| No swearing please |
| Veteran designer Ed Swearingen found another reason to promote his vision of long-range small private jet travel on a recent promotional trip around Europe. Budgie News heard how his luggage, including suit, notes and essential hearing aid went astray at New York Kennedy while transferring to a commercial flight from Texas. Calls from his outraged entourage to the airline asking the classic question of whether they knew “who he was” fell on deaf ears after being transferred to a call centre in Bangalore, India. The bags finally showed up, two days behind him. |
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| Big, big single? |
| “London (AFX) – Rolls-Royce Group said it has won a contract to provide an additional two RB211-524H-T engines to European freight operator, Cargolux Airlines International to power its two additional Boeing 747-400F freighters, scheduled for delivery in 2007 and 2008.” Spotted in an AFX News report by nephew Simon Weighell, who suggests the H-T must obviously stand for High Thrust. Not half! Who needs the Megafan GE Thrust Monster when you can get a slightly tweaked Rusticus Barnoldswickus 211! |
| Oops… wrong airport! |
| The recent tale of the errant Eirjet landing at the wrong airport (Ballykelly) prompts nephew Trevor Lewis to recall the famous landing in October 1960 of a Boeing 707 at RAF Northolt, which the Pan Am crew mistook for London Heathrow. “There was even a great cartoon in the Evening News by Wren with a caption ‘that the Pan Am captain got his gasometers wrong!’ He lined up with the Ruislip one instead of the one at Brentford!” Nephew Alan Crowe also tells us that Ballykelly’s nickname of “Shackelton” comes from the fact that it was, for many years, the home of Coastal Command’s North Atlantic squadrons, and reverberated to the roar of the Avro Shackelton. He adds that the A320 “had been cleared for a visual approach to Eglington, City of Derry airport, which is about three-quarters of a mile west of Ballykelly. After a prolonged pause, the Eglington controller called: ‘Ryanair… what is your DME?’ To which he got the immediate, puzzled, response: ‘Eglington, we are on the ground!’.” And then there was the March 1989 Langford Lodge airport incident, in which it seems the unfortunate crew of “a Dan Air BAe 748 that broke cloud over Lough Neagh on short finals for runway 08 at Aldergrove [Belfast], spotted the runway immediately ahead and promptly landed. Unfortunately, the pilot had spotted, not Aldergrove, but Langford Lodge.” The approach to runway 08 at Aldergrove was just under a mile ahead. Oh dear. For a good source of wrong landings visit Jol Silversmith’s collection at www.thirdamendment.com/wrongway |
| Yuck speak (series of 1,000,000) |
| Extravehicular Activity Mobility Unit = space suit Focused-lethality munition = your name is on it |
 Read Flight from 1956 or read Uncle Roger's web log. |
Source: Flight International
