a380

Flights

Posted on January 3, 2018

For some reason, it seems that I like planes. Not in a Let’s Go And Stand At The Airport For Days On End And Note Down Their Registration Numbers way, but definitely in a Since We’re At The Airport Let’s Go And Have A Coffee Somewhere We Can See The Runway From way. It’s an interest, not an obsession.

Of course, the only obsessive bit of this interest is the Airbus A380. Scarce in Cape Town thanks to our thin taxiways, but always a pleasure to get on in Dubai and go to Manchester. This (mild) obsession resulted in me following British Airways A380 pilot Dave Wallsworth on twitter. I mentioned this to you on here almost two years ago.

Captain Dave has now released a pair of YouTube videos showing exactly how an A380 takes off and lands. Yes, it’s a bit nerdy, in that it’s 10 minutes (each time) of real time footage, and it seems that aside from a few short words and actions, the crew don’t actually seem to do very much*, but it’s also annotated so that each thing that they do do is explained clearly.
If you have some spare time (and who doesn’t in early January?), it’s worth a watch:

And then, should you so wish, there’s the landing to look at as well.
WARNING: You will end up in Johannesburg at the end of this particular video.

One thing I did notice in both videos is that there’s an awful lot of looking out of the windows, presumably for other planes. I’m not sure if I find this comforting or not. Sure, a final check left before heading onto the runway seems like a pretty good idea, but should it really be necessary? I suppose that it takes minimal effort and it could make a huge difference, but I do wonder if it ever has. A bit like me looking left when turning onto the dual carriageway this morning, so as not to hit the utter twat of a cyclist going the wrong way. (An incident that was apparently entirely my fault with only a few months until the Cycle Tour, obvs.)

Having flown on these beasts several (or more) times, albeit never on a BA one or into Joburg, it’s really interesting to see what happens up front when we’re sitting in the back having our headphones and blankets collected and trying to find where our shoes have disappeared to.

* almost certainly because they’ve done an awful lot of things previously to make sure that they actually don’t have to do very much during this ten minutes.

The Qantas A380 post

Posted on September 11, 2017September 11, 2017

After an impromptu Twitter debate yesterday evening, I have found myself photoshopping this Qantas A380 into various images in any moments of spare time this morning.

It’s a long and actually rather uninteresting backstory, but I have discovered that adding a Qantas A380 to any photo not only makes that photo better, it’s also quite a cathartic process.

Additionally, I got a couple of helpful replies from the legend that is Jules Hudson – presenter of BBC’s Escape To The Country – and all round aircraft noise avoidance technique expert (residential).

Anyway, you can look forward to occasional images with the additional of the above aircraft on here. And then you’ll see what I mean.

Epique!

Posted on December 7, 2016

If you sell a range of 4 different sorts of pens, you will be able to demonstrate their capabilities fairly easily. Pop them in your pocket and you can take them most anywhere to show off just how good they are at… at… well, at writing stuff.

It’s more difficult when you’re selling passenger aircraft, including the Big Bird itself, the A380. But you still need to show potential buyers what they are buying. So Airbus slipped their metaphorical pens in their metaphorical pockets and gave us this:

The modern Airbus family includes the A320neo, A330-200, A350-900 and A380 aircraft, all of which the pilots flung around the skies above Toulouse.

And the airborne shots are impressive, but I actually really enjoyed watching them on the runway. The A320neo isn’t actually small, but you wouldn’t believe that when you see it with its big brothers.

5½ minutes of impressive flying and plenty of informative commentary. iLike.

Boxes ticked

Posted on July 7, 2016September 2, 2016

Wait – could this be a timelapse [tick] video of an Emirates [tick] A380 [tick] being repainted?

Yep, and obviously, as with every A380-related thing, it comes with some ridiculous stats:

Seven coats of paint weighing 1,100 kilograms were applied on ‘Echo Delta Delta’, covering an area of 3,076 square meters. The entire exterior of the A380 including the fuselage, wings, engines as well as vertical and horizontal stabilizers received a makeover. The paint coats on the fuselage comprised of one layer each of a primer and sealer, followed by three coats of Brilliant White, which is the custom Emirates color, and then two layers of clear coat and decorative paints for the Emirates insignia and logo.

There’s a full description of the process here.

Piloting

Posted on February 16, 2016February 16, 2016

It’s a sad thing, but the lovely Airbus A380 can’t use Cape Town International Airport. Given that we can fill a couple of Emirates 777s and two BA 747s each day (plus Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Swissair, Singapore Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Air France and Qatar flights), there’s definitely passenger demand for big planes. It’s just that, apparently, the taxiing bits twixt the main runway and the building where the people get off aren’t wide enough… or something.

That’s not to say that A380s haven’t visited the skies above Cape Town. Lufthansa brought theirs down here in 2011 [photos] to publicise their flights to… er… Joburg. And BA followed suit 2½ years later to get some shots to let people know about their new A380 service to… er… also Joburg. They went all over the general Cape Town area in G-XLED, even “buzzing the tower” at CTIA, but they couldn’t land.

No such issues for G-XLEC and pilot Captain Dave Wallsworth, who I am now following on Twitter. He flew all the way from Singapore to London Heathrow yesterday and he took this shot on final approach to runway 27R at LHR.

It looks a bit like a videogame , doesn’t it? It’s probably more difficult than that though. Probably.
I’m not sure how much Captain Dave and his co-pilot actually have to do to get the plane safely down onto the ground by this point, but given that I haven’t heard anything about a massive crash at the London airport, I’m guessing that he was able to happily and safely snap this sort of thing without too much of an issue.

For the record, BA now have 11 A380s, the latest one having been delivered earlier this month.

None of them will be coming to Cape Town any time soon.

UPDATE: Or will they…?

Woohoo!