My full sympathies go out to the poor bastards stranded at Heathrow and many other British airports, or forced on to coaches due to the persistent fog. It's come as a bit of a surprise to me as my assumption was that the pilot's naked eye played no role whatsoever in flying a commercial aircraft nowadays as it was all done by computer - a bit like the Docklands Light Railway or something. But it turns out that BAA are only able to run the airports at full capacity if visiability is good enough for pilots to be able to see that they're not actually going to hit another plane. Also, fog slows down aircraft taxiing, which has to be done visually. Well, I never claimed to be an aviation expert - fortunately.
For the hardbitten air traveller this has been a hell of a year, though. The clear thing that comes across from the hand luggage restrictions fiasco in the summer and now these delays due to fog is that the mass cattle-processing operation that is London air travel is such a tight-margin operation, running at so close to full capacity, that any slight hiccup throws the whole system into disarray. Moreover, the contingency plans for coping with any major disruption are at best completely ineffectual, and at worst, non-existent. Maybe that's the price we pay for being able to fly to anywhere in Europe for less than the price of a meal for two, but it makes any flight from Heathrow or any of the other airports a real gamble; you just never know when the next wave of major disruption will kick in. Forget about liquid explosives smuggled in through drinks bottles; all the terrorists need now is a dry ice machine. Or the ability to impersonate John Reid as he briefs the newspapers about yet another 'major terrorist threat'.
Anyway, none of this will affect me very much as following an unbelievably turbulent flight back from India in March, I'm off the air for the time being - figuratively speaking. I know the statistics say its very safe but the statistics don't have to sit in that bloody tin box with their insides contorting as the damn thing is buffeted about by the massed forces of nature. It feels like I'm taking my life in my hands every time I get on a plane at the moment and I just can't be doing with it. Just thinking about it now is making me feel a bit odd. Or maybe I just feel like that all the time?
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2 comments:
I think you are right about pilots not needing to use their eyes at all to fly planes - unfortunately air traffic control seem to have this thing about being able to see the planes that they are directing onto or off runways.
Seems crazy I know, but as the old saying goes "We can put a man on the moon [except that's never really happened] but we can't do f*** all else without f***ing it up."
Couldn't agree with you more on the woeful inadequacy of current contingency plans for an airport shutdown. I try where possible to use Luton and Stansted although these appear to be suffering from a less acute version of the same phenomenon. I think I may have the solution, though!: Visit www.unlimited-spurt.org
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