Be trying for years to get TLA-GRICE-INV as per flight planned route (saving 250 quid for the company) but the buggers always send me to Foyle.
Maybe they are your guardian angels - saving you from idiots who blast through between cloud layers 'at 10,000 on 1013mb'??!!
I am sure that a lot of points will come out in the AAIB report, much of it airmanship related, and almost certainly not the positive spin that Mr H has been trying to generate since his crash.
Few people are more annoying than A list celebrities who will court the media at every occasion for all the publicity and spin they can, and then winge like babies once something less flattering (and usually brutally accurate) is exposed.
But one group even more annoying are the Z list celebs who will do anything in a desperate attempt to keep their name in trashy rags, fighting to make sure the next gasp of the oxygen of publicity and 'fame' is not their last.
The only people more annoying than these Z listers are idiot attention seekers who live their lives trying to be the centre of attention and who desperately wish to be famous. They will do virtually anything to get their 5 minutes of fame. Then they get upset when the spin doesn't work, and their stupidity is exposed publicly, so they winge about how badly the press have treated them. Sadly, they seem genetically incapable of keeping a low profile, showing some humility, and keeping schtumm, compelled as they are to open their big mouths and stick their foot in it.
This roughly where Mr H enters the scene.
Given the circumstances, a brief and rather more humble statement to the media along the lines of:-
"I have had a lucky escape. Apologies and very grateful thanks to the air traffic controllers, police, fire, ambulance and over-worked and under-staffed NHS for taking up their valuable resources."
... would have come over a whole lot better, and would have won Mr H a few more friends and supporters than he has achieved with his choice of gunning for maximum publicity posing as some kind of hero.
And still I haven't seen even the first hints of him accepting any responsibility for any of his actions, not one hint of humility, not one hint of any attempt to learn from this situation of his own making.
But then we all know the difficulty of changing habits of a lifetime, and the saying about old dogs and new tricks!
I'm just off to EDI, via TALLA. It is a massive relief to know for certain that Mr H is presently grounded so there is one less risk to my passengers, crew and me on this occasion. I simply cannot tell you just how scary the though of Mr H at 10,000' in controlled airspace is.
To answer another question:
Do Composite aircraft show an erroneous height return?
Altitude returns are sent Mode C (or S) by transponders and are usually very accurate, sent as flight levels ref 1013mb.
They are not influenced by aircraft construction material in any way.