Thank You Bonnie Lass. The main threads associated with this tragedy are very busy. Anyone who wants to read them should do so but comments need to be very few and far between.

This is very moving...and beautifully respectful by all involved.....the ATC recording for their arrival and airport fire service reception

To the Airmen Who Did Not Return
Above the fields, the clouds still drift,
white sails on a windless sea of blue;
yet somewhere higher, beyond our sight,
your wings have found a truer sky.
Engines once roared like iron hearts,
beating against the dark and the cold;
now silence holds the shape of your flight,
traced in the memory of contrails fading.
We walk the runways where grass has grown,
touch rusted rails, read names in stone;
each letter a spark, each date a wound,
each story a lantern we keep alight.
The wind still carries the scent of fuel,
the echo of orders, the laughter before dawn;
and in that wind, we hear you—
not gone, but circling home forever.

RIP Antoine and Mackenzie

There are various news media reports also of people lining the streets for these two young men on their final journeys, including this one.....it should be noted that both young men were aboard the aircraft in this clip, they were repatirated to different airports aboard the same aircraft, this is not made clear in the clip

In a list of suggested links on my desktop PC today, I was amused to se this headline:
Turns out to be Condé Nast Traveller. Which was not a surprise! Do I tell them that this has ALWAYS been a status symbol ...?

I guess it's one of their standard articles they recycle every few years for their advertisers. This one is linked to social media, which is another reliable source.

Surely when you pass through Thiefrow you want to have your luggage look at cheap as possible as if there's nothing in there worth stealing?

The only baggage I've ever had stolen was a globe-trotter. Fortunately it and the contents were insured. I still had to go through the hassle of going to a Garda station and making a statement.

The last time I bought luggage was during the pandemic when luggage was really cheap (no-one was travelling) and what I bought then will probably see me out.

I have a truly hideous suitcase these days - it screams LO-Rent. Recently we had luggage not make a very tight connection. When I showed the Agent a picture of the case when he asked for a desciription he said - "that's one we'll have no trouble finding - it looks awful".

I 've often thought of finding one of those E Asian red & white sack type bags - but I feel I'd be a target for customs trying to pass myself off as the owner of one of them.

I did draw attention when I bought my first suitcase with wheels and used it through UK trains and LHR in the summer of 1975! I have no idea what the brand was.

For many years I bought Delsey until they became too expensive. Then I bought Samsonite, of which one mid-size case remains as airport staff proved themselves ever more capable of destruction. I now buy a no-name brand, soft sided, in a discount sale. As long as it is the right size - everything now is a spinner - and I use it until the airports break a wheel. They cost around
£80/90 and last 4 or 5 years. Bargain. I am currently looking to replace the current one. I use an old fashioned coloured strap and a swing tag that is unique.

I agree Asturias56 about the red and white sacks, you also see them across Africa.

I have a choice of suitcases.....so-called normal / plain (a black one (soft side), a silver one (hard side), a metallic wine one (hard side) ), then I have a not so normal, in your face, screams at you one that I use when flying - mainly so that it stands out on the baggage carousel - not found another quite like it on any of my travels, it has stripes all over it in various shades of ivory, burgundy, blue and purple hard sided and, along with the dayglo pink and orange straps, anyone thinking or trying to nick it would be seen from several miles away.

I used to have a plain beige one, but that died in Madrid. It had been left behind by Spanish baggage handlers on the way home from Buenos Aires. When it finally arrived home via British Midland and a taxi some days after I had got home it looked like it had been the victim of a B747 hit and run accident, it was totally crushed, in pieces and with an enormous tyre mark across it. Neither the case (which was a hard shell) or the contents survived, I gathered all the bits and binned the lot.

Which begs the question.....which is better.....hard or soft?

I find that soft sided suitcases offer no structural rigidity unless stuffed to capacity. Therefore my preferred option is hard sided.

Same here. You choose how your goods withstand the shocks of being transported, with soft-sided the baggage handlers do,

I travel light. Same bag for everything, but straps to reduce the size for aeroplane if necessary. Shoulder straps and a handle. Max size is 40 litres and about 25 strapped down. Works really well on trains and like a rucksack for walking. It weighs about 6kg full, maybe 8 at 40l. It's not quite big enough for heavy winter clothes, so I have to wear the outer gear. I have a little waist pouch for phone and documents. You don't need more unless you are taking very elegant evening wear. I use launderettes.

Yes, the soft sides can get trashed but having two hard side (both a Delsey and a Samsonite) trashed - not so keen to spend that kind of money again! The only time that I was able to get compensation was when they returned the case and agreed that it was broken. But that was softsided and is still in use. :rolleyes:

Technology has probably moved on, but I do recall having a soft sided suitcase many years ago, that was unloaded during a torrential downpour in some long forgotten airport. I do, however, still recall soending two days trying to dry out the contents of said suitcase !

