Sooo... is anyone actually going to reveal this one? I won't go into the other urban dictionary suggestions...

For what it's worth, I knew MSY, but not SXM, and wouldn't have known if 7000ft was long or short for a runway.

I honestly thought you were joking, introducing a second obscure TLA in your thread.

I've quickly realised humour may not be one of your stronger traits, so googled CSA. Abbreviations.com has six pages of candidate explanations (http://www.abbreviations.com/CSA).

Could we convince you to abandon your flinty approach to educating us, by revealing the words and meaning behind CSA?

I fell for it, and Googled it. None the wiser (see above :eek:). From usage, I'm guessing it refers to an airport system, as in London airport system includes Heathrow, Luton etc.

The urban dictionary suggestions were alarming: the hair-tie related one I instantly discounted.



BINGO! I'm nothing if not tenacious :D I phoned a friend (literally!):

FFS everyone knows it means Child Support Agency :)

try the urban dictionary :) The explanations are much more interesting: some are hair raising...

The first thing that came to my mind was Canadian Standards Association, same sorts of people as those who set British Standards or Cenelec.

"Combined Statistical Area"... the combination of metropolitan + micropolitan areas, used primarily to compare economic, social, and (especially) transportation stats for given urban areas.

Airports and airlines in particular use CSAs for their research purposes, as they paint the most realistic picture of catchment areas.

As to the CSA mentioned... it's the combination of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and their plethora of surrounding suburbs, to form the 8million person San Francisco Bay Combined Statistical Area: which has the distinction of being the only CSA with three different gateway airports to London.

All of the other major CSAs with multiple gateways to London (Greater New York City, Greater Orlando, Greater South Florida, Greater Washington D.C., etc) only have two.

NUTS !

I guess these are the broad equivalent in European terms to our NUTS.

I'll be generous: Nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques.
NUTS level 3 are the finest grained units: there are getting on for 1400 of these in the EU, the United Kingdom accounting for 10% of them.

I have been on a BA 747 that used 1R for take off and it was quite a ride.
There was no announcement from the flight deck and we seemed to be taking the normal path to the 28 runways across the back of the 1's when we turned onto what I thought was the outside taxiway and stopped.
The engines then spooled up and we were off leaping into the sky, poetic licence, at a higher than usual angle and sitting in 64K I got a very good booty haul as everything that had been left on the locker top in row 63 came shooting down to me.

All in all a very enjoyable experience for a plane geek but as we were late leaving and it was October it was dark so no interesting views or photos

DMF

Thats only true if you are taking off from a field where the field length is greater than the balanced field length, and, or where the take off is not TORA limited. In these conditions then there will be only one V1 available. Modern perf calculations do allow a range of options and the readily available performace tools do allow this options to be optimised for several factors but you cannot beat physics and the regulations. The reality is that takeoffs are seldom limiting though it does happen and sometimes departures from certain runways will not be available in the prevailing conditions.

Most departures use the longest available runways for sensible reasons and they are not just safety related. Engines are generally bought on a power by the hour arrangement and these arrangements mandate the use of the greatest available derate (or reduced thrust setting) for take-off in order to enhance engine life. The higher the power the higher the turbine temperature and the shorter the engine life. Also engines generally fail in one of two conditions; high power setting and or change from a steady state. So the less power the less strain the engine is under. Using max power for no reason is not the smartest thing to do, it is available but you need a pressing safety reason to use it.

Sidebar: anyone know how I can find out the name of the captain on this flight (BA224, March 27, 2017)?

She was the first female captain I've ever had on a longhaul flight. Figured it'd be worth knowing.

It is type dependent though. For example, the BA Embraers at London City would automatically 'uptrim' (i.e. increase thrust) by 10% on the functioning engine in the event of an engine failure. This isn't anything to do with London City operations, it's just how that particular type was designed.

I have another question :D

I recently heard about an incident where a China Eastern A320 was forced to rotate early because of a runway incursion with insufficient distance to stop.
— http://avherald.com/h?article=49f37b96

If a similar incident happens with a derated engine, are the crew able to remove the derate and "firewall" the engines relatively quickly? Or are you stuck with the derated power until the take off run is complete?

On an airbus the throttle has a number of detents which represent various power levels for CLIMB, FLEX, and TOGA, and the one used for take-off is the flex position which I understand is the set power level based on the selected de-rates and assumed temperature.

https://leehamnews-5389.kxcdn.com/wp...ust-levers.png

I would imagine in order to get additional power during a take-off you would simply manually advance the throttles from the FLEX detent to the TOGA detent which as noted above seems to give maximum available take-off thrust.

On a boeing I am genuinely not sure how you would achieve the same short of disengaging the autothrottle and manually advancing the throttles beyond the pre-calculated take-off position - I am not sure pressing the to/ga button again during the take-off roll would do anything.

EDIT: read the report on avherald which seems to bear this out "the commander took control of the aircraft, applied TOGA and accelerated the aircraft to 130 KIAS"

In short, yes.