Straight & level: 6 June 2006

Bombs away

(Overheard in Budgie newsroom)
Rex Stocks: “We have many interesting things in this week’s edition, but
I particularly like the A319 with bomb bay doors for India.”
Wasteofspace: “Don’t you know they aren’t called bomb bays anymore?”
Stocks: “Since when?”
Wasteofspace: “Since the Indian government decreed that the city is called Mumbai.”

Meanwhile in India

(From Radhakrishna Rao, Bangalore)

“Indian President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, who also happens to be the supreme commander of the Indian defence forces, has been found fit to fly Su-30MKI combat aircraft in service with the Indian air force after preliminary tests carried out by a team of aviation medical experts. The 74-year-old Kalam, the architect of India’s civilian space vehicle development programme, had some while ago expressed his desire to fly in a Sukhoi combat aircraft.”
Your uncle wants to know:
a) Is this a record age for such a flight?
b) Can he be next?

Plus ca change?

Defence watchdog Stewart Sidewinder remarks on the continuing pattern of military history with the recent news that one of the British Army’s AH-64 Apaches had been in action for the first time in Afghanistan. “It was used to take out a French vehicle that could not be recovered and could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Taliban. Plus ca change, the British Army has followed its long held tradition of using its new weapon for the first time against French materiel!”

Caught red-handled

Remember the story (S&L 9-15 May) about Bent Jockstrap and the air-openable door for the Bombarider Dash Turbomonster, which opens from the inside? Well maybe not…but one certainly does. Step forward nephew Joar Gronlund who says: “So you caught on to our dastardly plan and gave the game away. We were going to charge the Swedish coast guard extra for that ‘inside’ feature!”
A thousand pardons Joar.

Burning money

Spotted on ATI by steely-eyed A H Hawker, who thinks this might explain why the major US carriers are in trouble.

“‘The airplane exists only on paper, but we are scheduled to take delivery of the first in the 2010 timeframe,’ says [US Airways president and chief executive Doug] Parker, noting that the aircraft ‘will likely replace the A330s and 767s and it’ll do so very economically because the fuel burn alone is some 20% higher’”.