Can I help you

I was presuming that it was the latter and only a small gift of thanks.

msm2000uk

As CIHY has said, it will be just a token of appreciation to thank someone at BA.

M

nancypants

One for the pilots amongst us

do you find flying as a job curtails your enjoyment of leisure flying or makes you want to limit it?

BA6501

Another one for the pilots... when flying as a passenger, do you sometimes suffer from "back seat driver" syndrome?

Soupdragon62

Great question! Speaking as someone who literally flies somewhere almost every week for work, I know that when my wife suggested a few days in Hawaii for Thanksgiving, I politely declined and suggested a road trip to the Sierra Nevada for a few days.

nancypants

I also have a follow up question of whether aviation professionals are less interested in aviation stuff now “you” work in aviation?

Can I help you

You may not have noticed but our pilot colleagues are mostly less or in some cases not at all.

nancypants

yes I did think it might not get answered when I asked it, although I think there’s a few retired pilots still posting?

alex67500

Question, maybe not in the right place... I got SSSS on my boarding pass on the babybus and had to go through the extra searches at both LCY and SNN. If they don't trust the LCY one, then why go through the trouble there? It's an intra-Europe flight at that point.

The only upshot at LCY was that I got passed the queue and was through faster than my friends who were in the "normal" queue.

Heathrow Tower

I can't speak for pilots, but there's plenty of back-seat controlling when I fly, especially from LHR!

TedToToe

A couple of follow up questions, Heathrow Tower . Do LHR controllers need to practice single runway operations? If and when it happens, how easy is it to adjust?

zanderblue

I’ve always wondered how take off order is decided.
Is it as the aircraft arrives at runway or as they push back from gate?
thanks

LCSinTexas

... or is money changing hands first...

Erwin10

Speaking for myself I am still more than interested in aviation, despite working in it. I would say my interests help me with my day to day job, as it adds additional wide knowledge of the industry.

champair79

Definitely. I’m on shorthaul and when I get a few days off, I want to be well away from an aeroplane or airport. However, after a few days I’m itching to go again. You have to give your body time to recover. Irregular hours, intense concentration and repeatedly going up and down (with the dry cabin air etc) is fatiguing. I’m LHR based and the daily grind of ‘fighting’ LHR can take its toll. You always want to do the best for your customers but inevitably, things will go wrong. LHR as an airport is bursting at the seams and once something goes wrong, the operation can very quickly fall apart as there is no slack anywhere. You learn to not let it affect you too much as there’s nothing you can do.

I try not to and try to switch off from the operation. When deadheading on my fleet, I’ll fully admit to ‘assessing’ their performance figuratively speaking. Whether it’s quality of the PAs, when they start the second engine, how firm the landing is etc. Of course I have no idea what situation they’re actually encountering in the front. Often we’re thrown curveballs! . There are things you pick up which you can take on board to develop you as a professional - things you thought they did well or didn’t do so well. I always ask myself “what would I have done or said in that situation? Did that convey the right message? How did the customers react?”

No, I still love it and couldn’t imagine working in a different industry. I sometimes worry about the direction the industry is heading but I find the whole industry and airline world fascinating. There are so many different roles and specialities right across the business and every day you learn something new. Plus of course travelling is great for the soul.

Lots of things. Broadly speaking it’s who arrives in the queue first. However, the order is further refined by utilising a direction orientated sequence (i.e. it’s more efficient to depart aircraft in a N/S/N/S..... sequence as you can reduce separation down to minimum wake requirements rather than the two minute route minimum.

Then the controller will also consider whether the aircraft are light, medium or heavy (based on their wake turbulence category). This affects the separation gap between departures. For example, a heavy departing behind another heavy requires less separation time than a light departing behind a heavy.

Then of course there are inevitable slot windows for certain aircraft. So occasionally some aircraft will queue jump to avoid missing their slot. No airline gets preferential treatment (unless you’re Aer Lingus at LHR..... ).

90% of the time, the taxi time at LHR is 20-25 mins. It’s amazing how regular it is. We carry fuel based on these average taxi times which are reviewed constantly.

Regards,
Champ