All easyjet flights grounded

[whole diary]

[Surrey 455]

East Midlands Airport is now the 10th busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow 2nd, Gatwick has dropped out of the Top 40.

From The Independent on Saturday 11th April.

A small Leicestershire airport that last year ranked only 13th in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) in passenger numbers has now joined Frankfurt, Heathrow and Paris CDG in the European top 10 for flight movements.

Figures released by Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based air-navigation authority, show that East Midlands airport joined the premier league with 99 arrivals and departures on Thursday. The figure put it ahead of key European hubs including Madrid, Rome and Munich.

East Midlands handles a significant number of cargo flights, and has seen the number of aircraft movements drop by only 54 per cent – compared with a Europe-wide average of 91 per cent.

Heathrow airport has lost its perennial place as Europe’s busiest to Frankfurt.

[TonyK]

There was a flight in the small hours of this morning that woke me up. It must have been either landing at or taking off from Bristol but I've no idea where it was going/from.

The last departure last night was Ryanair to Dublin, at 2212. That was all that was shown until the same flight tonight. there may be the occasional private flight. They usually happen before midnight, though. It wasn't Sir James so far as I can tell.

Reminds me of my return flight from a holiday in Limassol, Cyprus in July 2009. Loadings must have been a bit light because the two flights from Larnaca to Bournemouth and Gatwick that day were amalgamated into one calling at Bournemouth first then Gatwick. I remember there being quite a wait between landing and taking off again.

Checking distances, as the crow flies it's about 76 miles but the flight miles would have been longer.

There are a number of things that can affect aircraft turnaround. One is refuelling - I doubt you would do that for a short hop. The pilot would have uplifted enough for both take-offs and flights. Passenger unloading and loading is another, but presumably that would be one-way traffic at Bournemouth, with the the cases for the first drop by the door of the cargo hold, separate from the Gatwick stuff.

Another consideration that isn't usually noticed, but is very much on the mind of the pilot,  is brake cooling. They get pretty hot on landing, with 400°C not being unusual. They have to be down to 100°C to 150°C before starting to taxy depending on the type, to make sure that they work efficiently in the event of a rejected take-off. Usually, the normal 40 minute turnaround for an A320 or B737 is enough, particularly on a decent length runway like Bournemouth with a light load on a nice day, when the autobraking would have been set to low, but it does mean you can't land, chuck out the pax, and take off straight away. Airbus, and I assume others, have a temperate gauge and a countdown on the control panel to time needed to brakes being usable again, There are fans, but there are reasons why these are not often used, and they don't speed it up much in any case. And there is always the need to get a slot through all the traffic then into Gatwick - you wouldn't want to take of for a 70 nm flight and have to stack for an hour.

[Clan Line]

There is a segment in 'flying heavy metal' on Discovery with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, where they are doing training landings and takeofffs at Cardiff I think, in a 747, so no the aircraft has no priblem with short flight, unless you load up with enough fuel to cross the atlantic, and then dont, as the aicraft may break if you try and land with too much fuel.

This one perhaps        Just come across the photo below when sorting out a load of old stuff; taken at Zurich 4 years ago, forgotten that I had it.  Seems to be attracting a lot of attention - lots of "goofers" on the far side of the aircraft.

[Thatcham Crossing]

Iron Maiden have a huge global following as a band, and this crossed over into aviation geekery with Bruce's flying exploits, flying the line as a 757 pilot for Astreaus, and using one of them (adorned similarly to the 747) for previous world tours (I remember seeing it parked at Auckland when there on hols in 2009), not to mention the whole "Flying Heavy Metal" thing.

Going back a few years 747's were used for charters to Orlando from Cardiff on a regular basis, so it's more than useful for 747 ops.

The "Iron Maiden" jumbo was operated by an Icelandic operator, Air Atlanta, who are specialists at what's known as ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) leases. Prior to that, it flew for Air France for about 20 years. 

[TonyK]

That parrticular Boeing 747-428 was delivered to Air France on 31 March 2003 after rolling off the production line less than 4 weeks earlier. That makes it reasonably young for a Jumbo. It's currently in storage on lease to Saudi Airlines, but its future will be interesting to watch. Four-engined aircraft are going out of favour, being usurped by the 787 and A350 and so on.