flightradar24
flightradar24 seems to show no less aircraft than normal for Southern Britian.
Computer glitches in the UK's air traffic control system have restricted the number of flights over the south of England. It's reported thousands of passengers and holidaymakers face delays thanks to the technology gremlins. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) confirmed that it's "experiencing technical problems" at its …
Well, the last few chartered flights I've tried to track (one being a couple of weeks ago, a Thomson flight) did not appear on any (online/app) flight tracker I used, only the scheduled (and actual) departure and arrival times were displayed. Maybe I've been doing something wrong then?
Recent cases on either side of the Atlantic suggest that marking your commentary as "a joke" in order to avoid being arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist is about as useful as as marking it as "allegedly" in order to avoid being sued for libel.
Even talking about the weather is risky these days :-(
Hi! Paul Chambers here, You may remember me from such news stories as
“Twitter airport bomb joker to face jail”
“Robin Hood Airport, Yes, it is a real place”
“Northern Irishman in bomb scare shock”
and “My only comment is, thank God I’m not a Muslim, or I would not be available for comment”.
While I fully support your joke, I would like to suggest you remove all items that could be mistaken for a weapon from a half mile radius of your home, and spend the rest of the afternoon practicing your ‘non-threatening face’ while waiting for the knock on the door. You may also want to become friends with Al Murray and Stephen Fry.
What makes too many?
I work extremely close to heathrow and it is remarkable how quiet the aircraft are nowadays. Modern economies are founded on easy communication and travel. I think there are far too few aircraft over SE england caused by the paralysis of our political and planning system that makes it impossiblw to sensibly increase capacity. This is damaging the UK economy and therefore jobs etc.
"I work extremely close to heathrow and it is remarkable how quiet the aircraft are nowadays."
From what I've read it seems that planes landing are now the bigger noise problem, not planes taking off.
Quiet engines, steep ascents, throttling back at the right moment so as to be able to tip-toe away have made take-offs much quieter than they used to be.
But when landing aircraft are still coming in on a straight line, in a shallow glide, shedding speed as they go (which makes a ton of noise) and they're going slowly anyway. It means they can't fly around noise sensitive areas like they can on take off, they're low, and they they take ages to pass overhead. Sorting those problems out will take a lot of thinking.
Tell me about it - only it's not London, but Brum. Have had that sodding copper chopper hovering in a tight circle around my street for 90 minutes at least 3 times this year.
Around 2 am.
No sirens, no sounds from the ground, and nothing on their twitter feed.
Oh, and it has some sort of flashbomb on the front, so as it's bearing down it's blinding you - really wouldn't have been out of place in "Apocalypse Now".
I have little time for a police force that tries hard to intimidate it's citizens.
So now can they reduce the noise of the Met's helicopter when it circles somewhere above my house for half-an-hour at three in the morning?
No those are deliberately noisy as its a well know fact that terrorists hate the sound of western helicopters and will run out of their hiding places to shake their fists at them, making it easier to detain them.
PS if you don't know a terrorist in you area, then its you!!!
@bazza
If you watched Airport Live, you'd know that manufacturers like Airbus are working on the problem. e.g. a lot of noise comes from landing gear and slats and flaps and other devices that are needed for takeoff and landing and disrupt the otherwise smooth passage of air around the aircraft (e.g. airbrakes/spoilers). Those contribute a lot noise, especially on landing (landing gear is raised quickly on takeoff to reduce drag). Putting a small cover over the landing gear mechanism near the wheels (brakes, etc) made a noticeable difference in the noise profile of the undercarriage.
There are other things that can be done also. The universally accepted approach angle is 3 degrees. A slightly steeper approach angle will reduce the noise quite a bit, especially further from the airport. It also means less engine power is needed to sustain the glide slope (you never fly your engines at flight idle on approach at 3 degrees, they're always generating a bit more thrust. It's easier said than done as you'd have to recalibrate a LOT of gear, including the now infamous glideslope ILS transmitters.
“I work extremely close to heathrow and it is remarkable how quiet the aircraft are nowadays”
I also work close to Heathrow, and I agree, the aircrafts have gotten a lot quieter, I recently told this to my brother who lives in the countryside when I went to stay with him, he told me to stop shouting and turn the TV down.
"What makes too many?"
The fact that you hardly get blue skies over London any more - its always a white smear of vapour trails - and in a damn aircraft goes over at low level about once a minute either taking off or landing.
"I think there are far too few aircraft over SE england caused by the paralysis of our political and planning system that makes it impossiblw to sensibly increase capacity."
Too few?? Are you a troll or just a fool?
"This is damaging the UK economy and therefore jobs etc."
Utter bollocks. Air travel is a minor part of the UK economy - its only the vested interests in the air transport sector who are clamouring for more capacity and gullible politicians who believe them.
