Back in February 2011 I reported in this Blog on a particularly silly state of affairs. Pilots and controllers had got used to a simple rule where ‘each clearance replaces the old’. This means that in a clearance, such as ‘cleared FL 150, 200 or below 20 miles before X’, the constraint ‘below 20 miles… Continue reading The Great SID/STAR Phraseology Fiasco (part 2)
Tag: SID
The Great SID/STAR Phraseology Fiasco
Most of us find the workings of ICAO pretty strange. The constant repetition of States’ sovereignty, with its assumption that they actually know what they are talking about, is quaint, rather than obviously dangerous. The glacial speed of progress, with timescales measured in years for quite minor textual changes, can be exasperating, but nothing is… Continue reading The Great SID/STAR Phraseology Fiasco
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
Wake turbulence gone with the wind – the CREDOS project
The problem of vortices There are two kinds of dangerous phenomena behind large aircraft. Jet wash and wingtip vortices. These are the most important components of what is commonly referred to as “wake turbulence”. The intensity of this turbulence depends on a number of factors, among them the mass of the aircraft concerned. Jet-wash is… Continue reading Wake turbulence gone with the wind – the CREDOS project
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
A short left turn
The arrival of Lufthansa’s shiny new Boeing 727 in Budapest was an event in itself. The flight from Frankfurt was almost always on time, the 727 looking like it had come from Boeing’s delivery centre the day before… We learnt early that she could climb and descend like no other jet serving Budapest and as… Continue reading A short left turn