Entries Tagged 'Flying' ↓

A lot of big things happening this weekend, many of them without me (can’t be in three places at once):

• The launch of the PS3 in Japan
• The AOPA Expo 2006 in Palm Springs, seems like I miss it every year it in CA
• The Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo. The event has already started but this weekend sees the highlight with the parade Saturday morning, and the various rodeos throughout the weekend. Yee-hah! And all that.

This past weekend I flew Teri to Camarillo for a surprise trip to Santa Rosa Island. The island lies 40 miles off the coast of Ventura and I had signed us up for a tour with Channel Islands Aviation who would fly us there, and arrange for a guide.

The self-flying was fun, including a return trip with only one working brake, and you can read about it on my flying blog if you wish.

I can heartily recommend the tour. The island feels quite isolated and is beautiful with untouched beaches and rolling hills, just beware the high winds and the hunters (though hopefully they will be gone in 2011). We had a great guide, Inge, a volunteer with the National Park service who had a great passion and knowledge for the island. The trip across the sea to the island was also fun, our pilot Curtis skilfully brought the plane down on the dirt strip in very high winds and thanks to several people not showing up he was able to join us for the tour.

To the pictures I took, click on the photo above or go to this link to my flickr photoset.

Been trying to think of something neat to do with the Google Maps API and finally came up with doing a map of the airports that I’ve flown into. Yeah, its been done before but first time for me, and isn’t the first time always special?

So poor BA has had to cancel all its flights in and out of Heathrow for two days thanks to some wildcat strikes. Some dodgy dealings by its catering contractor led to a walkout causing some short and long-haul BA flights to leave without food on board. But then today some good old British workers decided to strike ‘in sympathy’ and bring BA to it’s knees.

BA has nothing whatsoever to do with the problems at the catering company, other than being a customer. So why then did the baggage and ground handlers feel compelled to ‘join their brethren’? It would be easy to say its because they are bunch of lazy tossers, easy because its true. I say sack the bleedin’ lot of them, they are in breach of their contract, they can’t argue they are supporting downtrodden BA employees because they’re not and so the strike is totally illegal. Even their trade union says so.

Meanwhile people have been stranded on planes on the tarmac for in excess of 6 hours because they can’t go to the gate as there are no tugs to take the plane there, no people to put the bridge over and open the door etc. And there there is the chaos inside the terminal (though I’d rather be there if I had to be somewhere).

This could turn into a real nasty situation for BA (and the other airlines affected such as Qantas), I hope they are able to sort it out quickly.

Been planning on this one for a while but finally gotten to the point where I want to do it - leftturnwhenable.com will be a bulletin board site where San Diego pilots can share trip ideas, routes, problems and, most importantly, find trip buddies and safety pilots. Nothing there yet, but look out for it soon.

Oh, the reason for the name? When landing at Montgomery Field, if you land long and fast (or look like you had any difficulty) rather than tell you to take exit whatever they tell you to make a “left turn when able”. I always know I blew it when I hear that.