For the record London has more runway capacity than ANY other capital in europe. Don't believe me?
Ok then , try Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, City, Stansted, Southend, Biggin Hill.
I'm appalled at the Luddism shown by supposedly techy types. Air travel is one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and you complain about a bit of noise (I grew up on the flight path of Vulcans, and recently lived on the path from Birmingham), and would happily move back to live near a proper airport (Dundee doesn't count ...)
NIMBYs are the lowest form of social life.
I may be one of the few people who would gladly see profoundly noisy aircraft such as the Fairey Rotodyne reinvented and put into use - no matter how loud those rotor tip jets were - because it looked brilliant.
Anon, as I hail from an area of Eastern England where there seem to be fewer flights and I grew up to the sound of Lightnings and Jaguars so unlikely to be met with enthusiasm by someone whose conservatory lies under the final approach into Heathrow.
Yeah - bring back the Republic XF-84H too!
The loudest plane in history. Powered by a supersonic propeller mated to a turbine engine with reheat capability! Famed for making ground crew and people in the tower physically ill (nausea, headaches and seizures!), even when taxiing due to the constant sonic boom coming off the tips of the prop that were travelling at over mach 1.1.
The sonic boom shockwave extended from the prop for hundreds of yards and was audible from up to 25 miles away when doing high-speed ground run-ups!
Respect...
The Evening Standard has had a multitude of articles on Heathrow expansion.
A couple of weeks ago it was a scare piece, saying how awful everyone's life is in West London due to all the flights, aircraft noise and so on, and how a Heathrow expansion would be a disaster.
Literally two days later, the local politicos in West London went apeshit at the idea of BoJo Island, which would DESTROY their local boroughs and lead to the collapse of civilisation in Hillingdon.
"Maybe they should just blow the dust off the old PDP-11s.."
They're in Bletchley at TNMoC aren't they, so hopefully not gathering too much dust?
The people who understood them, on the other hand? Hopefully they're still around, but they may not come cheap (it's a scarce resource, Tim Worstall will tell you that scarce stuff in demand can be expensive).
I might be available.
The Russians used to have it sussed. They didn't bother with controllers to keep the planes apart in flight. Before departure the pilots were given three things: a height, a route and a speed.
If they deviate from any one of them they'd be joined by a couple of Migs and they'd land at the nearest available airfield. Passengers continue by coach and the crew are never seen again Very good system, didn't suffer in the slightest from repetitive faults!
(credit to David Gunson for his awesome After Dinner speech)
I was just thinking about that bit of it on the way home. "One on each wingtip" he says about the MiGs.
chock full of beautiful lines. It might be imprinted on my brain, the number of times we listened to it in the car on long journeys. In describing landing "my apologies gentlemen, but the wind is coming from your end"
I think he covers most everything under the sun in aviation in that speech. Concorde, why helicopters take off, landing on aircraft carriers, French air traffic control ( "I accept zem"), aircraft evacuation. All yours for £8 off Amazon and there's a taster on youtube.
Would the Post Office please note that this is the correct procedure for handling a computer failure. You do NOT insist your system is bullet proof, let the planes fly, and then put the pilots or air traffic controllers into jail when a plane crashes. (Or insist 76 crashes out of 200,000 flights is acceptable.) This has been a public safety announcement. The exits are on the left and on the right, next to my coat, which I will now take. Thank you for your attention.
Congratulations on cross connecting these two stories!
So as with the Post Office cock up adequate remedy for those killed in the ensuing accidents would be a refund of their air fare!
(Readers who've not seen the PO story: computer error led to people being bankrupted and jailed for fraud, having belatedly investigated and found out it was indeed a computer error PO appears to be proposing a refund as adequate recompense for ruined lives).
My first reaction was... why don't they just switch to computer system B? or system C if B is currently under maintenance.
Then I remembered that this was NATS running a safety of life service for one of the busiest airspaces in the world. Oh how I laughed at my own sillyness.
Yes NATS record in recent years is less than impressive.
But in what way is it "safety of life" though ? Obviously life is easier for the drivers if everything at NATS is working, and you can get more traffic through if everything is working. And the chance of incidents does increase when the system stops working.
But it's not safety critical in the same sense as (say) the no-mechanical-backup computer controlled fuel system on pretty much every modern commercial or military aircraft engine fitted in the last decade or two is safety critical, really, is it?
When each engine control system on a given plane has an identical software or hardware failure at the same time for the same reason, because they're all identical, now THAT's a problem in "safety of life" terms. Or as the industry calls it, DO178 Level A terms (there's probably an IEC SIL equivalent but I'm not sure their system and nomenclature is entirely equivalent).
Fortunately those things don't happen very often. Keep your fingers crossed it stays that way.