Smooth cruise – The WizzAir experience

Editor’s note: This article dates from 2007. We are now an economic crisis later but the essence of the story is still the same. What is more, WizzAir, operating 30 aircraft, is still with us and hopefully will remain for a long time to come. WizzAir, the largest low fare – low cost airline in Central… Continue reading Smooth cruise – The WizzAir experience

The communications related aspects of runway incursions

More than two incursions a day… Few other incidents return with the grim and persistent regularity of runway incursions. A lot of effort by all concerned has resulted in a reduction of the total number of incidents but there are still, on average, more than two runway incursions in Europe per day. Clearly, there remains… Continue reading The communications related aspects of runway incursions

NOTAM goes digital

What is a NOTAM? There are a few things in aviation that have survived over the years with so little change as the NOTAM, in spite of its numerous, known shortcomings. NOTAM is a quasi-acronym for Notice to Airmen, a system of providing aeronautical information introduced well over 60 years ago. NOTAMs… we have all… Continue reading NOTAM goes digital

Will training finally meet the future?

There are places in the world where ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information System) is still the hard to understand analogue affair, suffering not only from poor voice quality but also the multitude of accents their operators will dish out for you. Of course, somebody somehow will have approved them for use, poor quality, accent and all.… Continue reading Will training finally meet the future?

Visiting an office with a view

Familiarization flight with Transavia One of the countless drawbacks of 9/11, a few of you may have realized, is that even for air traffic controllers it has become increasingly difficult to visit a cockpit of an airliner, indeed most of the airlines adopted a closed cockpit door policy. I used to take every opportunity to… Continue reading Visiting an office with a view