I'm intrigued what pax carry in suitcases that can get trashed?
It seems I've been lucky as apart from a wheel disappearing and the occasional wet suitcase, I've never permanently lost one or had one trashed in getting on for 60 years of very frequent travelling.

I have two soft-sided cases, but they have a wire mesh embedded in the material. Best cases I have ever had, and undamaged after several years.

Soft case for carry one, hard shell for checked. Samsonite has been my go to for a long time. 20+ years of solid travelling. Yes, the hard shells are a tad heavier but they don't wet through in the rain. :)
I think if the bag falls off the trolley enroute to/from the aircraft, that's when the damage can really happen.
I put AirTags in them so I can see where it is. (within reason).

My beige Travelpro hard sided case had just completed a 2 week long Christmas / New Year cruise from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires with me. The contents were the usual for a 2 week holiday plus the proverbial "posh frocks" etc. The initial flight from EZE to MAD with Iberia was late arriving in MAD which meant the transfer to the Iberia MAD - LHR flight was much tighter than it should have been (should have been a 3 hour gap, ended up being just over 1 hour). Somewhere tween getting the suitcase off the EZE flight and supposedly boarding the LHR flight the suitcase was brutally run over by something very heavy that had tyres of at least 60cm wide. It did not make the flight to LHR. The remains of the suitcase and contents were bagged, tagged and sent directly to MAN 3 days after I had flown from LHR to MAN with British Midland. I had received a "sorry but your suitcase is on an extended holiday" notice just before boarding the LHR to MAN flight. The bagged and tagged remains arrived home 4 days after their hit and run accident in MAD courtesy of British Midland and a taxi. The bag of suitcase bits had a big label on it "British Midland apologise for the late arrival of your suitcase"....it wasn't British Midland's fault at all, it was someone at MAD who ran it over. (Out of curiosity I reassembled the suitcase and there was a tyre mark across it of at least 60cm width so whatever attacked the suitcase was very large and very heavy).

I have gone through a few makes over the years from Delsey, Samsonite , Tumi, Briggs & Riley.

Just replaced last with Green B&R bags balletic nylon pair affectionately known as the Luggage and Trunkee from Terry Pratchet and so far have not had any issues and quite distinctive on the carousel.

Icarus 1

When there was a Heathrow Terminal 1 with a domestic carousel landside, I was waiting with a colleague from Edinburgh when there emerged onto the carousel a baggage handle. Then a piece of suitcase (soft-sided). Then a pair of knickers. Then we were joined by an FA who watched with detachment as various other items appeared on the carousel. She had a fit of the giggles as the knickers came around. The poor girl whose personal items were on display must have been mortified.

Hard-sided suitcases for me.

Hmmm - I was once collecting luggage in Berlin from a BA flight - three v large hard sided, aluminium cases came along, clearly containing some sort of technical kit. The guy next to me picked off #1 & #2 which were heavy but solid.

When he picked up #3 it was heavy alright but emitted a sort of jangling noise you get when there are a million peices of glass and metal in a jar.

He did NOT look happy

My wife and I both have Delsey hard shell cases. They have seen much traveling over the years and are still serviceable if a little scraped etc. Bought almost 35 years ago on the recommendation of an airline pilot friend.

My first Delsey hard sheel was brilliant, it had two wheels - as was standard before the 'spinner'. Later I replaced it with the same model that was lighter and an airport trashed it. Then I bought Samsonite hard shell. After a few years that suffered the same fate. So I went over to cheap and cheerful.

In television world, we used to use bespoke aluminium flight cases for equipment, but nowadays, we mostly use something called Peli-cases. These are very tough hard cases made from nylon, or ABS or similar plastic. They are not cheap, but I might invest in one as my suitcase one day.

But apart from broadcasting gear, I would never trust anything delicate to airport baggage handlers. Any case they handle might miss the conveyor belt when exiting the aircraft hold, and will drop about 8' onto concrete, (from an A320). I occasionally saw it happen during my walk-arounds and was once physically assaulted by a baggage handler when I stopped the belt and asked him what the hell he was doing after he had dropped about 4 cases in this way.

So, always pack assuming that your case might fall 8' onto concrete, or off the baggage truck.

When I used to be the tame physicist accompanying bits of satellite from the US or Europe to Baikonur, as able to speak the language at both ends, there used to be endless discussions as to whether to encapsulate a printed circuit or not. Encapsulating adds grammes and the weight budget of a satellite is carefully calculated to the last gramme. Satellites are a whole new world of technology, with radiation-hardened components, thermal budgets worked out to the last Joule, and mechanical engineers putting in a lot of skull sweat into the lightest mechanical structure that will actually support the system.

