Southwest Airlines Rap

Brilliant!

Bit of a Giveaway

Nil points to the would-be illegal immigrant who was caught at Manchester airport last week. The Mexican man was doing well with his story that he was visiting a friend in the UK until customs officers spotted a 'Good Luck with your new life in the UK' card in his luggage. He didn't really have much of a case from that point on and, having admitted his real intentions, was deported the next day.

Casting Aspersions

Full marks for creativity go to the Chilean gentleman who was arrested at Barcelona airport last week for attempting to smuggle cocaine into Spain by ingenious means. The 66 year old had a genuinely broken shin. What was less pukka was the cast he was wearing; it was almost entirely of compressed cocaine! Not content with that he also has six fake beer cans and two hollowed out stools, all of which were packed full with 'showbiz sherbet' too.

Flamboyant Pilot is not an oxymoron

There's news today about a pilot who lost his job from My Travel the UK charter airline after allowing a footballer onto the flight deck on a return flight with the Blackburn Rovers. It was apparently to help allay the players fears of flying but it was against company regulations and it got the pilot sacked for breaching anti-terrorist regulations. While the footballer in question my have had a bit of a reputation as a hard tackler it seems to be stretching credibility to use the inflight hijacking rules in such a way. Read on in the reports and the pilot in question was on a final written warning from the airline over an incident at security in Birmingham airport. He stripped to his underwear after what appears to have been an over zealous security check. No one complained but the airline handed out a written warning but has now agreed he had been provoked by the security people.

On the plus side he had received more commendations from the public than any other pilot in the company. It seems that the ex-RAF fighter pilot is certainly larger than life but where's the harm in that? In a world where regulations are suppressing all the colour out of life it's just one more nail in the coffin of flamboyant characters – the airline industry was once full of them. . .I must be getting old.

Guaranteed Upgrades?

Following the incident of the severely anguished passenger who missed her flight at Hong Kong in early February it’s caused quote some consternation at Cathay Pacific, the airline whose plane the lady missed. The airline has apologised because it was one of their workers who filmed the video, they’ve since been disciplined, although it was someone else who actually posted the video on Youtube.
Apparently the woman was shouting "They have no compassion. The plane hasn't even left, and they've shut the gate. They're crazy! They're crazy!" Cathay have apologized to the woman "for the inconvenience and embarrassment she may have suffered as a result" and offered to upgrade her seats on her next trip and reimburse her for frequent flyer miles she used for upgrades on recent flights.
So if nothing else we now at least have a fool proof method of securing an upgrade.

Safety Pays

In the wake of Ryanair's plans for pay toilets on board their aircraft, those witty spoofsters at i.gizmodo.com have come up with a most excellent vision of the possible future with this fake emergency safety card...

What's in a Word?

In a time long ago, in fact WAY back in the last century, a time when aeroplanes had propellers there was a very odd thing happened to an aircraft called a York. It was a derivative of a World War 2 bomber; it looked it, flew like it and was very noisy even with the door shut.

A flight engineer called George Savage was on the flight deck of a York along with a Captain named MacKenzie – he later became chief pilot of British United Airways (what do you mean you've never heard of them! -Ed). George was a miserable old sod and half way down the runway Captain MacKenzie turned to George and said "cheer up George." George thought he said – gear up George. The rest is history as one very sad York sank back on the runway with very bent propellers. (with thanks to Roy Saxton)

That's a York in the background with me aged 14, and my little sister Sue. I was about to go and sleep in it as I was learning to glide with the Scouts. It had that wonderful smell that all old aeroplanes have!