Been travelling which included taking Jerry keighley's dad to lunch in Swalesdale where his family had built a house in the 30s. Bill had been shot down on a suicide mission in 1940 and spent the war in Stalag Luft Drei and participated in the death march. His son was P2 in papa Inida.
If Hamble boy cares to read my blog - trustthepilot.blog.com - he will understand that he is 100% wrong re research.
The accident period I refer to was Novemeber 1971 until I joined the VC-10 which was 1977.
Vanguard known corrosion ignored. all dead.
Papa india.
What became X-ray mike - training Nicosia.
707 at Prestwick - training!
707 Heraklion - written off on landing but flown back to Gatwick with pax without engineering clearance.
T3 mid air - atc but some criticism of crew lookout.
Viscount on air test flew into cloud with hard centre.
1E at Bilbao - hit puddle.
Not exactly in chronological order.
And a steward who fell to his death from incorrectly installed Airstairs in Rome. (FR aren't whiter than driven snow in this respect).
There were so many other near disasters - many I haven't written about but one was when the crew apparently went the wrong side of the checker board and nearly took out downtown HKG.
Agree with Aileron drag re the huge difference in changing from BEA to BOAC - I was nearly chopped.
Cunningham stated that the Trident was designed, tested and certified to carry out a standard take off climb to an acceleration altitude. A continuous acceleration at this altitude and flap retraction at requisite speeds in one go.
This was carried out at climb power.
It was also Davies recommended procedure in Handling the big jets. He gave evidence but I didn't read the file and there is no mention of it in the report.
I flew six different airliners for three companies - about another six variants and no one bar BEA did such a foolish noise abatement.
Throttle back sometimes at 500ft, set a dangerously low amount of power, whip up the flaps and fly around V2+10 on the backside of the drag curve.
Whilst we had some fantastically skilled pilots in BEA there was what we called a significant "pony express" mentality - get the mail through whatever.
It didn't matter what the book says or airmanship - my job is to get the pax to X even if I don't take prisoners.
We called it "cowboys" although the modern term is apparently "cavalier" so I suppose that excludes the circumcised amongst us. (and Les on the grounds of size). - private joke to another pruner.
Safe flying.