WHBM

last time was, alas, 3½ years ago, in the worst snowstorm for a decade, ending with a brilliant departure through it all by British Airways which you can read about here:

http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf...-done-all.html

Thank you jlemon for the London comments. The Olympics Marathon I referred to above passed spectacularly, we were watching here if that interests you (Squirrel park to the left)
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=51.5110...107.22,,0,3.78

and aviation helped as the course passed about three miles each side of us, there were three laps, so they passed us six times, and progress of the leaders could be easily followed by watching the TV helicopter in the sky. Oh, and speaking of hats off, I wish I’d had a hat on. Now sunburned on top of the head.

Alex Frater, in his brilliant book "Beyond the Blue Horizon", which all here should read, went in about 1985 to recreate the route of the old Empire Flying Boats from 50 years previously, stopping at all the same points along the way and comparing old and new accounts of places, including of course many mentions of timetables. Anyway, on the very last page he is back on the steps of St Pauls Cathedral in London, and wrote he looked up and just saw a BAe146 slipping across the sky. So it was more than a little appropriate that yesterday, standing on London's Embankment within sight of St Pauls, just as the Marathon race leader approached, a Swiss 146 turned overhead us at 2,000 feet for an easterly final approach into London City.

6-across is the standard for the 146 around the world, with the exception of the USA where it has been found too cramped. Now I'm not saying anything about national stereotypes ! A number of the US Air and Northwest aircraft that came back to Europe were refitted with 6-across seats, without real issue.

Just to round off about the De Havilland Albatross, alias the Frobisher class. The old Imperial Airways ordered two grand 4-engined designs off the drawing board in the late 1930s, the all-aluminium Armstrong Whitworth Ensign, and the still wooden-built (using a balsa frame), fast, De Havilland Albatross. The latter was regarded by many as something of an anachronistic joke, but the Ensign turned out to be the 787 of its day, years late, overweight, unreliable, all of that, so it was the elegant Albatross that got there first on its high speed runs to Paris, and surprisingly long mail runs to Cairo and beyond. It did have a habit of breaking clean in two in a couple of heavy landings, there are several photographs of this, but two weeks’ work by the carpenters and it was back in the air again. It formed the precursor to De Havilland’s classic WW2 bomber, the Mosquito, which again was laughed at until it was finally realised that it carried the bomb load of a B17 at a speed that the fighters couldn’t catch. BOAC also had a few Mosquitos, used for all sorts of clandestine passenger flights. The only real restriction was the resources needed for the volume timber frame construction; several major furniture manufacturers and even piano factories were engaged as subcontractors using their carpentry shops. This all started, anyway, with the Albatross. One never made it across the Atlantic. In the US you’ve probably never heard of it. Too bad.