Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

DGR I'd also like to know who decides if they "can" ramp it up. Presumably the pilot is breathing the same recirculated air? He may well decide to pull out all of the stops if so, but perhaps they separate them off in case of a gas attack and therefore, why would he care?

Pedant my mother's voice : fewer passengers (she could never ignore it and neither can I ) Memories of her complaining to M&S people about the "10 items or less" sign

Apologies for genderising pilot there - of course there are many female pilots too.

But I'm with DGR and Louise () - at the moment, the last place I would want to be/go through is a plane/airport

Heaven knows when I'll get to Australia (which was supposed to be in May, one last big family holiday in future ds will pay for himself ), SA or NZ to visit family and friends

@JeSuisPoulet

DGR I'd also like to know who decides if they "can" ramp it up. Presumably the pilot is breathing the same recirculated air? He may well decide to pull out all of the stops if so, but perhaps they separate them off in case of a gas attack and therefore, why would he care?

Not sure if you are one of the regular Private Eye readers here, but they have been carrying stories for years of pilots (certainly with BA) who have repeated reported some sort of oily fumes that have entered the cockpit and made them ill. BAs stance being "nothing to see here, move on".

As we know with Boeing, the regimes that are supposed to protect passenger safety (FAA) have been corrupted to now protect the aircraft manufacturers (and given the current transatlantic jetstream it would be odd if the CAA weren't following).

In terms of ramping up the aircon (so to speak) I imagine it can be done, but it will cost fuel. Which is a double whammy as you will then need more fuel to carry that fuel. For less passengers.

I really would be looking to quietly offload my stock in airlines that have made long-haul their business right now. And the ancillary industries that support them.

Heaven knows when I'll get to Australia

You know those floating cities of cruise liners ?

(of course, being longer at sea for weeks with thousands of people may be just as bad as a few hours with hundreds ...)

In terms of ramping up the aircon (so to speak) I imagine it can be done, but it will cost fuel.

Back in the day "Pack flow" used to be under the control of the Flight Engineer.

Some (non Flight Engineer) aircraft used to have a "high flow" button that could be selected by the pilots ( e.g. some of the 747s)

These days increasingly the air conditioning schedule fully automated and there's certainly no manual "ramping up" option on some airliners I'm acquainted with.

You know those floating cities of cruise liners

My idea of hell . I'll wait and save up until we can fly again at great expense .

These days increasingly the air conditioning schedule fully automated and there's certainly no manual "ramping up" option on some airliners I'm acquainted with.

It's entirely possible that subsequent refits/tweaks have factored in the smoking ban, and deliberately downrated the aircon equipment. After all why fit (and carry the weight) for the "1000XL" model, when you can now get away with the "500L" model at half the price, weight and running costs ?

Of course if national regulators decide to mandate a higher rate of exchange, then a lot of planes may need a very expensive upgrade.

I leave it to the reader to trust whether in such instances national regulators would work to protect the travelling public, or the airline profits. (Hint: They've already done the latter with the 737 Max ...)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Flight_testing_and_certification

^During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product.[49][54] It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo, which hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model.[55]
Introduction^

(contd)

With an EU-liberated CAA doubtless wagging it's tail behind the FAA and it's remit "to promote the US aviation industry" ...

@prettybird

You know those floating cities of cruise liners

My idea of hell . I'll wait and save up until we can fly again at great expense .

That may be a long way off. How many people ever flew Concorde ?

I used to work in the automotive industry

In the USA, car manufacturers can do their own certifications.
They can have as many attempts as they like, tweaking one thing after another until a car goes through

In Germany, we developed vehicles with a large safety margin, because if we ever failed legal cert, it was 6 months before we would be allowed another attempt - because it was assumed / required that the car would need further development

Also, throughout the years that the vehicle was in production, the state regulation bods could march into a plant and haul away any car they picked,
for testing that it still passed requirements (not updated regs, just the ones it was originally designed to fulfill)

In the USA, car manufacturers can do their own certifications.

I imagine food producers too ...

It's entirely possible that subsequent refits/tweaks have factored in the smoking ban, and deliberately downrated the aircon equipment.

I'm not sure it's accurate to say are downrated...

