Newcastle_director
1st Jan 2001, 19:10
Something for people to think about:
Afew months back I was on my way back to Newcastle from Naples-Italy- on board an airtours A320 aircraft. We were delayed nearly 2 hours and worst of all, we were stuck on board the aircraft all that time!
Here are a serious of events that happened that day:
We began our push back and engines began to start and to my suprise i heard the engines shutting down a few minutes later and we then began moving forward into our parking stand.
No sooner was the Captain on the PA system to us, explaining that were going to have to wait a while because runway 24 is in use at the moment and we need runway 06 to depart because of it's downhill slope as we are too heavy to depart using runway 24, and Air Traffic thought we were using runway 24.
So we waited our 10 mins and he got back to us sayin unfortunately we've missed our slot time as our push back tug was too slow in pushing the adjacent Britannia 757 out from it's stand, and he explained we'd have to wait upto 30minutes to get a new slot time from Brussels.
30 minutes had passed and he explained we'd have to wait an hour and 10 minutes before we can begin our homeward journey to Newcastle.
Eventually we got pushed back, started take-off roll and climbed on the Teano 5A Sid taking us over Mount Vesuvious and Pompeii!
Was this delay typical of a busy summers day in Europe or was it an unusual occurance?!?
1 more thing to think about is i visited the flight deck at the top of our descent, and strangely enough we were about 30 DME to Honiley VOR routing via HON-POL-GASKO-TILNI to land at EGNT on runway 25! You will be asking your selves, "well whats unusual about that....?"
Well we departed Newcastle on runway 07, which held us back about 10 mins at Newcastle, because we were too heavy to get airborne on the active 25. Any way we took off and made a slight right turn out towards the north sea towards FAMBO which to me would seem the quickest way to Italy. Any way on our way back i was assuming we'd be arriving that way via DOGGA-SILVA-FAMBO- Newcastle but we must have gone the "long way round" and cut across France and north throught london-Birmingham and Manchester and then towards Newcastle!
Could anyone, from either side of the Radar screen, fill me in on why we went, possible the longest way back to Newcastle!?!?!?
All the best and Happy New Year!
------------------
Andy Thompson
Afew months back I was on my way back to Newcastle from Naples-Italy- on board an airtours A320 aircraft. We were delayed nearly 2 hours and worst of all, we were stuck on board the aircraft all that time!
Here are a serious of events that happened that day:
We began our push back and engines began to start and to my suprise i heard the engines shutting down a few minutes later and we then began moving forward into our parking stand.
No sooner was the Captain on the PA system to us, explaining that were going to have to wait a while because runway 24 is in use at the moment and we need runway 06 to depart because of it's downhill slope as we are too heavy to depart using runway 24, and Air Traffic thought we were using runway 24.
So we waited our 10 mins and he got back to us sayin unfortunately we've missed our slot time as our push back tug was too slow in pushing the adjacent Britannia 757 out from it's stand, and he explained we'd have to wait upto 30minutes to get a new slot time from Brussels.
30 minutes had passed and he explained we'd have to wait an hour and 10 minutes before we can begin our homeward journey to Newcastle.
Eventually we got pushed back, started take-off roll and climbed on the Teano 5A Sid taking us over Mount Vesuvious and Pompeii!
Was this delay typical of a busy summers day in Europe or was it an unusual occurance?!?
1 more thing to think about is i visited the flight deck at the top of our descent, and strangely enough we were about 30 DME to Honiley VOR routing via HON-POL-GASKO-TILNI to land at EGNT on runway 25! You will be asking your selves, "well whats unusual about that....?"
Well we departed Newcastle on runway 07, which held us back about 10 mins at Newcastle, because we were too heavy to get airborne on the active 25. Any way we took off and made a slight right turn out towards the north sea towards FAMBO which to me would seem the quickest way to Italy. Any way on our way back i was assuming we'd be arriving that way via DOGGA-SILVA-FAMBO- Newcastle but we must have gone the "long way round" and cut across France and north throught london-Birmingham and Manchester and then towards Newcastle!
Could anyone, from either side of the Radar screen, fill me in on why we went, possible the longest way back to Newcastle!?!?!?
All the best and Happy New Year!
------------------
Andy Thompson