Who Flies Tony Blair?

[rjemery]

PM Tony Blair recently travelled to the USA to
meet with President Bush. He arrived at Andrews
AFB near Washington, DC, aboard a chartered BA
777.

When the PM travels abroad on such BA charters,
who does the flying? Is it a military crew or a
BA crew?

[LD Max]

One of our instructors used to fly the Queen's flight, (Queen / Royals and ministers) from RAF Northolt. Military crews.

Not sure how they do it now though... If its a BA charter, I guess it would be BA pilots, but possibly with a military escort.

[HZ123]

It is always BA tech crew but naturally senior members with at least two Captains.

[Kestrel_909]

I do believe it is a BA crew and senior crew.

Did anyone see it on BBC news on Friday morning, journalist standing infront of the BA 777 or as I think it was a 747, maybe wrong, who had flown back with the PM from America. Anyway, I think the Captain wanted to be in the shot and slowly walked down the stairs and stood beside them, and used his mobile POSER! Had to wait a few moments for his lift by the looks of it.
BTW, when the PM flies on a BA chartered plane, is its callsign still the usual Speedbird xxx or Shuttle xxx, or does it use something else?
Thanks

[G.Khan]

Are you sure it was the Captain, (the guy actually flying)? Or someone whose job it was to check out that there were enough cars to go round etc.! Not sure how it is at LHR but years ago at MAN the airport duty officer also had four big rings on his sleeve.

For security reasons I doubt if the call sign would be anything special.

[rjemery]

Kestrel,

Regarding call signs, please tell me more about
the use of Speedbird xxx or Shuttle xxx. I
presume such use is unique to BA. When did use of
Speedbird xxx begin?

Coincidentally, I am reading 'All Four Engines
Have Failed': The True and Triumphant Story of
Flight BA 009 and the 'Jakarta Incident', by
Betty Tootell, 1985, Andre Deutsch (London),
0-233-97758-9.

The above account relates the event when
BA 009, a Boeing 747, unknowingly flew through
volcanic ash in June, 1982, near Indonesia. The
Speedbird call sign was in use then.

[tunneler]

I belive the good chaps and chappetes at BA use the "shuttle" callsign on the shuttle services between london and the north etc - all others have "speedbird" callsigns - I think it has something to do with slots or summat - could be wrong though!

Hope that helps.

Tunny.

[shuttlebus]

As far as I know, all BA flights except the UK Shuttle sevices use the "Speedbird XXX" callsign format (Includes franchise partners (BA/BAW)) And the BA logo is Speedbird.... from BOAC I believe.

However, given the frequency and similarity of the flight numbers for all the UK Shuttle services (Mainly in the range 42xx to 47xx as I remember) a SHTxy format was introduced to reduce the chance of Pilot/ATC errors.

The x was a number depending on the destination (From the second number of the flight number, so Belfast used to be SHT5y)

The y was the "trip" so second flight of the day from LHR to BFS would have been SHT5C. (a, c, e, g.. from LHR and b, d, f... from BFS)

Any BA pilots like to comment ?

Regards,

Shuttlebus

P.S. I'm sure there was a question on this about 4-6 months ago.

[ETOPS]

The "Speedbird" callsign dates back to the early days of Imperial Airways/BOAC and is taken from the stylised bird which became the logo.

http://aerosite.net/logos/boac.gif

At that time the callsign of BEA was "Bealine" and only became "Speedbird" after the merger and creation of BA

[chiglet]

Now "Speedbird" is the 'Mainline' c/s:( (B737 and above) generally, altho' the odd Ba46 MAN LGW is also BA/Speedburd;)
Owt else is BRT/British to ATC altho' it [usually] is a BA ticket:confused:
Hope that this helps
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

[sickBocks]

More...

SHT2x LHR-MAN
SHT3x MAN-LHR
SHT4x LHR-BFS [DEFUNCT]
SHT5x BFS-LHR [DEFUNCT]
SHT6x LHR-GLA
SHT7x GLA-LHR
SHT8x LHR-EDI
SHT9x EDI-LHR

They start with the first departure (LHR-MAN) the 0645 so that's 2A then the next flight is the 0700 to EDI so that's 8B etc.

In addition on the domestic sectors the following are used:

BAW12x LHR-NCL
BAW13x NCL-LHR
BAW15x The defunct PLH-NQY-LHR-PLH Brymon round-trip
BAW16x LHR-JER [DEFUNCT]
BAW17x JER-LHR [DEFUNCT]
BAW18x LHR-ABZ
BAW19x ABZ-LHR

Any additional flights non-schedule usually adopt a BAW9xxx flight #/callsign.

Oh, and 'Bealine' is still used for towing BA a/c at LHR for nostalgia's sake 'Bealine Whisky Bravo' etc

I'm off to get out more. :O

[Youwererobbed]

BA has three call signs
SPEEDBIRD which is used on the vast majority of flights. SHUTTLE which is used on the "shuttle" services to MAN, GLA etc. The last one is fairly unusual but is SANTA which is used on the "santa" flights..a quick blast round the skies were the kids get to meet the Santa and some presents etc.

Many more callsigns used by franchises and wholey owned subsids around the world (British, Speedway, etc) but the above are the three used by BA mainline.

[Kestrel_909]

Hi G.Khan
Sorry for the delay, I have too many posts to follow on here I can never remember which I have posted in and which I haven't and then have to go hunting through my profile to find the ones I have.
I just guessed it was the captain because he was up the stairs, set his bag outside the a/c door, then a few moments later came down and used his mobile. Just the bag made me think that he had come from the US and suppose the 4stripes just made me assume captain.


Seems the others have beaten to the answer rjemery
Every airline has its own callsign, not all have anything to do with the airlines' but some do, Eg British Midland is Midland, but Air2000 is Jetset, and MyTravel is Kestrel.

I know about the Jakarta incident, and all the paint was burned off the aircraft and the pilot/cpt only had a small patch which he could see through to land. Bet on the next few flights they were hesitant to fly through a grey cloud lol.

[eyeinthesky]

The B747 involved in the volcanic ash incident is now owned by European and is based at Bournemouth.

[5milesbaby]

Furthering the callsign confusion bit, even though the ticket trip number says ie LHR-JER BAW 16xx, the callsign can and was different, as BA with so many more have converted to a Callsign Numbers Letters for RTf confusion purposes. The EASY way to explain is by hearing an EASY checkin, it currently starts errrrrrrr........... while they find the new variant. :p

For Blair the callsign still will be Speedbird, but the flight priority will be higher than any normal flight, therefore being exempt from all flow regulations and arrival delays. At ATC we have the appropriate priority catergory written on our lovely paper strips, but this doesn't affect/get transmitted over the RTF in any way.