The modern systems on the larger airliners tend to be able to have to cater with the demand generated by more passengers and possibly operate routinely for longer at higher differential pressures than was seen "back in the day"..

I would agree they certainly work subtly differently from an operating POV.. the smoking ban may have allowed that but the need for reduced fuel burn/reduced emissions has been the driver.

Of course, in any country, a manufacturer of any commodity can just decide to cheat ....
A lot depends on firms being honest, or at least fearful of the consequences if found out

btw, the super-nationalist AfD have gone all out defending VW & co
and supporting profiteering polluters of all kinds, over people

Sorry to hear of the aborted family travel plans prettybird similar for lots of people I’m sure. I heard some chap representing Heathrow Airport on the news yesterday and his outlook just seemed so unrealistic to me. Last time I looked into taking a long haul flight it seemed quite expensive but in terms of miles travelled it probably wasn’t. In future I expect it will be eye watering. Is that Max back flying yet DGR?

Is that Max back flying yet DGR?

it may never fly again. Boeing tried to pull a fast one by redesigning the planes engines and remounting them, only to discover to their dismay that pilots certified to fly the base 737 were unable to handle the new configuration.

At that point, it effectively becomes a new plane and needs full certification and pilot re-skilling. Which are expensive, time consuming, and (most importantly) profit sapping.

So they got their bright ideas department to come up with a patch to the software systems that knew all about the reconfigured engines, and translated the pilots directions into a viable flight parameter. Thus crucially avoiding the need to retrain pilots in the "new" aircraft.

Only no one told the pilots. Or so the current findings (from the piles of corpses) seem to suggest. In the 737 Max crashes (so far) it seems the pilots were trying to fight against the extra corrections the software was making as they were unaware of the need for them. So they cut to manual and pretty much sealed the fate of the plane.

That's my TL;DR understanding as a software bod. I'm happy to say that I know less about the intricacies of aeroplane design than Dominic Raab does Calais. But it works as a broad-brush picture.

Remember if the UK government had it's way, you'd still not be allowed to know about Thalidomide.

I'm just musing on the irony of the UK cutting itself off from Europe with Brexit only to be faced with a pandemic where we are in the relatively unique situation that as an island (and a small one at that) with high cases of COVID we now cannot even literally get out of the country without risking death more than most other nations on the planet. Huh.

I assume you all read that Bozo is now advertising for a spokesperson (100kpa). Pity the bugger who has to do everything Cummings says just because Bozo can't keep up and is probably still suffering from COVID but admitting that would make him look weak Besides, I thought the whole point of Bozo as the puppet was that Cummings didn't have the momentum and Bozo did.

notimagain
The cabin air is constantly being recirulated and filtered
but at 36,000 feet they are NOT sucking in fresh air from outside the plane every few minutes

if nothing else because there is not much air out there to suck in ....

@JeSuisPoulet

I'm just musing on the irony of the UK cutting itself off from Europe with Brexit only to be faced with a pandemic where we are in the relatively unique situation that as an island (and a small one at that) with high cases of COVID we now cannot even literally get out of the country without risking death more than most other nations on the planet. Huh.

I assume you all read that Bozo is now advertising for a spokesperson (100kpa). Pity the bugger who has to do everything Cummings says just because Bozo can't keep up and is probably still suffering from COVID but admitting that would make him look weak Besides, I thought the whole point of Bozo as the puppet was that Cummings didn't have the momentum and Bozo did.

I wonder if we are going to enter a further twist on reality, whereby all of Europe has contained Covid with impressively low rates of transmission, but the UK government is still insisting it's "coming from Europe" as our rates rise (again) ?

With - apparently - most of the public falling for it ?

Meanwhile, call to "delay" 2020 US Presidential Election

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53597975

And sleazeball friend to the PM Charlie "Naughty Tory" Elphicke has been found guilty on both counts.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-53515005

That’s certainly the message atm DRG
Alongside ‘Look at how good we are whereas the EU is dangerous’ narrative

PMK

I thought we already did that DGR, when we let our public go abroad to countries with lower rates of infection

Oh Trump. I'd say "has he read the Constitution?!" but we all know tge answer to that.

How well will this "I only lost because of fraud" defence go? Well enough to stay in the Office? Sounds like there will be civil unrest in the US this winter.