legislate for eventualities such as this? Although most UK operators keep the crash axe inside the locked flightdeck door, is there not the need to at least address what appears to be this grey area? Surely the industry owes it to itself and the travelling public to tighten up what are clearly loopholes within the system? Stuart Schofield Manchester, UK
Boeing's debt? Had it not been for billions of US taxpayers' dollars, there would probably be no Boeing today, since the 707 owes much of its success to its military life as the KC-135. Thomas Skamljic Vienna, Austria
Source: Flight International