The number of g's a payload can withstand and the g's the launcher is capable of are carefully matched. Ideally a launcher, for maximum efficiency, wants to accelerate as quickly as possible, this is only done with missiles. Launchers for commercial launches go up much slower to protect the payload, which before launch has been tested for acceleration, temperature and pressure.

Getting the bits of satellite from A to B is also taken into account. There's no risk of them being dropped 2.5m onto concrete by a clumsy baggage handler. Many satellites contain toxins (beryllium oxide), maybe radioactives, and sometimes explosive bolts. All of these have to be signed off by the captain. They are then loaded onto the cargo hold by the loadmaster, who treats the components as if they were the finest porcelain.

If even a single component is rated to only -30 C and at Baikonur it's -35, the launch is held. There's no point in launching a satellite that might fail.

Thank you justapax fascinating glimpse of another world.

Satellites are about the most reliable bits of technology out there. Voyagers 1 and 2 have been up there since the late 70s. They've been subject to intense radiation, through several solar cycles, and are still mostly working. They have about the digital technology of a singing birthday card. They're well on their ways out of the solar system, working far beyond their design lifetimes.

AMSAT_OSCAR 7 (American Satellite Overhead Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) is not much younger. The batteries have failed, but you can still talk through the satellite when it's in sunlight. This was built not by governments with multi-million budgets, but by radio amateurs. It was put into orbit before people were concerned about space congestion, and its orbit won't decay for centuries.

An internet acquaintance of mine, who I've lost contact with, works for the European Space Agency Kourou, in French Guiana, about the best place on the planet for launching satellites. it's really close to the Equator. If it wasn't for political reasons (Cape Canaveral is on US soil) everything would be launched from there.

Very nasty accident at MAN this morning. I sincerely hope that the victim recovers fully, it sounds like they have a long road ahead of them sadly.......must have been pretty horrific for the pax in the departure lounge to see it happen too.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co...orror-33753324

I tried to find any update about the injured man but the only info is the original report. Let us hope that no news is good news.

I know someone who fell out of a 737 dorway like that - they suffered some serious injuries but felt they could have died all things being equal - it's a long drop onto a very hard surface

No big surprise.

Airlines across Europe are demanding a level playing field (or should that be airfield) in regard to support during difficult periods as it means global competition is leaving them behind

More on this : Europe's airlines say wars, red tape are holding them back as rivals streak ahead (Reuters - May 20, 2026)

Before I left flying and Europe, the European mob controlling emissions were so frustrating. You couldn't tanker fuel between many city pairs in Europe thus hindering flexibility and fuel cost optimisation.

ZFT , Chuckled at your straw hat story ...
Then rushed out to check my Panama hat .... 87% paper , 13% polyester [ Inside says Do NOT get wet ] ... It's done UK-NZ return 6 times now ...
Never crossed my mind it's a problem . Will have to wait 'til December to try again , bound to get caught as I'll be thinking of it !
Not as bad as our son . Deadheading back to NZ after a flying duty . Had apple in brief case to eat on the way .... fell asleep and forgot ! $400NZ on the spot , had to do some O/T to pay that one off .

rgds condor .

Been reading the thread regarding the power bank diverting an easyJet flight recently (unable to comment on it directly so just wanted to add something that may have been missed from the thread)

The question of why the flight diverted at that specific time after it had been flying for some time already can be easily explained...from a pax point of view.

Families....everyone wants to help pack the bags before leaving to go home. Unlike packing before the holiday, it can get a bit messy when going home....things put in the wrong bags, things being left behind etc

Is it not possible that a family who took their power bank on holiday, placed it into their carry on bags on the outbound flight.....but in the melee of packing to go home it ended up in a checked bag and that mistake was not discovered til part way through the flight someone wanted something from the carry on bag and at that point realised that the power bank was not where it should be....with "where did you put the power bank" question to the rest of the family and a reply "I put it in the suitcase" from one member of the family who maybe did not realise the potential harm in doing that. The pax then alerts the cabin crew, who in turn alerts the flightcrew and they divert out of basic caution.

It is totally possible that in the rush to get the kids packed and everything else packed that a power bank would end up in the wrong bag........however......you do have to wonder why it was not picked up on the baggage scanners prior to being loaded, but that is a different thread altogether.

I gather that he is about to/has been released from Hospital. Still well strapped up mind.

Playground no more: Thais sick of badly behaved tourists hail stricter visas
This article in The Guardian should not surprise. Thailand looks to be following Spain (possibly others) in not enjoying some British tourists. What is different here is the change to Visas. Obviously not always Brits.

Couple with travel costs, carriers may notice the change.

I doubt that. The change has very little to do with misbehaving tourists and all to do with illegal business operations, predominantly by Israelis and Russians that has caused issues with the already xenophobic attitudes that prevail within Thailand.

So why did they restrict the other 90 odd countries?
I believe this issue was raised with you before.

Source: BBC

They effectively reverted back to pre Covid requirements.

Exactly.